Head Case How I Almost Lost My Mind Trying to Understand My Brain by Dennis Cass ISBN: 9780060594725 $24.95 Hardcover HarperCollins Publishers Infiltrating the world of neuroscience, Dennis Cass offers up his own brain to "research," subjecting his mind and body to electric shocks, mind-numbing attention experiments, cigarettes, stress tests of his own devising, and the comedy of Bill Maher. Like a slightly off-kilter George Plimpton, Cass, in his daring exploits, reveals the intricacies of fear, attention, stress, reward, and consciousness from the inside out. Along the way, he weaves in the story of his stepfather's manic depression and drug addiction, in addition to his own problems--which are many. Cass attacks the subject of the human brain with wit and candor, turning popular science into something distinctly human. Head Case is an imperative read for anyone who has ever wondered, Why am I who I am? Poor People by William T. Vollmann ISBN: 9780060878825 $29.95 Hardcover Ecco In the tradition of James Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, Vollmann's Poor People struggles to confront poverty in all its hopelessness and brutality, its pride and abject fear, its fierce misery and its quiet resignation. Poor People allows the poor to speak for themselves, explaining the causes and consequences of their impoverishment in their own cultural, social, and religious terms. The result of Vollmann's fearless journey is a look at poverty unlike any other. Complete with more than 100 powerfully affecting photographs--taken of the interviewees by the author himself--this series of vignettes and searing insights represents a tremendous step toward an understanding of this age-old social ill. With intense compassion and a scrupulously unpatronizing eye, Vollmann invites his readers to recognize in our fellow human beings their full dignity, fallibility, pride, and pain, and the power of their hard-fought resilience.