Author of STEEP
About The Book
I felt the impulse to write this book as I faced the Black Studies shelves of our local bookstore. It began as a letter to our sons. I marveled at the indisputable truth in those books, the scholastic rigor. Pages brimming with courage, trauma and righteous fury. Their diagnosis of America’s racial illness was brilliant, the prognosis bleak. But I found little mention of remedy, no action prescribed – and wondered where my story could find shelf space. I felt dwarfed by the forces they described, felt as powerless as any viewer of cable news. If these authors held the whole truth my life hadn’t amounted to much.
Steep is my response to that bookstore moment. It isn’t one more tale of winning against a stacked deck. It’s a look at history’s unspoken power through the lens of seven decades – at how the work of remembering can bring that power to light, and soften its voice.
The past shapes us all. Many flavors of tribal identity shrink our lives today, immunize us against a wide world filled with sublime surprise. Steep tells of waking up, of inching toward a more fluid self, toward some friendship with that past – and toward some space for the future.
Dr. Craig Yorke
About the Cover -- a Purkinje Cell
These cells are among the most beautiful and easily recognized in the human brain, mimicking a minute oak tree. They were first revealed in the drawings of the Spanish artist and anatomist Ramón y Cajal in 1902, long before his microscopic images could be photographed. About 15 million of them live quietly in tight formation in our cerebellum, at the bottom of our brains, and work to inhibit excessive muscle tone.
They listen unceasingly to the world and our bodies through their thicket of millions of dendrites, but speak only through a single transmitting axon. They keep our muscles balanced -- neither too tight nor too loose, help us find our place in the world from one instant to the next.
Purkinje Cell
Right now they are allowing the muscles of your arms and hands just enough contraction to hold this book still, and permitting your eyes to move accurately across these words. These are cautious inhibitory cells, conservative of energy. They favor stillness over action.
Conventional scientific wisdom in 1902 held that the human brain was a continuous network, but Cajal’s drawings argued that it was composed of individual cells (about 100 billion). He suggested that those cells were separated by tiny spaces, decades before the electron microscope could see what we now call synapses. And, based purely on their architecture, he suggested that they communicated electrically, long before synaptic transmission could be detected. His work won a Nobel Prize in 1906 and the beauty of his pen and ink drawings launched the discipline we know today as Neuroscience.
Accolades
“Craig Yorke has written a provocative book about his personal journey from childhood, adhering to his parents' dreams and plans for him, focusing on excellence in school, music and athletic pursuits throughout childhood and his professional career. I found Steep a thoughtful reflection on life lessons and a compelling read.”
– Kathleen Sebelius, 44th Governor of Kansas, 21st U.S. Secretary of Health & Human Services
Dr. Craig Yorke's book is a compelling account of his chartered climb from poverty to becoming a top neurosurgeon and the life lessons that have influenced and shaped him. This vibrant narrative uses storytelling to engage readers and emphasizes the bravery required to reveal one's truth. It is an inspiring must-read for anyone seeking encouragement and motivation on their life's journey, highlighting the transformative power of sharing our experiences.
– Michael Kates, History Teacher at Topeka Schools and previous Kansas Teacher of the Year Nominee
Socrates insisted that self-knowledge is central to leading a meaningful life. What sounds so simple is in reality an adventure, often fraught with peril. Surprisingly, this book is not primarily about the obstacles inevitably faced and, not so inevitably, surmounted by a black man on his way to becoming a neurosurgeon. In this sense, it is a gentle rebuff of subjugating individual experience to the generalizing tendencies of identity politics. Steep is a memoir, a telling of the author’s life, but one that is no less a profound meditation on the toll it takes to stand before the steep wall of lowering historical forces and the determination, discipline, and drive necessary in scaling it. What awaits at the summit, however, is unexpected; the ultimate reward of the author’s journey upward is freedom - liberating self-knowledge and compassion for the struggles of others. Steep is about discovering what it is to become truly human. Abraham Joshua Heschel once said that radical amazement lay at the root of religious insight. That this work is but a page-turning 150 pages is in itself a miracle. I can only hope that this, the author’s first book, is not his last.
– Tobias Schlingensiepen, Member of the Kansas House of Representatives, Senior Pastor First Congregational Church, Topeka, Kansas