In The Mind's Eye, Oliver Sacks tells the stories of people who are able to navigate the world and communicate with others despite losing what many of us consider indispensable senses and abilities: the power of speech, the capacity to recognize faces, the sense of three-dimensional space, the ability to read, the sense of sight. For all of these people, the challenge is to adapt to a radically new way of being in the world. There is Lilian, a concert pianist who becomes unable to read music and eventually even to recognize everyday objects; and Sue, a neurobiologist who has never seen in three dimensions, until she suddenly acquires stereoscopic vision in her fifties. There is Pat, who, after years of isolation, reinvents herself as an outgoing and highly social member of her community, although she has aphasia and cannot utter a sentence; and Howard, a prolific novelist who must find a way to continue his life as a writer even after a stroke destroys his ability to read. And there is Dr Sacks himself, who tells the story of his own eye cancer and the bizarre and disconcerting effects of losing vision to one side. Sacks explores here some very strange paradoxes -- people who can see perfectly but not recognize their own children, blind people who become hyper-visual, or who navigate by 'tongue vision'. Along the way, he considers more fundamental questions: How do we see? How do we think? How important is internal imagery -- or vision, for that matter? Why is it that, although writing is only five thousand years old, humans have a universal, seemingly innate, potential for reading? The Mind's Eye is a testament to the complexity of vision and the brain and to the power of creativity and adaptation. And it provides a whole new perspective on the power of language and communication, as we try to imagine what it is to see with another person's eyes, or another person's mind.

The Mind's Eye. by Oliver Sacks

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Oliver W. Sacks

Diseases & Physical Ailments

Picador USA

'A humane discourse on the fragility of our minds, of the bodies that give rise to them, and of the world they create for us. This book is filled with wonders' Daily Telegraph Oliver Sacks' compassionate tales of people struggling to adapt to different neurological conditions have fundamentally changed the way we think of our own minds. In Musicophilia, he examines the powers of music through the individual experiences of patients, musicians and everyday people those struck by affliction, unusual talent and even, in one case, by lightning to show not only that music occupies more areas of our brain than language does, but also that it can torment, calm, organize and heal. Always wise and compellingly readable, these stories alter our conception of who we are and how we function, and show us an essential part of what it is to be human. 'Fascinating. Music, as Sacks explains, "can pierce the heart directly". And this is the truth that he so brilliantly focuses upon that music saves, consoles and nourishes us' Daily Mail 'Irresistible, astonishing and moving' Spectator 'Deeply warm and sympathetic' Guardian

Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain

Arts & Photography

Music

'An inexhaustible tourist at the farther reaches of the mind, Sacks presents, in sparse, unsentimental prose, the stories of seven of his patients. The result is as rich, vivid and compelling as any collection of short fictional stories' Independent on Sunday As with his previous bestseller, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Oliver Sacks uses case studies to illustrate the myriad ways in which neurological conditions can affect our sense of self, our experience of the world, and how we relate to those around us. Writing with his trademark blend of scientific rigour and human compassion, he describes patients such as the colour-blind painter or the surgeon with compulsive tics that disappear in the operating theatre; patients for whom disorientation and alienation but also adaptation are inescapable facts of life. 'Sacks' great gift is his capacity to place himself in the position of his subjects, to see the world the way they see it and to empathize with their condition with grea

Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales

Crafts, Hobbies & Home

"Oliver Sacks has become the world's best-known neurologist. His case studies of broken minds offer brilliant insight into the mysteries of consciousness". ("Guardian"). In his most extraordinary book, Oliver Sacks recounts the stories of patients lost in the bizarre, apparently inescapable world of neurological disorders. These are case studies of people who have lost their memories and with them the greater part of their pasts; who are no longer able to recognize people or common objects; whose limbs have become alien; and, who are afflicted and yet are gifted with uncanny artistic or mathematical talents. In Dr Sacks' splendid and sympathetic telling, each tale is a unique and deeply human study of life struggling against incredible adversity. "Populated by a cast as strange as that of the most fantastic fiction ...Dr Sacks shows the awesome powers of our mind and just how delicately balanced they have to be". ("Sunday Times"). "This book is for everybody who has felt from time to time that certain twinge of self-identity and sensed how easily, at any moment, one might lose it". ("The Times"). "A gripping journey into the recesses of the human mind". ("Daily Mail").

Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat

Biographies & Memoirs

Professionals & Academics

'If you did not think that gallium and iridium could move you, this superb book will change your mind' The Times In Uncle Tungsten Sacks evokes, with warmth and wit, his upbringing in wartime England. He tells of the large science-steeped family who fostered his early fascination with chemistry. There follow his years at boarding school where, though unhappy, he developed the intellectual curiosity that would shape his later life. And we hear of his return to London, an emotionally bereft ten-year-old who found solace in his passion for learning. Uncle Tungsten radiates all the delight and wonder of a boy's adventures, and is an unforgettable portrait of an extraordinary young mind. 'This book is both a heartwarming account of a delightful, eccentric family life and an inspiring record of a remarkable intellectual odyssey' Mail on Sunday 'The amalgamation of personal recollection and scientific history makes a luminous, inspiring book' Sunday Telegraph 'Uncle Tungsten is really about the raw joy of scientific understanding; what it is like to be a precocious child discovering the alchemical secrets of reality for the first time: the sheer thrill of finding intelligible patterns in nature' Guardian

Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood

Science & Math

Mathematics

'The story of a disease that plunged its victims into a prison of viscous time, and the drug that catapulted them out of it' Guardian Hailed as a medical classic, and the subject of a major feature film as well as radio and stage plays and various TV documentaries, Awakenings is the extraordinary account of a group of twenty patients. Rendered catatonic by the sleeping-sickness epidemic that swept the world just after the First World War, all twenty had spent forty years in hospital: motionless and speechless; aware of the world around them, but exhibiting no interest in it until Dr Sacks administered the then-new drug, L-DOPA, which caused them, temporarily, to awake from their decades-long slumber. 'A brilliant and humane book' Observer 'Not only a collection of astonishing case histories, Awakenings is also a memoir, a moral essay and a romance. It is a work of genius' Washington Post 'It makes you aware of what a knife edge we live on' Doris Lessing

Awakenings

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

'A mine of treasures, a source of visions, a microcosm of human experience and suffering, the philosopher's stone: Migraine is a remarkable achievement' Sunday Telegraph Migraine is an age-old the first recorded instances date back over 2,000 years and often debilitating condition, affecting a 'substantial minority' of the population across the globe. In this book, Oliver Sacks offers at once a medical account of its occurrence and management; an exploration of its physical, physiological and psychological underpinnings and consequences; and a meditation on the nature and experience of health and illness. 'This book pushes no panaceas, but its humanity may prove helpful in reconciling us to darker sides of ourselves' ROY PORTER, Sunday Times 'It delves into the workings of the brain with brilliant complexity, and should be required reading for migraine sufferers or those with an intellectual bent' Cosmopolitan Migraine is full of those wondrous insights that have made Oliver Sacks the most accessible and at the same time the most magisterial of doctors' ANITA BROOKNER, Spectator

Migraine

"This book will shake your preconceptions about the deaf, about language and about thought--. Sacks [is] one of the finest and most thoughtful writers of our time."--Los Angeles Times Book Review\nLike The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, this is a fascinating voyage into a strange and wonderful land, a provocative meditation on communication, biology, adaptation, and culture. In Seeing Voices, Oliver Sacks turns his attention to the subject of deafness, and the result is a deeply felt portrait of a minority struggling for recognition and respect--a minority with its own rich, sometimes astonishing, culture and unique visual language, an extraordinary mode of communication that tells us much about the basis of language in hearing people as well. Seeing Voices is, as Studs Terkel has written, "an exquisite, as well as revelatory, work."

Seeing Voices : A Journey into the World of the Deaf

Psychology & Counseling

Stoddart

A major bestseller and already acclaimed as a science classic, this collection of 20 true tales of individuals stricken with astonishing neurological disorders has sold over 70,000 copies. (Pscyhology)

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: And Other Clinical Tales

Self-Help

Personal Transformation

Paw Prints 2008-06-26

Seeing Voices: A Journey Into the World of the Deaf

Written by the author of "The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat", this book begins with the history of deaf people in the 18th century, the often outrageous ways in which they have been treated in the past, and their continuing struggle for acceptance in a hearing world. And it examines the visual language of the deaf - Sign - which has only in the past decade been recognized fully as a language linguistically complete, rich, and as expressive as any spoken language. Oliver Sacks has also written "Migraine", "Awakenings" and "A Leg to Stand on".

Seeing Voices: A Journey into the World of the Deaf

HarperAudio

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Books by Oliver W. Sacks