Proust Was a Neuroscientist is
a unique look at our understanding of how the mind works. Lehrer, who writes the fascinating science blog Frontal Cortex, maintains that artists showed us ways in which the brain works that science only "discovered" at a later time.
Each chapter focuses on one artist and one aspect of the human mind. We see that Virginia Woolf showed us much about consciousness; that Gertrude Stein observed much about the structure of language; that George Eliot anticipated neural plasticity; that Walt Whitman discussed what we now call the mind-body connection; that Igor Stravinsky was ahead of his time in his thinking about listening; and more.
I love Lehrer's writing style; it's clear and concise, easy for a layperson to understand. I was initially intimidated by this book because, well, I don't read many books about neuroscience. But although you will learn about such small scientific details as how hair cells help us hear, or how the corpus callosum lets us believe in our singularity, you will never once feel like you accidentally enrolled in an advanced course without taking the prerequisites.