A son's journey through his father's dementia. As a cardiologist, Sandeep Jauhar is trained to think logically and dispassionately about medical problems, and primed to offer his patients reassurance and solutions. But when his father is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s there are no magic treatments or miracle drugs – only the promise of unstoppable decline. For years Jauhar watches his father undergo a distressing transformation. Once a prominent research geneticist and author, he now repeats questions over and over, forgets what he has eaten for breakfast, makes baffling financial decisions and turns into a liability behind the wheel. Jauhar investigates the science of dementia and what actually happens in the brain as we age and our memory falters, uncovering the history of Alzheimer’s from first discovery to the most cutting-edge research, and whether modern treatments offer any hope in a global crisis. A blend of science, history and memoir, My Father’s Brain is a brutally honest and moving account of how Jauhar and his siblings grappled every day with some of life’s toughest questions.

‘Jauhar weaves his own personal and family story into his history of the heart…very effectively… This gives a certain dramatic tension to the book, as it tells the fascinating and rather wonderful history of cardiology.’ –Henry Marsh, New Statesman

A Mail on Sunday Book of the Year

The heart lies at the centre of life. For cardiologist Sandeep Jauhar it is an obsession.

In this fascinating history he interweaves gripping scenes from the operating theatre with the moving tale of his family’s history of heart problems – from the death of his grandfather to the ominous signs of how he himself might die.

Jauhar looks at the pioneers who risked patients’ lives and their own careers, and confronts the limits of medical technology, arguing that how we live is more important than any device or drug we may invent. Heart is the all-encompassing story of the engine of life.

"Intern "is Dr. Sandeep Jauhar's story of his days and nights in residency at a busy hospital in New York City, a trial that led him to question his every assumption about medical care today. Residency--and especially its first year, the internship--is legendary for its brutality, and Jauhar's experience was even more harrowing than most. He switched from physics to medicine in order to follow a more humane calling--only to find that his new profession often had little regard for patients' concerns. He struggled to find a place among squadrons of cocky residents and doctors. He challenged the practices of the internship in "The New York Times," attracting the suspicions of the medical bureaucracy. Then, suddenly stricken, he became a patient himself--and came to see that today's high-tech, high-pressure medicine can be a humane science after all. Jauhar's beautifully written memoir explains the inner workings of modern medicine with rare candor and insight.