Russian psychologist A. R. Luria presents a compelling portrait of a man's heroic struggle to regain his mental faculties. A soldier named Zasetsky, wounded in the head at the battle of Smolensk in 1943, suddenly found himself in a frightening he could recall his childhood but not his recent past; half his field of vision had been destroyed; he had great difficulty speaking, reading, and writing. Woven throughout his first-person account are interpolations by Luria himself, which serve as excellent brief introductions to the topic of brain structure and function.