The author relates how a chance encounter in a magic shop with a woman who taught him exercises to ease his sufferings and manifest his greatest desires gave him a glimpse of the relationship between the brain and the heart, and drove him to explore the neuroscience of compassion and altruism.

"Like most Americans, you might think of Ben Carson as a trailblazing brain surgeon and, in the last few years, as an outspoken commentator on national issues. But his wife of more than forty years knows him as so much more: a loving husband, a devoted father, a devout Christian, a committed philanthropist, and a fierce patriot. Now Candy Carson introduces us to the private side of a very public figure as she shares the inspiring story of their marriage...

Dr. Walter J. Freeman ranks as one of the most scorned physicians of the 20th century, widely remembered as a loose cannon who worked beyond the boundaries of acceptable medical practice. Yet many of the most important medical figures during his time lent their support to his work, effectively pulling lobotomy--the operation that made him famous--into the mainstream. Many of his patients observed how their lobotomies had changed them for the better....

"Tumors, injuries, natural malformations -- there is almost no such thing as a non-emergency brain surgery when it comes to kids. For a pediatric neurosurgeon working in the medical minefield of the brain -- in which every millimeter in every direction governs something that makes us essentially human -- every day presents the challenge, the opportunity, to give a new lease on life to a child for whom nothing is yet determined and all possibilities...