For a condition that affects 50 million Americans, migraine is surprisingly poorly understood and, as a research topic, grievously underfunded. By turns personal (cluster headache! God almighty!) and journalistic, The Headache explores the mysterious nature of headache pain and, equally mysterious, the whims of federal funding and the biases that underlie the condition's neglect. Zeller writes with intelligence, compassion, equanimity, and wit. Required reading for anyone with a head." Mary Roach, New York Times bestselling author of Stiff and Fuzz
Mr. Zeller does more than dispel the myth of malingering; he powerfully argues that justice must be done for those who . . . have been failed by a medical system that still considers headache disorders a trivial choice for specialization. . . . What Mr. Zellers book offers, most powerfully, is testimony. It is not merely a headache, and it deserves our attention. Wall Street Journal
The Headache is smart, insightful, funny, compassionate, addictively readable, and most of all necessary. Its about timeand every sufferer out there will agreethat we try to make sense of headaches, one of medicines longstanding great mysteries. Tom Zeller Jr.s book is a pioneering illumination of both the subject and the many people it touches, offering understanding tinged with hope. Deborah Blum, Pulitzer Prizewinning author of The Poisoner's Handbook
"An important, harrowing, and ultimately hopeful book. If the path to enlightenment is to make the darkness conscious, as Carl Jung taught, then Tom Zeller Jr. is showing us the way by illuminating his own pain and those of countless others suffering from devastating headaches. The science here is skillfully explained, of course, but that's only the most obvious of this book's many virtues." Dan Fagin, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Toms River
The Headache not only renders the monstrous dimensions of Zellers own headache pain, it traces the haphazard and often comically dismissive attempts by science to make sense of headache disorders writ large. In turns wry, curious, and even harrowing, the book's quest for a Sanctuary of Asclepius ultimately broadens our understanding of a remarkably understudied plague and the new strains of science that appear to be, at long last, developing on the frontier. The Headache is an odyssey and a revelation." Charles M. Blow, author of Fire Shut Up In My Bones and The Devil You Know
The Headache is a revelatory and moving account of a condition that is both diabolically painful and woefully misunderstood. Zeller masterfully weaves his personal story with the vaporous but tantalizing threads of medical science. Florence Williams, author of The Nature Fix and Heartbreak
"In this absorbing, incisive account of the history of headache disorders, Zeller captures the profound human and scientific costs of medicine's neglect of these common conditions that affect millions of peopleespecially womenand points the way toward a more hopeful future." Maya Dusenbery, author of Doing Harm
"A sharpand funnyaccount of one mans attempt to understand why so many of us suffer head pain." Kirkus Reviews
"Moving. . .an eye-opening study of an all-too-common affliction." Publishers Weekly
