Emily Willingham—The Tailored Brain: From Ketamine, to Keto, to Companionship, A User's Guide to Feeling Better and Thinking Smarter

THE TAILORED BRAIN: FROM KETAMINE,
TO KETO, TO COMPANIONSHIP,
A USER'S GUIDE TO FEELING BETTER
AND THINKING SMARTER
Emily Willingham
Basic Books, December 14; $30
ISBN-13: ISBN-13 is 978-1541647022

Willingham reports:

The proposal for this book was a couple of years in the development process. That in part was because it doesn't make huge promises about "this one weird trick" to achieve amazing outcomes.

I already had an agent who had initially contacted me after reading something I'd written about gender and the brain. I have a background in evaluating scientific claims and in taking up how society influences science. In this book, I combine both to look at claims made about "brain enhancements" and whether or not the evidence—if there is any evidence—supports them.

Basic Books is a perfect publisher for this kind of realistic look at scientific claims, and I was glad that my agent connected me with an interested editor there. I did receive an advance, which was the only funding for this project.

The research was intense, but what surprised me the most was how much many claims were overblown except for two: making connections with others and engaging in some kind of physical activity. Add developing the practice of keeping your mind in the current moment and being open to awe, and what you get is a set of tools that most of us can access and that don't cost a dime.

I don't think that there's much I would have done differently, but as always with books requiring deep research, you come away feeling that more time might have, well, uncovered more material. The thing is, I already had too much material and had to cut tens of thousands of words from my final draft. Knowing that I'd have to do that, I just wrote as much as I wanted about everything that I thought was important. Then I shaped and carved the final manuscript to make sure that it hit on everything that called for emphasis. It works better for me not to get hung up on word count during the writing process and to save the cuts for clean reads once the draft is done.

Contact info:

• Emily Willingham, ejwillingham@gmail.com, http://www.emilywillinghamphd.com, @ejwillingham, Instagram: emily.willingham.phd
• Book: https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/emily-willingham/the-tailored-brain/9781541647022/
• Publicist: Sharon Kunz, 212-364-1100, sharon.kunz@hbgusa.com
• Agent: Emma Parry, eparry@janklow.com

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