General neurology and psychiatry

Inside the brain: revolutionary discoveries of how the mind works
Kotulak R. Andrews McMeel Publishing, 1997

This book explores some of the secrets of the human brain by analysing the work of the leading researchers in the field. It offers theories on how environment, diet, and a host of other factors affect neurological development. Among other things, the book offers groundbreaking evidence on how unhealthy surroundings foster serious imbalances in neurological chemicals and, in turn, unhealthy or violent behaviour.

How the mind works
Pinker S. W W Norton & Company, 1999

Why do fools fall in love? Why does a man's annual salary, on average, increase $600 with each inch of his height? When a crack dealer guns down a rival, how is he just like Alexander Hamilton, whose face is on the ten-dollar bill? How do optical illusions function as windows on the human soul? Cheerful, cheeky, occasionally outrageous MIT psychologist Steven Pinker answers all of the above and more in his fun, informative survey of modern brain science.

Am I okay?
Francis A, First MB. Touchstone, 2000

This text charts the territory of mental illness and guides readers along the pathway to better health. It is designed to help people identify whether or not they might have a psychiatric condition as early as possible.

Changing minds
Tallis F. Continuum Publishing Group, 1998

This study is aimed at the lay person with a "readable" history of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. It provides an introduction to the key figures from Freud to Beck and explains their most important ideas. It also illustrates how psychotherapy has influenced our understanding of the mind and how it works, particularly in the area as we refer to as "mental illness". This book explores the "character" of major figures in psychology as well as their ideas. Links are made throughout, showing how historical and cultural events (for example, the Holocaust and the invention of the computer) have influenced ideas about the mind, and vice-versa.

Minds behind the brain
Finger S. Oxford University Press, Inc., 2000

This volume presents the highlights of the history of brain research for a lay audience. The author, a neuropsychologist, begins with an unnamed physician in ancient Egypt and moves through Greece, Rome, European Renaissance and eventually into the 20th century. Overall the collection of scientific biographies reveals how people in other cultures and times thought about the mysterious organ of mind and how great discoveries are made and received.

The nervous system
Nathan P. Whurr Publishers, 1997

This work on the nervous system includes such areas as the five senses, and the senses unnoticed by the Greeks; the physics of the nerve impulse; and the anatomical bases of motivation, pain, the endocrine glands and hormones, sensation and perception, and the higher nervous activities.