Books for The Deep Thinker

Brainspotting: Adventures in Neurology

A. J. Lees

In this series of brilliant autobiographical essays, A. J. Lees takes us on a grand tour of his neurological career, giving the reader insight into the art of listening, observation and imagination that the best neurologists still rely on to heal minds and fix brains.

Confessions of a Heretic (revised edition)

Roger Scruton

A collection of twelve provocative essays by the philosopher and political thinker Roger Scruton. Each ‘confession’ reveals an aspect of the author’s thinking that his critics would probably have advised him to keep to himself. This diverse collection includes essays on art, music, architecture, government, social media, and culture.

Inspiration

Three writers pay homage to their unlikely influences in these remarkable and moving essays.

Denial: The Unspeakable Truth

Keith Kahn-Harris

The Holocaust never happened. The planet isn’t warming. Vaccines cause autism. There is no such thing as AIDS. The Earth is flat. Kahn-Harris sets out not just to unpick denialists’ arguments, but to investigate what lies behind them. The conclusions he reaches are disturbing and uncomfortable.

How Shostakovich Changed My Mind

Stephen Johnson

Winner of the 2021 Rubery Book Award. BBC music broadcaster Stephen Johnson (who has Bipolar Disorder himself) explores the power of Shostakovich’s music during Stalin’s reign of terror, and writes of the extraordinary healing effect of music on the mind for sufferers of mental illness.

Epiphany

Each of the books in this collection reveals a moment of sudden, life-changing, epiphany.

Mentored by a Madman: The William Burroughs Experiment

A. J. Lees

In this extraordinary memoir, neuroscientist Andrew Lees explains how William Burroughs, author of Naked Lunch and troubled drug addict, played an unlikely part in his medical career.

Essays on the Self

Virginia Woolf

The essays in this collection are, of course, not merely concerned with the self. Woolf does also discuss the rights of women, the revolutions of modernity, the past, present and future of the novel. She is eloquent on social inequality and the agony of war.

Things I Don’t Want To Know

Deborah Levy

Things I Don’t Want to Know is a unique response to George Orwell from one of our most vital contemporary writers. Taking Orwell’s famous list of motives for writing as the jumping-off point for a sequence of thrilling reflections on the writing life, this is a perfect companion not just to Orwell’s essay, but also to Levy’s own, essential oeuvre.

Junkspace with Running Room

Rem Koolhaas Hal Foster

In Junkspace, architect Rem Koolhaas itemised in delirious detail how our cities are being overwhelmed. His celebrated jeremiad is here updated and twinned with Running Room, a fresh response from architectural critic Hal Foster.

You and Me: The Neuroscience of Identity

Susan Greenfield

A fascinating look at the relationship between identity and neuroscience in the age of social media. Greenfield looks at the ways in which technology impacts our brains and sense of identity.

The Road to Apocalypse: The Extraordinary Journey of Lewis Way

Stanley Price Munro Price

In 1811 eccentric millionaire Lewis Way had an epiphany on the road to Exmouth. From that moment he devoted himself to one goal: the return of the Jews to the Holy Land, revealing a forgotten life story.