Press
History Summer Reads - Publisher’s Weekly - “Neurologist Anand debuts with a captivating and energetic tour through the mysteries of the mind. Drawing on literature, case studies, and stories from her own patients, she vividly brings to life the brain’s inner workings while revealing how medicine is intimately shaped by narratives—the ones patients tell doctors, the ones doctors record, and the cultural myths that influence both.”
The Most Anticipated Summer Reads - BookRiot
The Bookseller - Nonfiction Previews - “A young woman plagued by the chords of a Van Halen song; a mother whose children have been replaced by changelings; a wandering man who thinks he’s a spy. These are among the neurological narratives that feature in this beautifully composed debut by a US neurologist about the peculiar ways individual brains behave and how this can teach us something universal about being human. If you love the work of Oliver Sacks, you’ll embrace this as I did.”
MIT Technology Review - How AI is interacting with our creative human processes - “The electricity in The Mind Electric belongs entirely to the human brain—no metaphor necessary. ‘The truth of our bodies and minds is as strange as fiction,’ Anand writes—and the language she uses throughout the book is as evocative as that in any novel…In personal and deeply researched vignettes in the tradition of Oliver Sacks, Anand shows that any comparison between brains and machines will inevitably fall flat…The mind in The Mind Electric is vast, mysterious, and populated. The narratives people construct to traverse it are just as full of wonder.”
Publisher’s Weekly - It’s All In Your Head: PW Talks with Pria Anand
Publisher’s Weekly (starred review) - “Hallucinations, convulsions, delusions, and other symptoms shed light on the brain’s obscure machinery, according to this luminous debut from neurologist Anand…At the heart of the book is an exploration of the intimate links between narrative and medicine—how the brain slots confusing impressions into stories to find ‘order in the chaos,’ but also how patients create narratives to understand their symptoms; how doctors selectively cull from that information to shape diagnoses; and how cultural narratives inform the ways patients and doctors view bodies, illness, and treatment. In the process, Anand elegantly transforms the clinical minutiae of neurological disorders into evocative poetry. An engrossing exploration of the brain’s extraordinary powers and terrifying frailties.”
New Scientist - The Best Popular Science Books to Look Forward to in 2025