The author took part in the first experiments with a split brain (patients whose corpus callosum had been severed, isolating the two hemispheres of the brain). His accounts of those experiments make a fascinating read, as are many other facts about Neurology. Only for these, the book is worth a read.
He is on shakier ground when confronted with the age-old question of free will. We actually do not need such accurate information about where and when a specific trait or response happens to be to understand the simple fact that a brain is a physical entity and is, as such, subjected to the laws of physics. The finger that pulls the trigger of a gun and kills someone is activated by a neuronal network. Follow back the path from the neurons that directly contract the muscles all the way to the frontal cortex and you will never find a "free will" neuron that makes the decision. It really does not matter that at its most fundamental level (quantum mechanics), Nature is not deterministic, but random. This randomness is also at work inside the transistor in the device you are probably using to read this, and that does not make your device a free agent.
The author's quest to discredit reductionism is simplistic. He keeps on saying that you don't look at a car's mechanical parts to understand traffic patterns. That completely misses the point. That's called 'methodological reductionism' and is not embraced today by anyone. Modern reductionism does not attempt to do that. Rather, it concedes that epiphenomena can and should be studied and understood at its proper level. But that does not mean that emergent properties have causal links which are independent of the fundamental phenomena that explain them.
The author's foray into Physics to explain the concept of emergence is misguided. A macroscopic object, like a ball rolling down an inclined plane, is not an example of emergence from quantum mechanics. In fact, quantum mechanics cannot explain why the ball should roll down. This is hardly an example of an epiphenomenon, but simply reflects the well-known fact that quantum mechanics does not explain gravity (you need General Relativity for that).
If the author's point was to contribute something new to the question of free will, he has not succeeded.
But the journey itself is packed with so many interesting facts and descriptions about the science of the brain that I would still recommend it.
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