My Father's Brain

Reviews

"Painful yet affecting . . . difficult to put down." —Kirkus Reviews

"With Heart: A History and other books, Sandeep Jauhar established himself as one of our most insightful, readable, and humane physician-authors. With My Father’s Brain, his work becomes still more essential. Blending the humor, compassion, and absorbing family drama of first-rate memoir with expert science writing, he has composed a can’t-miss introduction to what has been called The Age of Alzheimer’s." —Sanjay Gupta, author of Keep Sharp and World War C

“These pages will be a blessing to families dealing with Alzheimer’s. Jauhar’s prose is insightful, honest and moving about a condition that most of us will inevitably encounter in our lifetimes." —Abraham Verghese, author of Cutting for Stone

"My Father's Brain is at once a deeply affecting memoir and a profoundly instructive primer about a malady that now affects many millions of people." —Amitav Ghosh, author of Flood of Fire and The Nutmeg's Curse

"My Father's Brain is honest and compelling, combining the professional and the personal in a story that is both gripping and desperately sad. Anyone who has loved and cared for someone with dementia will recognize their own creeping realization that something is wrong: the attempts to explain away bizarre behaviors, the moments of frustration and shame, the 'traitorous eye rolls' made by Jauhar as he tried to convey to strangers that his father 'was no longer himself and it was not my fault.' Sandeep Jauhar is unsparing in his analysis of his own response to his father's illness, and does not offer trite solutions, but he describes what happened—there are sharply observed scenes of family discord about the care of his father in his final days—and his honesty makes this a book that will give others what we sometimes need most: the knowledge that we are not alone." —Lucy Pollock, author of The Book About Getting Older

"From the unflinchingly honest perspective of a compassionate doctor and loving son, My Father's Brain offers an unprecedented portrait of the insidious ravages of dementia and the terrifying vicissitudes of chronic neurologic disease. It delivers a page-turning narrative as haunting as it is inspiring and as devastating as it is deeply moving. Essential reading for every child of a mother or father in the twilight of life." —Cody Keenan, former Chief Speechwriter for President Barack Obama and author of Grace: President Obama and Ten Days in the Battle for America