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Summary: People are all different...some are just more special.
Review: This book shows how people who are "victims" of neurological disorders are brilliant in their own right. Some of the tales are humbling, but humorous nonetheless. I can't help but smile at the thought of a man trying to take his wife's head off.I'd recommend this book to psychology students and enthusiasts. For students, this book will be especially helpful when you have an Abnormal Psych class and want to go beyond the textbook.
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Summary: Read this book! It is terrific!
Review: Fabulous, fascinating, hilarious, worth reading over and over (for me). I just ordered my second copy because the first one is just trashed from use. I only wish it were three times as long.
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Summary: A hard struggle to read it till the end.
Review: My neurologist indicated this book to me with a lot of good accolades and I was pretty much anxious about reading it asap. What a disapointment!!
True, the author is a pretty much well-known specialist on brain disorders and pretty much devoted to dismmiss a lot of prejudice one has against people with severe brain disorders, deserving all the accolades my neurologist has put on him, but it seems that (at least in the Portuguese edition I have read) the lackluster style of the texts do a lot of harm to the intensiveness of the narrative, which goes trough the lives of brain impaired people as if they were fictional characters and not real persons.
I hope next time, the author will be more successfull in portraying situations like the ones presented in the book, which he surely knows a lot, but which he is not so much efficient to convey to readers like myself.
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Summary: Spiritual Rather Than Clinical
Review: Anyone who thinks this book is "cold and unfeeling" either didn't take the time to read it or can't read. At heart the book is a meditation on what it means to be human. Do our brains define us, or our souls? Sacks doesn't find the people "amusing," though certainly there is some warmth in humor and some of the conditions of the patients are bizarre. As in his encounter with Rebecca, whom he saw at first as the sum total of her deficits, he finds that these patients challenge him to see them as more than their neurological disorders.
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Summary: Unsettling, thought provoking, and fascinating
Review: Oliver Sachs is an excellent story teller or story reteller, as well as a dedicated physician. These are well-written stories of real people. The text is not in dry, medical jargon. The persons selected are intriguing. Their neurological conditions are so startling to the 'average human' that you would not be able to imagine how your life would be if you were so effected. From autism to disembodiment, the workings of the brain and neurological system of persons with those conditions are so fascinating. In some cases, the folks are able to 'mainsteam' themselves, to use that term from special education, and this is a testiment to the strength of their wills, their prodigal genius, or both. In other cases, their conditions and losses are so painful, their stories will break your heart. All are utterly fascinating.
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Summary: A little old, but still interesting
Review: I used to work on a neurology ward when I first started in health care, and the many sad stories that I was privy to during that time has encouraged me to keep up with some of the research in brain and mind science. Oliver Sacks' book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat was first published in 1970 and has been reprinted several times with new material added. The book is an interesting collection of stories of individuals with neurological deficits that highlight and clarify how the normal brain works. The author approaches his study with a compassion for his patient's troubled existence, and where the patients are content with their lot, he prudently leaves well enough alone, something not all MD's are willing to do. He also appreciates what his patients have to teach him about life and even about the practice of medicine itself. His ability to learn from others considered "unfortunate" or mentally "defective" makes the book a very insightful work. While the author's extensive clinical practice has allowed him to make some interesting statements about what parts of the brain are involved with different mental functions, what he fails to do in this book is to provide anything approaching testable ideas or actual research supporting his theories. The colorful stories are well worth reading as moral parables, but a better book on current mind and brain research might be Ramachandran's Phantoms in the Brain. One might begin with the Sacks book, which is easy to read, and proceed to the more extensive work by Ramachandran.
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Summary: A facinating look at consciousness
Review: A fascinating book focusing on one of the most mysterious frontiers in neurological science: the relationship between the physiological processes of the brain and the more nebulous phenomenon we call cognition. To illuminate this relationship, Sacks relates a series of case studies describing individuals with severeÑand often bizarreÑcognitive dysfunctions. The accounts are often riveting, and several of the cases he describes are downright jaw-dropping in their strangeness. ÒThe Lost Mariner,Ó for example, describes a patient who lives in a perpetual 1945, his memory unable to hold on to any of the events of the last 30 years of his life. ÒWitty Ticcy RayÓ is a fascinating description of a patientÕs love/hate relationship with the impulsiveness and physical and verbal tics of TouretteÕs Syndrome. There are other, even stranger, pathologiesÑa man who cannot comprehend that the leg attached to his body is his own, a man who briefly enters a world of smell richer than any of us can imagine, a woman who in her senescence reexperiences the memories of her childhood. Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of this book is its demonstration that human consciousness is both more mysterious and more diverse than many of us imagine and that the multiplicity of means through which we apprehend reality and the self encompasses both the wonderful and the strange.
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Summary: Wonderful, mind-stimulating piece of work
Review: This book is much more than just narratives of clinical trials. Dr. Sacks approaches his patients with not only great medical knowledge, but also tremendous compassion, and philosophical analysis. This book raises questions regarding the human mind in a much higher, spiritual level. I am completely marveled by the limitless capability and capacity of the mind which Dr. Sacks demonstrates through the studies of his patients. At the same time, I am deeply touched by Dr. Sacks' heartwarming humanitarian approach toward the dysfunctionals. A must read!!!!
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Summary: Brilliant and intriguing
Review: Who ever thought neuropsychology could be enteraining? Sacks book about right-side of the brain cases is absolutely facinating. Reading about these cases makes one think about things in a different light. I'd never really thought about how I know where my feet are at any given moment or what it would be like to have such a disconnect between physical reality and how my brain perceives it. Sacks shows not only great compassion for the subjects of the book, but also shows the great difficulty in caring for people whose perspective is so fundementally different than the norm. As a non-psychologist ( I took the one requisite intro psych course in college), I found Sack's explanation of the conditions he encountered clear and as devoid of jargon as he could reasonably make it.
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Summary: Returning humanity
Review: It is hard to believe that these is real true stories that really does happen to people...
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