"Gross's tales of the history of neuroscience can be warmly recommended to all students of the brain, but especially to those who believe that history began when they were undergraduates. Informative and amusing in equal part, Gross is as fair to those who were wildly wrong as to those who were (relatively) right. . . . Never less than fascinating."
-- John C. Marshall, Nature

Charles G. Gross is an experimental neuroscientist who specializes in brain mechanisms in vision. He is also fascinated by the history of his field. In these engaging tales describing the growth of knowledge about the brain -- from the early Egyptians and Greeks to the Dark Ages and the Renaissance to the present time -- he attempts to answer the question of how the discipline of neuroscience evolved into its modern incarnation through the twists and turns of history.