Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 26-30 of 56
 Excellent in every way! August 3, 2004
Stephen Marc (Austin, TX USA)
Expertly written, the stories are fascinating, endearing, & enlightening. You'll learn so much about how your own mind is wired by reading the stories of these very special people. The medical and literary communities need more people like Oliver Sacks.
Color blindness and autism January 31, 2004
Mary E. Sibley (Carneys Point, NJ USA)
6 out of 9 found this review helpful
What if a painter is color blind. Absolute color blindness is a rare condition. Sacks encountered a painter who had been injured. The color blindness experienced meant to the painter that everything appeared wrong. He particularly missed the colors of spring. Things were leaden. The artist did derive pleasure from looking at drawings. He did start painting again, black and white paintings. As time passed there was evidenced in the painting a lessening of fear and depression.
Sacks describes a a surgeon with Tourette's syndrome. Writers on temporal lobe epilepsy have spoken of the doubling of consciousness. One of the subjects of the essays, Franco, has a prodigious memory and a gift for painting. He paints the town of his boyhood incessantly. His Pontito is minutely accurate. Returning to the town was not the intense experience Franco expected. Everything seemed small.
Sacks writes of the savant syndrome in a child called Stephen, an accomplished artist. He has extraordinary powers of visual perception. Savant talents seem to have a more autonomous even automatic quality than normal ones.
The anthropologist on Mars is Temple Grandin. Her work devising cattle chutes is described. She is constantly trying to understand her own autism.
Oliver Sack's medical stories are sui generis. Running into them is always a delight.
One of his best books! November 12, 2003
Christine
12 out of 12 found this review helpful
I've read several books by this author, including "The man who mistook his wife for a hat", "The island of the color blind" and "Seeing voices", but I have to say that this is the one I've enjoyed the most. In keeping with the format of his hugely popular "The man who mistook his wife for a hat", Oliver Sacks presents his readers with several case stories that are both gripping and enlightening. As always, the author's greatest talent is being able to teach the general reader about the intricacies of the human mind, without reducing the particular patient to something other than human. The people behind each of these case studies are never reduced to being just freaks of nature, but are instead described with a great deal of respect. I highly recommend all of Dr Sacks' books, but this is the best one to start with if you're new to his work. However, if lengthy footnotes are a pet peeve of yours, you may want to stay away. I, on the other hand, along with many other of his readers, really enjoy the many footnotes as they give his books more depth and points the reader in new interesting directions.
Unforgettable people August 11, 2003
tzefirah (Media, PA United States)
Science, medicine and psychology aside, these people who are triumphing over the most inhuman odds are unforgettable and inspiring. Most would be unlovable to us if we knew them personally, but that's not important. All of us know people who've had many more advantages in life who have not lived up to their potentials. These folks more than make up for the underachievers. They're all somehow brilliant in their own rights.
Oliver Sacks Sends a Postcard from Mars July 9, 2003
Mark Forrester (Hyattsville, MD USA)
7 out of 8 found this review helpful
Oliver Sacks' "An Anthropologist on Mars" is more than a collection of fascinating neurological case studies. Not only does Sacks offer a generous and holistic view of his subjects as complex individuals living in the real world, but he uses their disorders to raise provocative questions about what human Selfhood and intelligence mean. Is the color we see an objective external quality that is simply received by the brain, or is it constructed through an engagement between the brain and the environment? Are the memories that define our sense of who we are stored intact by the brain, awaiting retrieval, or must they be endlessly re-created? What are the potential relationships between memory and creativity, between art and disease, or between spirituality and disease? And perhaps most importantly, how can we separate the essence of individual identity from a lifelong neurological disorder, and at what cost is such a separation achieved? My only regret is that Sacks did not write some sort of postscript to bring together, and discuss more fully side-by-side, the many interesting question raised throughout this rich text.
Showing reviews 26-30 of 56
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