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Title: Phineas Gage                                                                                                                                                                                

Author: John Fleischman                                                                                                                                                                                

Genre: Non-Fiction/Biography

 

 

In the 1800’s, Phineas Gage, a railroad worker, had an accident that lead to scientific discoveries about the brain.  He was a foreman who survived an accident with explosives, despite having brain injury.  Phineas made a “complete recovery” and went on to have many jobs and travel the world.  The accident changed him forever and what people thought about the brain.

            The theme of this book is luck.  Throughout the book, the author says that Phineas was lucky.  I think that he was lucky but also unlucky.  He was lucky to have survived, but unlucky to have the rod go through his head in the first place.  It just depends on how you look at it.

            I didn’t like the parts of this book.  Some parts were slow.  There was too much science and brain information.  Also, there were parts that were hard to understand like the medical terms.  I would rate this book three stars, because some parts were slow and hard to understand.  I would recommend this book to people who are interested in the brain.