Pain Chronicles

throughout the ages-from ancient Babylonian pain-banishing spells to
modern brain imaging-to reveal the elusive, mysterious nature of pain itself.
Interweaving first-person reflections on her own battle with chronic pain,
incisive reportage from leading pain clinics and medical research, and insights
from a wide range of disciplines, Thernstrom shows that when dealing with
pain we are neither as advanced as we imagine nor as helpless as we may fear.

Melanie Thernstrom is a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine and the author of The Dead Girl and Halfway Heaven: Diary of a Harvard Murder.