If you are a neuroscience student still wrapping your head around the electrical properties of the neuron that you just learned in your upper division courses, read this book. Full stop. If you are a student still waiting to take the courses that will cover the resting membrane potential and the action potential, read this book. Full stop. If you are an enthusiast simply interested in taking a peek into the world of neurons (and other electrical cells), but cannot commit to taking formal college courses to learn all the details, read this book. Full stop. Regardless of where you are in your academic journey, this book will do wonders in untangling the knotted world of cellular electricity. As a bonus, young scholars also get a historical account of how this knowledge was acquired, which makes the material so much more meaningful. And the icing on the cake? Readers are regaled with the occasional “behind the scenes” anecdotes about the process of doing science, both past and present.
Campenot does a pristine job of stripping away the technical (read, molecular and mathematical) elements and sticking to the core concepts of how certain cells create and use electricity to operate the nervous system and musculature. Indeed, he is a believer (as am I) that understanding concepts is more important than memorizing details, and this book is a delightfully approachable jaunt into the electrical world of neurons (although a few other cell types are described as well). He is so passionate that we get gently scolded (fellow neuroscientists included) in his preface about so many of us not accurately grasping the conceptual logic of how a neuron works. This book is his attempts to right that wrong.
A small word of caution: although no prior knowledge is required to engage with this book, many concepts therein are naturally complex and abstract (electricity being particularly notorious here), so patience and the ability to follow logical arguments will come in handy.
