Brain Injury Book List

BrainLine compiled this list of books about brain injury to help people who have been recently diagnosed, their loved ones, and others who want to learn more about TBI. Most are memoirs, some are non-fiction, and some offer tips and strategies on living with brain injury. Our list is only a small sampling of the books out there, but they are ones that our editorial staff has reviewed and that our generous online community has endorsed or mentioned as their favorites.

We hope you enjoy the list — alphabetized by author.

Please share other suggestions you may have in the comments section below.

Happy reading!

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Falling Away From You: One Family's Journey Through Traumatic Brain Injury
By Nicole Vinson Bingaman

Falling Away from You tells the story of Taylor Bingaman and his journey through the world of traumatic brain injury. Taylor’s mother, Nicole, recalls the events that happened as the result of a devastating fall down the stairs in their family home on Thanksgiving Eve in 2012.

Nicole openly explores her own emotions about what has taken place, while also educating readers about practical matters surrounding brain injury within a family. She shares Taylor's recovery process in a personal and candid way. Nicole expresses the idea that it takes a village to work through this type of event, and accept the changes taking place. Nicole grapples with her own loss and shares her most heartbreaking moments as a mother.

Taylor's younger brothers each contributed a chapter, giving a unique perspective from the siblings of those affected by brain injury.

Falling Away from You is about hope in the midst of tragedy, triumph in the face of what seemed like unbeatable odds, and the story of how one family came together to help the son and brother they loved dearly. It is a realistic perspective on courage, determination and one young man’s struggle and drive to beat the odds, one step at a time.
Also available on Amazon.com.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: A Memoir of Life in Death
By Jean-Baptiste Bauby

In 1995, Jean-Dominique Bauby was the editor-in-chief of French Elle, the father of two young childen, a 44-year-old man known and loved for his wit, his style, and his impassioned approach to life. By the end of the year he was also the victim of a rare kind of stroke to the brainstem. After 20 days in a coma, Bauby awoke into a body which had all but stopped working: only his left eye functioned, allowing him to see and, by blinking it, to make clear that his mind was unimpaired. Almost miraculously, he was soon able to express himself in the richest detail: dictating a word at a time, blinking to select each letter as the alphabet was recited to him slowly, over and over again. In the same way, he was able eventually to compose this extraordinary book.
Also available on Amazon.com.

Where Is the Mango Princess: A Journey Back from Brain Injury
By Cathy Crimmins

When her husband, Alan, is injured in a speedboat accident, Cathy Crimmins reluctantly assumes the role of caregiver and learns to cope with the person he has become. No longer the man who loved obscure Japanese cinema and wry humor, Cathy’s husband has emerged from the accident a childlike and unpredictable replica of his former self with a short attention span and a penchant for inane cartoons. Where Is the Mango Princess? explores the very nature of personality -- and the complexities of the heart.
Also available on Amazon.com.

Amanda’s Fall: A Story for Children About Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)
By Kelly Bouldin Darmofal

Amanda's Fall depicts an event common in schools today. Young Amanda gets a concussion after falling and hitting her head during recess. While she can hear people talking, she cannot respond. Amanda is taken to a doctor for evaluation. Wisely, her parents ask for a prognosis, which in Amanda’s case, is a good one. Author Kelly Darmofal offers readers her third book on TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury), encouraging parents and caretakers to alert schools and, hopefully, doctors when any child is concussed; side effects can then be ameliorated.
Also available on Amazon.com.

Lost in My Mind
By Kelly Bouldin Darmofal

Lost in My Mind descirbes Kelly Bouldin Darmofal's journey from adolescent girl to special education teacher, wife and mother -- despite severe Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). Spanning three decades, Kelly's journey is unique in its focus on TBI education in America (or lack thereof). Kelly also abridges her mother's journals to describe forgotten experiences. She continues the narrative in her own humorous, poetic voice, describing a victim's relentless search for success, love, and acceptance -- while combating bureaucratic red tape, aphasia, bilateral hand impairment, and loss of memory.

