Author Guide ·

Books Written by Theodore H. Schwartz

Schwartz is a practicing neurosurgeon at Weill Cornell Medicine who has spent his career pioneering minimally invasive brain surgery techniques, and his book turns that same operating-room precision toward explaining what the profession actually involves — for patients, for surgeons, and for anyone curious about the three and a half pounds of tissue that make a person who they are.

By Lisanne Swart · 1 books · Popular Science & Medicine · Updated August 2026



Watch · A conversation worth sitting with

Dr. Theodore Schwartz in conversation with CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta about what it’s actually like to operate on the human brain.

01

Popular Science · MedicineOn my shelf

Gray Matters: A Biography of Brain Surgery

Theodore H. Schwartz · 2024

A history and inside account of neurosurgery, drawing on Schwartz’s own cases alongside historical archives to explore everything from early lobotomies to the JFK assassination’s neurological details, the NFL’s handling of CTE, and the ethical questions raised by modern brain-computer interfaces.

Named an Economist Best Book of the Year. Its distinctive strength is dual authority — Schwartz writes as both a working surgeon with real cases and a genuinely engaging popular science writer, a combination that’s rarer than it should be.

Waterstones bol.com Audible Bookshop.org Amazon

Frequently asked questions about Theodore H. Schwartz’s books

How many books has Theodore H. Schwartz written?
Gray Matters: A Biography of Brain Surgery (2024) is Theodore H. Schwartz’s first book for a general audience, following a career publishing over 500 scientific articles and academic chapters on neurosurgery.
What is Gray Matters about?
It’s a history and insider account of brain surgery, combining Schwartz’s own cases as a practicing neurosurgeon with the broader history of the field, from early lobotomies to modern brain-computer interfaces, and questions about consciousness and free will raised by neuroscience.
Is Theodore H. Schwartz still a practicing neurosurgeon?
Yes. He is a professor of neurological surgery at Weill Cornell Medicine and New York-Presbyterian Hospital, specializing in minimally invasive treatment of brain tumors and epilepsy.




Start Typing
Dummy Image

Hi, there.

Home

About

My Bookshelf

Weekly’s

Stay tuned: sign up for the newsletter!