“Malformed” Is the Best Brain Book I Read This Year (and Maybe Ever)

Of all the glossy photo books to showcase on your coffee table, your first choice might not be one of decaying human brains. But it should be, so long as that book is “Malformed.”

The first few pages give a sense of what you’re in for: hauntingly beautiful photographs of brains (see slideshow above). One photo shows a seemingly normal brain, plump and pink-gray, floating in cloudy liquid inside a glass jar. Another shows a thick slice of each hemisphere sitting on top of wet, white gauze. In another, three small brains are tucked inside a jar with a yellowing label noting the condition their donors were born with: Down’s Syndrome.

Photographer Adam Voorhes took these photos and dozens of

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