The Brain That Changes Itself
By Norman Doidge, MD

An astonishing new science called "neuroplasticity" is overthrowing the centuries-old notion that the human brain is immutable. In this revolutionary look at the brain, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Norman Doidge, MD, provides an introduction to both the brilliant scientists championing neuroplasticity and the people whose lives they've transformed. From stroke patients learning to speak again to the remarkable case of a woman born with half a brain that rewired itself to work as a whole, The Brain That Changes Itself will permanently alter the way we look at our brains, human nature, and human potential.
Also available on Amazon.com.

The Brain's Way of Healing: Remarkable Discoveries and Recoveries from the Frontiers of Neuroplasticity
By Norman Doidge, MD

The Brain’s Way of Healing describes natural, noninvasive avenues into the brain provided by the energy around us—in light, sound, vibration, and movement—that can awaken the brain’s own healing capacities without producing unpleasant side effects. Norman Doidge, MD explores cases where patients alleviated chronic pain; recovered from debilitating strokes, brain injuries, and learning disorders; overcame attention deficit and learning disorders; and found relief from symptoms of autism, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, and cerebral palsy. And we learn how to vastly reduce the risk of dementia, with simple approaches anyone can use.
Also available on Amazon.com.

League of Denial: The NFL, Concussions and the Battle for Truth
By Mark Fainaru-Wada, Steve Fainaru, et al.

“Professional football players do not sustain frequent repetitive blows to the brain on a regular basis.” So concluded the National Football League in a December 2005 scientific paper on concussions in America’s most popular sport. That judgment, implausible even to a casual fan, also contradicted the opinion of a growing cadre of neuroscientists who worked in vain to convince the NFL that it was facing a deadly new scourge: a chronic brain disease that was driving an alarming number of players—including some of the all-time greats—to madness.
 
In League of Denial, award-winning ESPN investigative reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Steve Fainaru tell the story of a public health crisis that emerged from the playing fields of our twenty-first-century pastime. Everyone knows that football is violent and dangerous. But what the players who built the NFL into a $10 billion industry didn’t know—and what the league sought to shield from them—is that no amount of padding could protect the human brain from the force generated by modern football, that the very essence of the game could be exposing these players to brain damage.
Also available on Amazon.com.

A Hard Chance: Sailing into the Heart of Love
By Tom Gallant
Tom and Melissa Gallant sat in their car at an intersection one early summer evening. After a decade of romance and adventure, they were at a crossroads in their lives. Melissa wanted to settle down and start a business. Tom wanted to sail their schooner around the world. They decided to go their separate ways. Then, their car was t-boned by a bus. This is the story of what happens afterward. It’s the story of a love affair full of high sea adventures and romance, of life lived far from the conventions of polite society. And it is also the story of redemption conferred by accepting the hardest things in life with an open heart.

Left Neglected
By Lisa Genova

From neuroscientist and bestselling author Lisa Genova comes a story of resilience in the face of a devastating diagnosis. After a car crash leaves a vibrant mother in her thirties with a traumatic brain disorder called “left neglect,” she learns what truly matters most in life.

Sarah Nickerson, like any other working mom, is busy trying to have it all. One morning while racing to work and distracted by her cell phone, she looks away from the road for one second too long. In that blink of an eye, all the rapidly moving parts of her over-scheduled life come to a screeching halt. After a brain injury steals her awareness of everything on her left side, Sarah must retrain her mind to perceive the world as a whole. In so doing, she also learns how to pay attention to the people and parts of her life that matter most.
Also available on Amazon.com.

No Stone Unturned: A Father’s Memoir of His Son’s Encounter with Traumatic Brain Injury
By Joel Goldstein

Bart Goldstein was 16 when he sustained a traumatic brain injury in a car crash in 2001. Told from his father’s point of view, the book chronicles the family’s ordeal, and flashbacks fill in Bart’s life since he arrived from Korea at the age of five months. Considering every possibility in their search for remedies to Bart’s catastrophic injuries, the Goldsteins explored several promising alternatives. Bart’s remarkable recovery resulted from a combination of conventional medicine and alternative and emerging therapies.

Life Out of Order
By Sally Laux

Life Out of Order is Sally Laux’s reflection on her life as it relates to her three brothers and of what happened to them. It is a story of holding onto oneself in the midst of six siblings and rediscovering oneself while losing them, one after another. It is a story of sibling life and sibling loss. Sally Laux lost two brothers to death then became guardian to her third brother after a car crash left him severely impaired with traumatic brain injury.

