ABSTRACT
Dr. Benjamin Carson, the renowned director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, did not have the most auspicious start in life. He grew up in what he calls “dire poverty” in Detroit and Boston. His mother could not read. He had low self-esteem, and he did poorly in school. Frequent angry outbursts got him in trouble. Then Carson came across some drawings of the human brain. The incipient neurosurgeon’s mind grasped the significance of the fact that, unlike animals, people have frontal lobes. He began to understand what it means to be human.
