This collection of essays presents case studies of seven individuals, though unlike other books by the author, none of these people were patients of Sacks'. They were either born with a condition such as autism, or sustained a brain injury due to stroke or disease, such as a brain tumour or an infection. In the case of the two autistic individuals, both have gifts - the ability to draw buildings in detail when only glanced at, or the ability to design systems for the humane slaughter of cattle and pigs and run a successful business based around that. The latter is an apparently well-known high-functioning autistic woman called Temple Grandin who wrote a book on her experiences as an autistic person and lectured on the subject as well. I'd never heard of her, but that didn't detract from the section about her, which concludes the book.

With the people who suffered brain injury, some were able to turn their condition to a positive outcome, for example, the artist who lost his ability to perceive colour but was able to move to monochrome instead. However, the man who could not remember anything after around 1967 does come across as a tragic case, as does the blind man who, sight restored, found the greatest difficulty adapting - illustrating that seeing is not just a matter of the eyes but a complex process taking place in multiple areas of the brain to result in something that makes sense at the conscious level. And that it is also mastered when we are babies - that we have to learn to interpret the visual input entering via the eyes and into the brain's various processing areas. That idea was interesting.

I had a few problems with the book. One is the author's tendency to introduce medical terms regarding areas of the brain or conditions without explaining them. A glossary and a diagram of the brain would have greatly assisted. To some extent the book comes across as not being a coherent whole, and when I checked the copyright page, I discovered that earlier versions of all the chapters had been previously published in The New York Review of Books, which would explain its lack of focus.

Apart from the vignette about the blind man, which does have some valuable conclusions as mentioned above, there is no real resolution to the case histories. Possibly this general deficiency is due to the book's 1995 publication date: the reasons why certain things happened, or how the brain worked in particular ways, wasn't known then. Perhaps those are still unknowns, but I found it frustrating.

Disquietingly, there is a tendency to ponder whether the people under consideration are really 'human' especially Stephen, the autistic boy-artist, as in whether they have the same kinds of emotions and feelings of identity as people lacking those conditions. The word 'retarded' is used quite a bit, though in 1995 that was probably still an acceptable medical term. The author went on holiday with Stephen, but basically did so to study him, rather than because he liked him. And that made me a bit uncomfortable in a way I hadn't been with previous books by this author. So altogether I would rate this as a 3 star read. ( )

Sacks is always worthwhile. Fascinating explorations of how we construct and are constructed. ( )

Seven case studies, very much a continuation of the Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat. I was particularly interested in the Case of The Colour-Blind Painter, and the colour studies on the mind, both in physics and neurology. Some of the chapter on The Last Hippie I had read about before in Uncle Tungsten. Overall Sacks presents each character as someone to be admired, and celebrates the human ability to adapt to challenges. ( )

More good stuff from Sacks. More "everyday" conditions than The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, focusing on autism in particular. ( )

More good stuff from Sacks. More "everyday" conditions than The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, focusing on autism in particular.

Well written. But meh. ( )

I can't seem to focus on reading these days, though I'm supposed to be reading brothers karamazov for a book club. I plowed through, this, however, which is a testament to how fascinating these case studies are. It was my first experience with Oliver Sacks, and a wonderful one. I get the feeling I'll be reading his other books in the years to come.

In a way, reading Sacks is like taking a hallucinogen: you realize how many complex mental faculties are required for us to constitute our world. What we perceive as reality is an illusion generated by the coordination of sensory input with higher brain functions like memory. Somewhere along the line you develop something of a sense of self, which, reading these case studies of people whose brains work differently from most, is more tenuous than we like to imagine. I didn't actually hallucinate while sitting down with this book, though, unless you consider reading one.

I loved the fable-like quality of some of the scenarios: a painter who becomes colorblind, a surgeon with Tourettic physical tics, another painter who can only make images of his childhood village, so possessed is he by memories of it.

Sacks is a generous observer. He brings to bear great scientific understanding, but also great human empathy for his subjects. The mixture never seems out of balance. His methods are kind of a throwback to a time when science was less cordoned off from humanistic inquiry like philosophy and the arts. Literary and philosophical allusions, as well as constant reference to centuries-old accounts of neurological conditions are only the most obvious evidence of this sensibility. It is a welcome point of view, as his subjects' stories get to some pretty fundamental questions about human existence, which questions, if not explored fully here, are at least evoked with requisite wonder and care. A more strictly scientific or medical approach would not be able to take this more holistic view.