Rise and Shine
By Simon Lewis

Simon Lewis was a film producer whose life was turned upside down when his car was broadsided and sent careening into a tree. The crash killed his new wife instantly and left him severely injured. He entered a coma he wasn't expected to emerge from, but he did, and over the next dozen years he disproved medical professionals and textbooks with a full recovery while also navigating the labyrinthine insurance industry and managing to find his faith. Rise and Shine is the story of what it means to return to live after a near-death experience.

He Never Liked Cake
By Janna Leyde   

When Janna Leyde was a teenager, her father sustained a severe brain injury in a car crash. Since that day, Janna’s life has been a navigation through the inescapable struggles of her father's brain injury, a study of her mother's resilience and unconditional love, and a challenge to find her own identity and acceptance as an adult. “Growing up with a father with a TBI is complicated, un-ending grief without closure,” she writes. “It’s the opposite of resolution. It’s missing someone like hell who’s still alive and with you.”
Also available on Amazon.com.

The Night the Lights Went Out
By Drew Magary

Drew Magary, fan-favorite Defector and former Deadspin columnist, is known for his acerbic takes and his surprisingly nuanced chronicling of his own life. But in The Night the Lights Went Out, he finds himself far out of his depths. On the night of the 2018 Deadspin Awards, he suffered a mysterious fall that caused him to smash his head so hard on a cement floor that he cracked his skull in three places and suffered a catastrophic brain hemorrhage. For two weeks, he remained in a coma. The world was gone to him, and him to it.

In his long recovery from his injury, including understanding what his family and friends went through as he lay there dying, coming to terms with his now permanent disabilities, and trying to find some lesson in this cosmic accident, he leaned on the one sure thing that he knows and that didn't leave him—his writing.
Also available on Amazon.com.

Head Cases: Stories of Brain Injury and Their Aftermath
By Michael Paul Mason

Head Cases takes us into the dark side of the brain in an astonishing sequence of stories, at once true and strange, from the world of brain damage. Michael Paul Mason is one of an elite group of experts who coordinate care in the complicated aftermath of tragic injuries that can last a lifetime. On the road with Michael, readers encounter people with brain injuries as they struggle to map and make sense of the new worlds they inhabit.

I Am the Central Park Jogger
By Trisha Meili

Shortly after 9 p.m. on April 19, 1989, a young woman jogs alone near 102nd Street in New York City's Central Park. She is attacked, raped, savagely beaten, and left for dead. Hours later she arrives at the emergency room — comatose — with a fractured skull, an 85-degree body temperature, and she has lost so much blood that her doctors believe it's a miracle she's still alive. Meet Trisha Meili, the Central Park Jogger.
Also available on Amazon.com.

Broken Arrow Boy
By Adam Moore

When Adam Moore was 8 years old, a fluke accident resulted in an arrow piercing his brain. The accident led him into a world of hospitals, operations, and physical therapy. Just one year later, Adam was inspired to use his experiences to create a book, Broken Arrow Boy. It tells of his remarkable recovery from brain injury. He entered his book into the 1989 Landmark Editions' National Written & Illustrated by ... Contest, open for students ages 6 to 19. Adam won the Gold Award.

The Stranger in Our Marriage, a Partners Guide to Navigating Traumatic Brain Injury 
Colleen Morgan, PsyD

TBI disrupts lives and impacts our society in innumerable ways, but the partners of survivors are the most affected. They are often unprepared for the aftermath of TBI, including personality, cognitive, emotional, and behavioral changes in their loved one. They are the hidden casualty of brain injury, as their plight has long gone unrecognized. The Stranger in Our Marriage seeks to remedy the situation, offering information, insight, and hope to the survivor's partner. The experiences of a TBI survivor's wife are woven throughout this informative book, giving life to the facts and details of brain injury and its consequences. Written by a psychologist, it includes specific suggestions for the partner on how to navigate the aftermath of brain injury and how to come to terms with their altered relationships and lives.
Also available on Amazon.com.

