Neurosurgeon learns about the afterlife after falling into a coma

Proof of Heaven
Eben Alexander
Simon and Schuster

As a neurosurgeon, Eben Alexander was used to dismissing – albeit sympathetically and professionally – his patients’ occasional tales of near-death experiences. His training told him their accounts of angels and higher planes of overwhelming unconditional love were just a fanciful reaction of the mind when under extreme stress.

Then it happened to him.

Before he fell into a seven-day coma battling meningitis, Alexander was a self-described nominal Christian, but while his higher brain functions were effectively defunct, he says he experienced the afterlife and encountered God.

This book is his attempt to convince people - such as his pre-coma self -that these things are real, knowing full well why his professional colleagues' eyes glaze over at the thesis. It serves as a fascinating, compelling and yet ultimately undefinitive addition to this genre that comes down to the same question as any debate about religion: you either believe or you don't.