Gray Matters

A practising neurosurgeon’s history of his own field, from trepanation and Harvey Cushing’s founding of modern neurosurgery through the mid-century enthusiasm for lobotomy to contemporary microsurgery — interleaved with cases from Schwartz’s own operating room. It is candid about how much of the discipline’s progress came from procedures later judged catastrophic, and about how the surgeon’s confidence is both necessary and dangerous.

Why it’s on the list: A history of a high-stakes technical craft told by someone inside it, with the failures given the same weight as the advances.

Where I saw it: Michael Mauboussin’s favourite books of 2024, posted December 31, 2024.

Connections

• Neuroscience — the field whose clinical arm this is.
• Expertise — the book’s recurring problem: what a surgeon’s judgement is actually built on, and when it misleads.
• Michael Mauboussin — the curator whose 2024 list this came from.