Chicken Soup for the Soul: Recovering from Traumatic Brain Injuries: 101 Stories of Hope, Healing, and Hard Work 
By Amy Newmark and Dr. Carolyn Roy-Bornstein

This collection of 101 stories provides support, advice, and inspiration to help you and your loved ones on your road to recovery from traumatic brain injuries. These are inspiring and motivating stories of hope, healing, and hard work for patients and their loved ones who are recovering from TBI.
Also available on Amazon.com.

Head Games: Football’s Concussion Crisis from the NFL to Youth Leagues
By Christopher Nowinski

America's favorite sport has a serious problem. Many of the NFL's top players — including Troy Aikman, Steve Young, Merril Hoge, Ted Johnson, Al Toon, and Wayne Chrebet — have had their careers ended by head injuries. But few realize that most NFL players are suffering multiple concussions during their career, and shocking new studies reveal that these players suffer higher rates of depression, cognitive disorders, and Alzheimer’s disease.

Over My Head: A Doctor's Own Story of Head Injury from the Inside Looking Out  
By Claudia Osborn

Locked inside a brain-injured head looking out at a challenging world is the premise of Claudia Osborn’s memoir. Over My Head is the story of how one woman comes to terms with the loss of her identity and the courageous steps — and sometimes hilarious missteps — she takes while learning to rebuild her life. The author — a 45-year-old doctor and clinical professor of medicine — describes the aftermath of a brain injury that stripped her of her beloved profession.

Successfully Surviving a Brain Injury: A Family Guidebook, From the Emergency Room to Selecting a Rehabilitation Facility
By Garry Prowe

In 1997, Garry Prowe’s wife, Jessica, sustained a severe brain injury in a car crash. Since then, he has been studying how people recover from serious brain injuries and live purposeful lives. This book is a result not only of his research and personal experiences as Jessica's caregiver, but also of the shared expertise of a panel of more than 300 people with brain injury, caregivers, family members, and medical professionals. His book, he says, is a labor of love. All profits are donated to brain injury organizations in the U.S. and Canada.
Also available on Amazon.com.

Learning by Accident
By Rosemary Rawlins

On a sunny spring day, in an ordinary kitchen, Rosemary Rawlins — a wife and mother of twin teenage girls — answers an unexpected phone call. A car has hit her husband, Hugh, who was out on his bike for a workout. Learning by Accident celebrates how shedding fear and starting over can lead to peace, and in that place of peace, possibilities appear, and lives flourish.

Crash: A Mother, a Son, and the Journey from Grief to Gratitude
By Carolyn Roy-Bornstein

After 25 years of caring for children, first as a nurse, then as a pediatrician, Carolyn Roy-Bornstein finds herself on the other side of the stretcher when her 17-year-old son, Neil, is hit by a teenage drunk driver while walking his girlfriend, Trista, home after a study date. Trista did not survive her injuries. Neil carries his with him to this day.
Also available on Amazon.com.

The Water Giver: The Story of a Mother, a Son, and Their Second Chance
By Joan Ryan

Both a medical drama and meditation on motherhood, The Water Giver is Joan Ryan's honest account of her doubts and mistakes in raising a child with a learning disability and the story of how his near-fatal accident gave her a second chance as a parent.
Also available on Amazon.com.

To Love What Is: A Marriage Transformed
By Alix Kates Shulman

OOne day it happens: the dreaded event that will change your life forever. For Alix Kates Shulman, it happened in a remote seaside cabin on a coastal Maine island — where the very isolation that makes for a perfect artist’s retreat can also put life at risk. Alix woke to find that her beloved husband had fallen the nine feet from their sleeping loft and was lying on the floor below, deathly still. Though Scott would survive, he suffered an injury that left him seriously brain impaired. He was the same — but not the same.
Also available on Amazon.com.

I’ll Carry the Fork
By Kara Swanson

“The curious thing about the auto accident that ended my life was that I lived through it. On January 31, 1996, Death sneaked through a red light disguised as a minivan going 50 miles an hour. ’Course, nobody told me that when they finished pulling me out of my car, they were putting me right on the bus…. That’s what I call the process of recovering from traumatic brain injury: ‘getting on the bus.’” So writes Kara Swanson in her wickedly funny and honest memoir about living with a brain injury.

