"Required reading for anyone with a head."—Mary Roach New York Times bestselling author of
Stiff and Fuzz "[ The Headache ] weaves together history biology a survey of current research
testimony from patients and an agonizing account of Zeller’s own suffering. . . If there’s a
lesson here it’s that pain resists mastery but understanding however incomplete can offer
its own form of relief."— New Yorker From blinding migraines to severe headache disorders known
as “clusters ” chronic head pain affects 40% of the population many of them suffering in
silence. Finally The Headache reveals the science behind a group of disorders that is as much
a curse as a cultural punchline and leads to key insights into the nature of pain itself.
Guided by his own decades-long struggle with cluster headaches veteran science journalist Tom
Zeller Jr.’s journey into headache science is at once intimate and panoramic. He visits
cutting-edge clinics interviews dozens of doctors neurologists and fellow headache patients
participates in clinical trials for multi-million-dollar new medicines and even experiments
with psilocybin in search of relief. Along the way Zeller traces the longer arc of mystery
around headaches from prehistoric skull surgery to Virginia Woolf’s assertion that in the
throes of a migraine “language runs dry ” to reveal how headaches became one of the most
under-researched afflictions in medicine—and how that is slowly starting to change. With warmth
wit and infectious curiosity Zeller’s search for the origins of his own headaches becomes a
journey into the inner workings of the human nervous system and an invaluable witness to one
of the most maligned conditions known to medicine.
