About this title: In a fashion still more personal than his previous books, Oliver Sacks gives us portraits of several neurological patients, following them as far as possible into their otherworldly modes of being: a surgeon who is consumed by the compulsive tics of Tourette's syndrome unless he is operating; an artist who loses all sense of color in a car accident, but finds a new sensibillity and creative power in black and white; an autistic Ph.D. who cannot decipher the simplest social exhange between humans but has built a career out of her intuitive understanding of animal behavior. By taking a personal ...
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Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Knopf
Date Published: 1995
ISBN-13:9780679437857ISBN:0679437851
Description: A wonderful copy with some minor edgewear to the cover. Dust Jacket has some edgewear present. -, Hard Cover, Very Good / Very Good. read more
Description: Very good. Book has appearance of light use with no easily noticeable wear. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Acceptable. Book is in good reading condition. Cover has wear at edges and corners, and may have creases. Spine has wear at edges. Marks on cover. read more
Description: Acceptable. Book is in good reading condition. Cover has wear at edges and corners. Spine has wear at edges. Dust jacket has some wear. Small amount of creased pages. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Knopf
Date Published: 1995
ISBN-13:9780679437857ISBN:0679437851
Description: Very good. 1995; Hardcover; No notes/hiliting; Good dustcover; Clean pages; Lightly edgeworn dustcover; No dog-ears; Strong binding. read more
Description: Good. Former Library book. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Very Good. Great condition for a used book! Minimal wear. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Very Good. Great condition for a used book! Minimal wear. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Vintage Books USA
Date Published: 1996
ISBN-13:9780679756972ISBN:0679756973
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Address sticker is on the inside cover. Has a little wear. Same ISBN, different cover art. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 352 p. Contains: Illustrations. Audience: General/trade. read more
"Excellent book. Psych is fascinating to me, so this book is fascinating to me. I was going to say that you don't have to like psychology to like this book, but I don't think that's true. He goes REALLY IN DEPTH at times into the psych of it all (even the changing history of the field and how we think about a certain psych subject), so if you don't like the subject, then just don't read the book.
Skip his Preface. Oh, wait, you can't, since it contains his overarching principle that the book comes back to again and again. Okay, at the very least, don't hold the Preface against him. I almost didn't read the book based on the Preface, and that would have been sad, cause it's a great book! Fortunately, either his style got better at the start of the book, or I got used to it, or the book was just so fascinating that it didn't matter either way.
Don't skip the footnotes. They're AMAZING. In one of them you learn that there's this woman out there who can't perceive motion. I mean, I can "get", in a way, not seeing color. But not seeing MOTION? How does that work? ... So read the footnotes.
I got to the last chapter and for some reason felt no urge to finish the book. But the book feels Finished to me, so I'm not going to force myself to read the rest. And I also don't hold it against the book, me not finishing it. The book feels complete without the last chapter, and as each chapter is really a stand-alone story, I say it's all good."
"Oliver Sacks will make you think, and on top of being a great series of remarkable case studies, An Anthropologist on Mars is a fascinatingly profound read.
I had always supposed that a person born blind, upon regaining sight through a modern operation, would represent the ultimate revelatory moment, one that would parallel the release of the prisoners in Plato's "Allegory of the Cave". One of Sacks' case studies is such a person, and without spoiling anything, his situation was not as pleasant.
Sacks investigates not just the quotidian habits of the seven people he studies, but actually attempts to see the world through their eyes. He builds a sense of "self" with each of his patients and builds models of the world, filtered through their unique perspective. His cases include a painter who loses his ability to perceive color, an autistic child with brilliant artistic skills, an autistic, middle-aged woman with a PhD, a seasoned surgeon with Tourette's Syndrome, and several others.
This book is written with a delicate appreciation for the frailty of the human psyche, as well as a loving charm for the awe-inspiring people whom Sacks studies. For anyone with interests in psychology with a metaphysical slant, this is a must-read."
"Another excellent set of case-histories from Sacks. He's just an amazing writer-- as good describing people and scenes as the science behind his patients' various neurological gifts and afflictions. And that science is fascinating: the cases in this book dealt with a wide variety of issues-- colorblindness, memory loss, Tourettes' Syndrome, prodigal drawing abilities, and autism. They're all well-told, and after you're done with the book, you can't help but feel like you've learned a little more about the strange experience of being human."
"Having just read three Sacks books in a row I suppose I am now a crdentialed Sacks-o-phile, but this old standard proves to be my least favroite of these recent reads. Island of the Colorblind stands apart for its personal and dramatic writing, whereas here we find Sacks still developing a formulaic style, mixing case study and journalistic profile writing. These tales are fasincating, especially the case of the "last hippie." Yet it was such a pleasure to see Sacks venture into geography, indulging of obsessions and adventure in his writing about his trip to the islands (in Island of the Colorblind)--I found my imagination less engaged here."
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