Lost and Found: Memory, Identity, and Who We Become When We're No Longer Ourselves

2013: THE EXAMINED LIFE; 2014: DO NO HARM; 2016: WHEN BREATH BECOMES AIR; 2017: FRAGILE LIVES... this year's moving, humane, medical bestseller will be Jules Montague's LOST AND FOUND, the definitive book for our times about what happens to the person left behind when memories disappear.

This will be the definitive book for our times about how we are affected by Alzheimer's, Dementia, Amnesia and other brain disorders that affect memory and, ultimately, identity. The subject has found its ideal author in Jules Montague, a leading British neurologist and science writer, whose writing combines scientific expertise, profound humanity and spellbinding storytelling.

LOST AND FOUND began when Jules's close friend, Anna, asked her a question.

Anna's mother had developed a brain tumour, diagnosed as late-stage. It had started with headaches but got worse. Eventually she was seeing double and hearing voices.

Her mother, Anna explained, had started telling Anna she loved her, repeatedly. She had never done this before; never been demonstratively affectionate.

The question Anna asked Jules was: was it really her mother talking? Was it part of her personality? Or was it an effect of the tumour on her brain? How do we disentangle these interpretations? Are they mutually incompatible? Might a neuropathological change make someone more, rather than less, themselves?

In this book, through a series of stories, case studies and descriptions of neuroscience at the cutting edge, Jules will examine personal identity; what it is, how we lose it, to age, amnesia, dementia, Alzheimers; to what degree we remain the same people throughout our lives, how and why we change.

An unforgettable book about what makes us who we are, LOST AND FOUND could not be more timely, more important, more exciting or more essential.