To Root & To Rise: Accepting Brain Injury
By Carole J. Starr, MS

An inspiring, interactive book and workbook to help brain injury survivors and caregivers navigate grief and loss, find their strengths and move forward with a changed life.
As a brain injury survivor herself, author Carole Starr knows the depth of grief and loss of self that accompany brain injury, the challenge of coping with symptoms that are misunderstood by many and the peace that can come from accepting a new life and a new self. Carole describes the journey in a way that survivors, caregivers and professionals can relate to and learn from.
Also available on Amazon.com.

A Three Dog Life
By Abigail Thomas

When Abigail Thomas’s husband, Rich, was hit by a car, his brain shattered. Subject to rages, terrors, and hallucinations, he must live the rest of his life in an institution. He has no memory of what he did the hour, the day, the year before. This tragedy is the ground on which Abigail had to build a new life. How she built that life is a story of great courage and great change, of moving to a small country town, of a new family composed of three dogs, knitting, and friendship, of facing down guilt and discovering gratitude. It is also about her relationship with Rich, a man who lives in the eternal present, and the eerie poetry of his often uncanny perceptions.
Also available on Amazon.com.

Trigger
By Susan Vaught

Jersey Hatch can't remember if he rammed the car into his parents' house. He can't remember why his best friend won't speak to him. He can't remember the right words to have a real conversation. And he can't remember why he tried to shoot his own head off.

Broken in both mind and body, Jersey must piece his life back together, step by painful step. He must re-learn to tie his own shoelaces. He must somehow pass Algebra and graduate high school. And he must try to repair old friendships as severed as the connection between his brain and his once-athletic body. With a compelling and unique literary voice Susan Vaught thrusts readers directly into the bitterly funny head of Jersey Hatch as he navigates his own damaged existence, and as he tries to answer the question not just why he wanted to end his very good life, but whether he can stop himself from trying to end it again.

In an Instant: A Family's Journey of Love and Healing
By Lee and Bob Woodruff

In January 2006, Lee and Bob Woodruff seemed to have it all — a happy marriage, four beautiful children, and marvelous careers. Bob had just been named co-anchor of ABC’s World News Tonight, but then, while he was embedded with the military in Iraq, an improvised explosive device went off near the tank he was riding in. He and his cameraman, Doug Vogt, were hit, and Bob suffered a traumatic brain injury that nearly killed him. In an Instant is an extraordinary drama of marriage, family, war, and nation.
Also available on Amazon.com.

Before the Ever After
By Jacqueline Woodson

National Book Award winner Jacqueline Woodson's stirring novel-in-verse explores how a family moves forward when their glory days have passed and the cost of professional sports on Black bodies.

For as long as ZJ can remember, his dad has been everyone's hero. As a charming, talented pro football star, he's as beloved to the neighborhood kids he plays with as he is to his millions of adoring sports fans. But lately life at ZJ's house is anything but charming. His dad is having trouble remembering things and seems to be angry all the time. ZJ's mom explains it's because of all the head injuries his dad sustained during his career. ZJ can understand that--but it doesn't make the sting any less real when his own father forgets his name. As ZJ contemplates his new reality, he has to figure out how to hold on tight to family traditions and recollections of the glory days, all the while wondering what their past amounts to if his father can't remember it. And most importantly, can those happy feelings ever be reclaimed when they are all so busy aching for the past?
Also available on Amazon.com.

Life with a Traumatic Brain Injury: Finding the Road Back to Normal
By Amy Zellmer

In February 2014 Amy Zellmer slipped on a patch of ice and fell, forcibly landing on the back of her skull. The impact briefly knocked her out, and when she started to get up, she immediately knew something was very wrong. Amy had suffered a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and was about to start a journey unlike anything she had ever experienced. Her life had changed in literally a blink of the eye. This book is a collection of her short articles, most of which were originally published on The Huffington Post. Learn about what it means to have a TBI as you read about her struggles and frustrations, like the days she can’t remember how to run the microwave, or how she gets lost driving to familiar places. Understand what it’s like to suffer fatigue and exhaustion after doing a simple task that most take for granted. This book is perfect for TBI survivors, their caregivers, friends and loved ones. It is a great book for survivors to give to their supporters so that they, too, can understand what those with TBI are dealing with on a daily basis. 
Also available on Amazon.com.