Agenda to include public presentation and meetings with local students
Saratoga Reads will continue its eighth year of community programming with a visit from author and science writer John Fleischman, who will give a public talk on Thursday, February 16, at 7 p.m. in the H. Dutcher Community Room at the Saratoga Springs Public Library.
Fleischman is the author of Phineas Gage: A Gruesome but True Story About Brain Science. The book is a junior companion title for young readers, selected to complement this year’s Saratoga Reads book of choice, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot.
Phineas Gage tells the true story of a railroad construction foreman who survived for 11 years after a 13-pound iron rod shot through his skull in a rock-blasting accident in Cavendish, Vt., in 1848. Scientists and doctors were baffled by Gage’s miraculous recovery and by the severe personality changes he experienced, making the case a textbook study of brain science.
Fleischman’s presentation will be appropriate for a wide-ranging audience—from young readers (fourth grade and up) through adults. Free tickets are available in the Children’s Room at the library. Call the library at 584-7860 for more information.
“Even today, the odds against surviving an injury that pierces the brain are stupendously high,” said Fleischman. “Phineas survived 150 years ago. This was before doctors even understood about bacterial infection let alone about how the brain is organized.”
Added Fleischman, “We have amazing new technologies that can scan a living brain. We’ve just decoded the complete DNA text for human beings that includes all the instructions for building and operating the human brain. And yet scientists say we still only have the outline of how the brain really works.”
Fleischman is a science writer for the American Society for Cell Biology and a magazine freelancer whose work has appeared in Discover, Muse, and Air & Space Smithsonian. He was working in public affairs at Harvard Medical School when he wrote Phineas Gage. In addition to writing for science publications, he was a senior editor at Yankee and Ohio magazines.
His most recent book is Black and White Airmen: Their True History, a book for young readers about flying, WW II, segregation, and friendship.
During his visit to Saratoga Springs, Fleischman will give a presentation to sixth graders at Maple Avenue Middle School and will meet with Skidmore students studying neuroscience and children’s literature.