From the Publisher
“Peter Sterling is a preeminent neuroscientist whose revolutionary work on allostasis has advanced our understanding of the brain and its functional architecture. What Is Health? continues that profound work of scholarship and prompts serious reflection as to how we deliver care and train the next generation of health care providers.”
—
Katrina Armstrong, Physician-in-Chief, Massachusetts General Hospital
“This lucid story on the wisdom of the human body and the poverty of our attempts to control it has deep implications for how we go about living our lives in the present crisis of persons and the planet. A wonderful and worried homage to Homo sapiens.”
—
Tor Nørretranders, author of
The User Illusion and
The Generous Man“The eminent and far-sighted neuroscientist takes a step away from the buzz and confusions of modern life and goes back to first principles. He suggests that we should take brain function to define our goals and make the economic and political decisions necessary to achieve them. When properly understood, the brain tells us what is good for us, whereas our sometimes unreflected choices can lead us into wrong, and ultimately fatal, directions. A wonderful and very consequential book.”
—
Wolfram Schultz, University of Cambridge, Brain Prize 2017
“Peter Sterling leads us on a deep history tour of ourselves, from single cells to the evolution of Homo sapiens. Understanding the ways bodies adapt to their environment yields one startling insight after another. You will never look at disease, addiction, and health the same way again.”
—
Keith Payne, author of
The Broken Ladder;
Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