(I want to note that the proliferation of footnotes in this book is outrageous, something I would never normally tolerate. And yet... they were by and large fascinating, each like the best Wikipedia page you've ever stumbled upon.)

Una serie di casi umani e clinici ci portano a capire meglio certe sindromi fisiche e mentali ( )

His writing is quite interesting because of his empathy for and appreciation of those who are vastly different from most of us.

Especially the last chapter, actually the last several chapters, it is clear that he strives to understand those he is writing about, to understand what emotions they feel or what their inner life is like. In many cases of autism it seems that the feel little or no emotion, but he leaves the question open. Oliver Sacks occasionally had glimpses that the autistic people he dealt with had some level of comprehension of what they were missing.

Another thing that came through clearly as I read this book, is that people with severe disabilities, such as blindness, when the disability is removed, will have great difficulty adapting to life. There are perhaps 20 cases of people with long term blindness who gained sight again. Ones that were described in detail all had difficulty, adapting to sight. It is only when young that the brain is plastic enough to learn new skills. Later on in life the areas of brain have already been claimed, plasticity is less, and learning new skills, such as sight, become extremely difficult, if not impossible.

( )

uh oh: "Many high-functioning autistic people describe a great fondness for, almost an addiction to, alternative worlds, imaginary worlds such as those of C.S. Lewis and Tolkien, or worlds they imagine themselves. Thus both the B.'s and their oldest son have spent years constructing an imaginary world with its own landscapes and geography (endlessly mapped and drawn), its own languages, currencies, laws, and customs- a world in which fantasy and rigidity play equal parts. Thus days might be spent computing the total grain production or silver reserves in Leutheria, or designing a new flag, or calculating the complex factors determining the value of a thog- this occupies hours of the B's leisure time at home together, Mrs. B. providing the science and technology; Mr. B the politics, languages, and social customs; and their son the natural features of the often-warring countries." ( )

Oliver Sacks = classic. As an ACT/SAT tutor, I taught an excerpt from "The Colorblind Painter" several times. One of the few passages that actually challenged me and held my interest on those test excerpts.

My favorites were the ones about vision, unsurprisingly. The man can't write a boring case history. ( )

Another collection of Sacks' fascinating case studies. As usual, they make for great reading. ( )

Beautiful. Written with insight and compassion by a man of remarkable humanity and curiosity without a shred of hubris. ( )

Out of seven stories, I enjoyed five. I think the book would have been better served with only five stories anyway as it was extremely dense and could not be considered a fast read by my standards. The material required frequent pauses between stories or even during them to really let all the science and information sink in. I did think Sacks repeated himself fairly often by the end. If he pondered to himself again whether an autistic person can have a complete sense of self without the access to the emotional experiences and depth the average person experiences, I was going to go crazy. I get it... that's what your asking... alright already...

Overall though, the stories and the neurology were interesting and written in a way that you don't need any strong scientific basis to understand them. I found the Colorblind Artist fascinating and the Anthropologist on Mars section on Temple Grandin flew by. Good book, but recommended only if you embrace your nerdy side. ( )

Oliver Sacks' lengthy interview (over several days) with Temple Grandin provides the title essay in this book. An Anthropologist on Mars is Temple's term for herself, an autistic individual trying to decipher the unspoken social rules around her. Hers is one of seven case histories Dr. Sacks, a self-described 'neuro-anthropologist' presents as examples of the brain's creativity in adapting to disease and neurological challenges. Not an easy read but well worth the effort. ( )

The video-gone-viral featuring "this autistic boy" drawing New York City in amazing detail after a helicopter trip gets a back story and the artist, Stephen Wiltshire, is introduced in the chapter entitled Prodigies. The inclusion of some of Wiltshire's drawings adds immensely to the book, as do the coloured plates in the chapter about the expatriate from an Italian hill town who obsessively painted his home village in great detail, despite not having returned for decades. (He later returned, in the company of Dr. Sacks, to be honoured with a local exhibition in a neighbouring town - his birthplace is now virtually deserted, ironically similar to his unpeopled paintings.) ( )

I've known for many years I wanted to read something by Sacks - now I know I want to read everything by him. His focus is on the case histories, well, actually, on the people. Only by getting to know individuals well and comparing their stories to the literature does he bring together theories and share those ideas with us. He doesn't bang us over the head with an agenda. Nice selected bibliography.

