Scarsdale Resident Publishes New Book: Gray Matters: A Biography of Brain Surgery

“It’s not brain surgery!” is a common phrase—but what about when it is? No other field of medicine is as synonymous with difficulty, but most people know very little about this 120-year-old profession.

One local man does know a lot about brain surgery. That’s Scarsdale father, dad and doctor Theodore Schwartz who has just published a new book, GRAY MATTERS: A Biography of Brain Surgery. Schwartz is a lead professor of neurosurgery at Weill Cornell Medicine and in this deeply insightful book, he explores the past, present, and future of neurosurgery.

Schwartz invites readers into the operating room with him as he extracts a tumor, removes a blood clot, and completes other harrowing tasks—when every second can mean the difference between life and death. He explores several high-profile case studies—from Bob Saget and Natasha Richardson to Presidents Kennedy and Biden to athletes like Muhammad Ali and Lance Armstrong. Schwartz also dives into sports-related injuries—from CTE to Second Impact Syndrome and more—illuminating what differentiates one injury from another and how age, size, and other factors play a role.

He examines the new field of brain-computer interfaces, as recently popularized by Elon Musk’s company Neuralink, and provides an insider’s perspective on this new groundbreaking technology and what ethical questions subsequently arise.

From wrenching personal stories to shocking historical missteps, intel on what symptoms can signal danger to a forecast of the technical advancements in neurosurgery, GRAY MATTERS, is an incredibly compelling book for anyone who wants to better understand the three-pound organ that rules us.

About the book, Dr. Sanjay Gupta says, “Gray Matters is a must-read, and Dr. Theodore Schwartz is the perfect guide, a master brain surgeon, and superbly talented writer. I have not read a better biography of our shared profession, and in Schwartz's talented hands, the most enigmatic 3 1/2 pounds of tissue in the known universe comes to light in remarkable and revelatory ways.”

And Kirkus Reviews wrote this: “[T]he author is warm and insightful, making the book accessible to general readers as well as specialists. Mixing expertise with storytelling, Schwartz provides a remarkable account of a crucial but misunderstood field.”

Purchase your copy here:

About the Author: Theodore H. Schwartz, MD is the David and Ursel Barnes Endowed Professor of Minimally Invasive Neurosurgery at Weill Cornell Medicine, one of the busiest and highest-ranked neurosurgery centers in the world. He has published over five hundred scientific articles and chapters on neurosurgery and has lectured around the world—from Bogotá to Vienna to Mumbai—on new, minimally invasive surgical techniques that he helped develop. He also runs a basic science laboratory devoted to epilepsy research. He studied philosophy and literature at Harvard.