Nonfiction offers personal, painful tales

Good as ‘Gold’
If you’re a light drinker, $24 would probably buy you enough alcohol at an Oregon dive to get a lawyer sauced enough to tell you about some of his zaniest, wildest cases. It’s also the price of “A Fool’s Gold” ($24, Bloomsbury) a funny book by former Portland lawyer Bill Merritt that has the comfortable, rambling feel of a tale told over whiskeys.

The true-life crime story begins with young attorney Merritt inheriting a stack of cases from the recently deceased owner of his law firm, a dodgy mentor who leaves behind jewelry of questionable origins, a safe full of twenties and a staff of misfits. The cases, including the possession trial of a hippie pot queen and an ongoing state fight against an eccentric beachcombing treasure hunter, tie together in ways the young Merritt couldn’t have imagined.

Merritt has a knack for absurdist detail. A pawn shop is called “The Happy Hocker”; a secret legal award given to an honored attorney is so secret that he asks readers to “Pretend you didn’t read this.” And though most of the story takes place 20 years ago, Merritt’s grasp of Oregon’s history and the loopy hilarity of some of its residents gives “A Fool’s Gold” a strong sense of place. Unfortunately, the narrative slips out of the author’s grasp as promising characters fall out of the story and new ones appear to lesser effect. Still, there are more clever moments than not in Merritt’s book, a memoir of off-the-books legal maneuvering that’s as wayward and tangled as the Oregon coastline.    —Omar L. Gallaga

No brainer
A Chicago surgeon delicately plucks a bullet from a patient’s open skull. In a university lab, brains are scanned with a magnet so strong that the operating technicians can’t wear jewelry. A video game inspires a sleep study after Tetris-obsessed college students dream about falling blocks. In “The Three-Pound Enigma: the Human Brain and the Quest to Unlock Its Mysteries” (Algonquin Books, $25), medical student Shannon Moffett shines a light on our gray matter as she spends time with today’s brain pioneers.

An intro neurobiology course at Stanford sparked the author’s curiosity about current brain discoveries; likewise, the wide-eyed wonder of a pupil permeates her book.  Moffett seems awestruck as she describes meeting the big names of neuroscience — occasionally coming off more cub reporter than qualified researcher. Still, the informal tone makes a challenging clinical subject more manageable for the reader.  Moffett excels at similes: Legos, “The Shining,” fridge magnets, Jell-O and the Daytona 500 are all used to demonstrate intricate medical concepts.

“The Three-Pound Enigma” is rich with supplemental material. Illustrated segments build a timeline of the brain’s development, from conception to death; the author’s Web site provides links to many of the experiments, puzzles and illusions referenced in the book. Moffett gets even closer to the science when she volunteers as a test subject, skiing on a stationary machine and climbing into an eight-ton magnet for an MRI.

By exploring neurological advancement from different perspectives, “The Three-Pound Enigma” presents more than just synapses and neurons. It reveals a modern snapshot of the human condition, appealing to anyone who has ever wondered how the mind works — which doesn’t take a brain surgeon.    —Tracy Edmondson

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