An Anthropologist On Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales
THE INSPIRATION FOR THE NBC SERIES BRILLIANT MINDS • From the bestselling author of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat • Fascinating portraits of neurological disorder in which men, women, and one extraordinary child emerge as brilliantly adaptive personalities, whose conditions have not so much debilitated them as ushered them into another reality.
Here are seven detailed narratives of neurological patients, including a surgeon 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 sensibility and creative power in black and white; and an autistic professor who cannot decipher the simplest social exchange between humans, but has built a career out of her intuitive understanding of animal behavior.
Sacks combines the well honed mind of an academician with the verve of a true storyteller.
Here are seven detailed narratives of neurological patients, including a surgeon 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 sensibility and creative power in black and white; and an autistic professor who cannot decipher the simplest social exchange between humans, but has built a career out of her intuitive understanding of animal behavior.
Sacks combines the well honed mind of an academician with the verve of a true storyteller.
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Community Reviews
I definitely enjoyed this book a lot more than Hallucinations. It's a series of case studies about different neurological disorders and how they affect the lives of the people who suffer from them, and in some cases, how they enrich the lives of those people as well. I found that the case studies themselves were well written and were generally a good balance between the personal and the science, although a few of the cases probably could have been shortened and condensed a bit, as they started to drag on a bit, especially the one about Virgil, the blind man who regained his sight.
I enjoyed getting to look at the lives of these different people, and as one other reviewer said, there were cases within the book I might have rated four stars, but as a whole, because of some of the less interesting cases that dragged a bit, I'm rating the overall book as three stars. He also has a tiny bit of a judgmental tone, especially towards the last two chapters in the book (both of which are about autism in various forms), and it started to make me a little uncomfortable as I kept reading. It didn't stand out or anything, but there was an undercurrent of it running through those chapters.
Still, I'd recommend this book to anyone who is interested in case studies of psychological and neurological problems as well as interested in looking at the people's lives as well as the problem itself. The only thing to keep in mind is that this book was published back in 1995, so some of the research that he cites is outdated.
I enjoyed getting to look at the lives of these different people, and as one other reviewer said, there were cases within the book I might have rated four stars, but as a whole, because of some of the less interesting cases that dragged a bit, I'm rating the overall book as three stars. He also has a tiny bit of a judgmental tone, especially towards the last two chapters in the book (both of which are about autism in various forms), and it started to make me a little uncomfortable as I kept reading. It didn't stand out or anything, but there was an undercurrent of it running through those chapters.
Still, I'd recommend this book to anyone who is interested in case studies of psychological and neurological problems as well as interested in looking at the people's lives as well as the problem itself. The only thing to keep in mind is that this book was published back in 1995, so some of the research that he cites is outdated.
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