A tidbit: [W]aking consciousness is dreaming - but dreaming constrained by external reality."" ( )

Borderline 3/4

I did enjoy the book and learned a fair deal from it, about the topics at hand (autism), and things at random... However it could have been half as long! The seven separate pieces didn't really feel like essays to me - they lacked coherent structure. But I do adore Mr Sachs and will read others of his works - hopefully shorter ones. ( )

This was my first experience of Oliver Sacks, and he's a fascinating writer. You can smell the imprint of The New Yorker on him, dipping in and out of direct reportage and contextual situation. But at the same time, he has a very singular gift: getting inside the phenomenology of cognitive peculiarities. He covers several different subjects—a painter struck color-blind, and finds the world an unappetizing grey; a 50 year old man who gains sight, assaulted by colors and light, unable to make sense of it all; a young adult who joins the Hare Krishna, develops a brain tumor, and becomes frozen in time, unaware of anything since the '60s—and in all of them Sacks tells a story of befriending the patient and trying to feel them out.

As a writer and a thinker, Sacks is excellent. The pieces all flow wonderfully, and you never get the sense that he's walking through a formula or trapped in his language. Many of the asides are especially wonderful, with Sacks always pulling in outside research, historical evidence, and even literary references (particularly concerning Borges' "Funes the Memorious"). He tries to give each patient an emotional arc of their own, but many are driven by his sense of discovery as he tests the bounds of each person's abilities.

The only real downside to the book was in the last two chapters: an extended treatment of autistic savants and of Temple Grandin. This is one area where the book seems kind of dated, as our understanding of autism has only grown over the last two decades. And specifically for Grandin, I had seen the Errol Morris documentary on her life that aired as part of the short-lived First Person TV series. It all seemed old hat, and Sacks' style failed to animate it enough to make up for the redundancy. ( )

Absolutely fascinating! Oliver Sacks powerfully demonstrates humanity's ability to adapt, and even thrive, in face of neurological disorder by presenting thoughtful and remarkably sensitive portraits of real people with various conditions. Trying to put myself in the shoes of these individuals was an exercise in imagination and empathy unlike any I've ever experienced. (And I am pleased to report that Sack's terminology in this book isn’t as horribly outdated as it was in The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.) Though some portions are a bit didactic, I still enjoyed An Anthropologist on Mars immensely, and Jonathan Davis is an excellent narrator. Highly recommended. ( )

I loved this book. Mostly because I think interdisciplinary studies/perspectives lead to breakthroughs in research. An amazing neurobiologist and an amazing writer, Sacks takes us into his work life and shows us just how wondrous and perplexing the sciences can be. He reminds us that even though we use objectivity in science, we shouldn't forget the human component. ( )

Oliver Sacks provides a fascinating look at several cases of neurological damage or disorder in extremely interesting people. I found the discussion of how difficult a transition it is for a person who has been blind from birth or for a significant length of time to suddenly be able to see to be quite eye-opening, so to speak. I always assumed that if one gains sight after being blind that one is able to actually "see" right from the get go, but this is not so. Sight, depth perception, visual recognition, motion vision, all these things are developed over time in a sighted person, and if sight is suddenly restored ( )

This is among my most favorite books, and I have the first edition. ( )

A series of sketches on the remarkable and often terrifying complexity, plasticity, power, and vulnerability of the human brain. These cases are also interesting examples on the nature of identity, the social and personal construction of ability and disability, and the frightening but also freeing thought that vastly different and perhaps mutually incomprehensible modes of perceiving and being in the world and being a human can and do exist and even thrive in modern society. ( )

Extremely interesting and educational. A series of stories about psychological and physical disorders. Includes an artist suffering from colorblindness and a child prodigy. I would definitely recommend this book. ( )