"Dr. Louis R. Caplan... guides readers through the subject in a straightforward and accessible manner. He examines the anatomy of the brain, explaining the specialized functions of different regions, and describes the flow of blood from the heart. He turns to the mechanics of the stroke itself, clearly discussing the complexities of the two major kinds-the ischemic and hemorrhagic-and the resulting damage. Caplan offers information and advice that...

Richard Alpert, after being expelled from Harvard in 1963 for experimenting with LSD, morphed into Ram Dass, a serious and much loved spiritual leader, author and lecturer. This film visits Ram Dass in 2001 as he remakes his life since suffering a stroke five years ago. Balances fascinating, often hilarious footage from the hippie era with contemporary material and interviews with Ram Dass and his associates.

The French editor of Elle magazine, Jean-Dominique Bauby, who, in 1995 at the age of 43, suffered a stroke that paralyzed his entire body, except his left eye. Using that eye to blink out his memoir, Bauby eloquently described the aspects of his interior world, from the psychological torment of being trapped inside his body to his imagined stories from lands he'd only visited in his mind.

"A deeply moving memoir about two lives that were changed in the blink of an eye, and the love that helped them rewrite their future. Five months pregnant, on a flight to their "babymoon," Allison Pataki turned to her husband when he asked if his eye looked strange, and watched him suddenly lose consciousness. After an emergency landing, she discovered that Dave--a healthy thirty-year-old athlete and surgical resident--had suffered a rare and life-threatening...

Ackerman chronicles her novelist husband Paul West's heroic battle to reclaim words and mobility and her tailoring of West's speech therapy to match his spectacular vocabulary and unique intelligence.

The author, former editor of French Elle magazine, describes the rare stroke to the brain stem that left his mind intact in a nearly totally paralyzed body.

William Wyatt Orser's life is turned upside down after his mother has a stroke, but the socially awkward, word-loving twelve-year-old finds glimmers of hope when he discovers friends who share his love of wordplay and books.

Lawrence Wetherhold is a recently widowed literature professor who is a numb and chilly intellectual. He rebuffs his students, ignores his own teenage children, James and Vanessa, and spurns cries for financial assistance from his ne'er-do-well but rather soulful adopted brother, Chuck. After an accident and Lawrence goes to the hospital, he is deprived of the right to drive. Janet is a physician and former student of Lawrence who remembers her disappointment...

"At age 37, Harvard neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor suffered a massive left-hemisphere stroke that took away her ability to speak, walk, read, write, or remember any of her life-and gave her an unprecedented, profound experience of dwelling in the right hemisphere and the sense of oneness and peace to be found there. Her recovery led to her writing the New York Times bestseller "My Stroke of Insight", being named one of Time Magazine's Most Influential...