The Headache - The Science of a Most Confounding Affliction-and a Search for Relief

"Required reading for anyone with a head."-Mary Roach, New York Times bestselling author of Stiff and Fuzz
For the many millions of headache sufferers, a deeply reported, sometimes harrowing, and frequently humorous journey into the author's own excruciating headaches, and the science behind these surprisingly mysterious disorders that may, finally, offer relief.
Virtually everyone has experienced a headache-a nuisance arising from occasional stress or as payback for last night's overindulgence. But for hundreds of millions of people, there are headaches, and then there are headaches. From blinding migraines to severe headache disorders known as "clusters," chronic head pain can upend entire seasons of life. And perhaps owing to the ordinariness of the very word "headache," these disorders are frequently trivialized.
In The Headache, veteran science journalist Tom Zeller Jr. takes readers on an odyssey both intimate and panoramic, through his own decades-long struggle with cluster headaches and across the scientific landscape of a group of disorders that is-to the chagrin of sufferers-as much a curse as a cultural punchline. He visits cutting-edge clinics; interviews dozens of doctors, neurologists, and fellow headache patients; participates in clinical trials for multi-million-dollar new medicines; and even experiments with psilocybin in search of relief. Along the way, Zeller traces the longer arc of mystery around headaches, from prehistoric skull surgery to Virginia Woolf's assertion that, in the throes of a migraine, "language runs dry," to reveal how headaches became one of the most under-researched afflictions in medicine-and how that is slowly starting to change.
With warmth, wit, and infectious curiosity, Zeller's search for the origins of his own headaches becomes a journey into the inner workings of the human nervous system, and an illuminating look at the nature of pain itself.

About the author

Tom Zeller Jr. is co-founder and editor-in-chief of Undark, a nonprofit digital magazine exploring the intersection of science and society. Previously, he was a reporter and columnist at the New York Times, an editor at large for National Geographic magazine, and a Knight Science Journalism fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He lives in Lolo, Montana. The Headache is his first book.
 

Summary

"Required reading for anyone with a head."—Mary Roach, New York Times bestselling author of Stiff and Fuzz
For the many millions of headache sufferers, a deeply reported, sometimes harrowing, and frequently humorous journey into the author’s own excruciating headaches, and the science behind these surprisingly mysterious disorders that may, finally, offer relief.
Virtually everyone has experienced a headache—a nuisance arising from occasional stress or as payback for last night’s overindulgence. But for hundreds of millions of people, there are headaches, and then there are headaches. From blinding migraines to severe headache disorders known as “clusters,” chronic head pain can upend entire seasons of life. And perhaps owing to the ordinariness of the very word “headache,” these disorders are frequently trivialized.
In The Headache, veteran science journalist Tom Zeller Jr. takes readers on an odyssey both intimate and panoramic, through his own decades-long struggle with cluster headaches and across the scientific landscape of a group of disorders that is—to the chagrin of sufferers—as much a curse as a cultural punchline. He visits cutting-edge clinics; interviews dozens of doctors, neurologists, and fellow headache patients; participates in clinical trials for multi-million-dollar new medicines; and even experiments with psilocybin in search of relief. Along the way, Zeller traces the longer arc of mystery around headaches, from prehistoric skull surgery to Virginia Woolf’s assertion that, in the throes of a migraine, “language runs dry,” to reveal how headaches became one of the most under-researched afflictions in medicine—and how that is slowly starting to change.
With warmth, wit, and infectious curiosity, Zeller’s search for the origins of his own headaches becomes a journey into the inner workings of the human nervous system, and an illuminating look at the nature of pain itself. 

Report

"For a condition that affects 50 million Americans, migraine is surprisingly poorly understood and, as a research topic, grievously underfunded. By turns personal (cluster headache! God almighty!) and journalistic, The Headache explores the mysterious nature of headache pain and, equally mysterious, the whims of federal funding and the biases that underlie the condition's neglect. Zeller writes with intelligence, compassion, equanimity, and wit. Required reading for anyone with a head."
- Mary Roach, New York Times bestselling author of Stiff and Fuzz
"The Headache is smart, insightful, funny, compassionate, addictively readable, and most of all necessary. It's about time-and every sufferer out there will agree-that we try to make sense of headaches, one of medicine's longstanding great mysteries. Tom Zeller Jr.'s book is a pioneering illumination of both the subject and the many people it touches, offering understanding tinged with hope." - Deborah Blum, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Poisoner's Handbook
"An important, harrowing, and ultimately hopeful book. If the path to enlightenment is to make the darkness conscious, as Carl Jung taught, then Tom Zeller Jr. is showing us the way by illuminating his own pain and those of countless others suffering from devastating headaches. The science here is skillfully explained, of course, but that's only the most obvious of this book's many virtues." - Dan Fagin, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Toms River
"The Headache not only renders the monstrous dimensions of Zeller's own headache pain, it traces the haphazard and often comically dismissive attempts by science to make sense of headache disorders writ large. In turns wry, curious, and even harrowing, the book's quest for a Sanctuary of Asclepius ultimately broadens our understanding of a remarkably understudied plague - and the new strains of science that appear to be, at long last, developing on the frontier. The Headache is an odyssey and a revelation." - Charles M. Blow, author of Fire Shut Up In My Bones and The Devil You Know
"The Headache is a revelatory and moving account of a condition that is both diabolically painful and woefully misunderstood. Zeller masterfully weaves his personal story with the vaporous but tantalizing threads of medical science." - Florence Williams, author of The Nature Fix and Heartbreak
"In this absorbing, incisive account of the history of headache disorders, Zeller captures the profound human and scientific costs of medicine's neglect of these common conditions that affect millions of people-especially women-and points the way toward a more hopeful future." - Maya Dusenbery, author of Doing Harm
"A sharp-and funny-account of one man's attempt to understand why so many of us suffer head pain." - Kirkus Reviews
"Moving. . .an eye-opening study of an all-too-common affliction." - Publishers Weekly

Product details

• Authors: Tom Zeller Jr., Tom Zeller Jr.
• Publisher: HarperCollins US
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Release: 15.07.2025
• EAN: 9780358507758
• ISBN: 978-0-358-50775-8
• No. of pages: 336
• Dimensions: 152 mm x 228 mm x 25 mm
• Subjects: Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > Medicine > General; Non-fiction book > Nature, technology > Biographies, autobiographies; Pain and pain management, SCIENCE: Life Sciences / Human Anatomy & Physiology, BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY: Medical (incl. Patients), MEDICAL: Pain Management, Coping with / advice about headaches and migraines