The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat: And Other Clinical Tales
by: Oliver Sacks
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In his most extraordinary book, "one of the great clinical writers of the 20th century" (The New York Times) recounts the case histories of patients lost in the bizarre, apparently inescapable world of neurological disorders. Oliver Sacks's The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat tells the stories of individuals afflicted with fantastic perceptual and intellectual aberrations: patients who have lost their memories and with them the greater part of their pasts; who are no longer able to recognize people and common objects; who are stricken with violent tics and grimaces or who shout involuntary obscenities; whose limbs have become alien; who have been dismissed as retarded yet are gifted with uncanny artistic or mathematical talents.
If inconceivably strange, these brilliant tales remain, in Dr. Sacks's splendid and sympathetic telling, deeply human. They are studies of life struggling against incredible adversity, and they enable us to enter the world of the neurologically impaired, to imagine with our hearts what it must be to live and feel as they do. A great healer, Sacks never loses sight of medicine's ultimate responsibility: "the suffering, afflicted, fighting human subject."
In his most extraordinary book, "one of the great clinical writers of the 20th century" (The New York Times) recounts the case histories of patients lost in the bizarre, apparently inescapable world of neurological disorders. Oliver Sacks's The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat tells the stories of individuals afflicted with fantastic perceptual and intellectual aberrations: patients who have lost their memories and with them the greater part of their pasts; who are no longer able to recognize people and common objects; who are stricken with violent tics and grimaces or who shout involuntary obscenities; whose limbs have become alien; who have been dismissed as retarded yet are gifted with uncanny artistic or mathematical talents.
If inconceivably strange, these brilliant tales remain, in Dr. Sacks's splendid and sympathetic telling, deeply human. They are studies of life struggling against incredible adversity, and they enable us to enter the world of the neurologically impaired, to imagine with our hearts what it must be to live and feel as they do. A great healer, Sacks never loses sight of medicine's ultimate responsibility: "the suffering, afflicted, fighting human subject."
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Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: 
- Clinical Mysteries of Neurology
I loved this book.It consists of clinical tales by a neurologist.He discusses his patients, always with a concern for their humanity, uniqueness, and quality of life.He waves the philosophical, literate, and aesthetic with the physiological, trying to mete out the underlying wholeness and spirituality of human beings.His concern is not mind/body splits, but the wholeness we find despite all odds against it and the clinical conditions that often limit one's ability to find or recognize our ... Read More
Rating: 
- Follow the format!
The one star does not refer to the text, which I have only partially read. The one star is for the retarded publishers at Picador.
When publishing a work of any genre, there are universal guidelines that publishers and editors MUST follow. These give the reading public a sense of cohesion and makes them able to pick-up and read any text by any publisher. If all publishers had vastly different systems of layout, style and protocol, then reading would become increasingly difficult and ... Read More
Rating: - Wonderful, wierd, thought-provoking.
I read and re-read this book a number of years ago.The way Sacks uses the abnormal to enlighten and probe the normal challenges the very definition of those terms.
Rating: - I thought I've heard it all
I thought I've heard it all after reading Phantoms in the Brain by Ramanchandran and Musicophilia by Sacks.This book was delightful to read and study.Oliver Sacks has become one of my favorite authors and neurology and the body/mind connection has become one of my favorite topics.His readable style without becoming too simplistic is definately his forte (much like Ramanchandran).This is a relatively short book but the cases it contains will give you something to ponder on for a long time. ... Read More
Rating: 
- The Reader Who mistook Dr. Sacks as a Patient.
This book is written in an unusual prose; one that is off-putting in the very beginning, but as the author establishes his pace, the writing improves drastically; as does the story line.
Actually, the author is a medical doctor, but he spends microseconds of time defining what he does. The reader is flung into stories of patients and at times, the good doctor uses such demeaning terminology to describe the developmentally disabled. It is cruel, and I mean to tell you that Dr. Sacks should never ... Read More
- Clinical Mysteries of NeurologyI loved this book.It consists of clinical tales by a neurologist.He discusses his patients, always with a concern for their humanity, uniqueness, and quality of life.He waves the philosophical, literate, and aesthetic with the physiological, trying to mete out the underlying wholeness and spirituality of human beings.His concern is not mind/body splits, but the wholeness we find despite all odds against it and the clinical conditions that often limit one's ability to find or recognize our ... Read More
- Follow the format!The one star does not refer to the text, which I have only partially read. The one star is for the retarded publishers at Picador.
When publishing a work of any genre, there are universal guidelines that publishers and editors MUST follow. These give the reading public a sense of cohesion and makes them able to pick-up and read any text by any publisher. If all publishers had vastly different systems of layout, style and protocol, then reading would become increasingly difficult and ... Read More
- Wonderful, wierd, thought-provoking.I read and re-read this book a number of years ago.The way Sacks uses the abnormal to enlighten and probe the normal challenges the very definition of those terms.
- I thought I've heard it allI thought I've heard it all after reading Phantoms in the Brain by Ramanchandran and Musicophilia by Sacks.This book was delightful to read and study.Oliver Sacks has become one of my favorite authors and neurology and the body/mind connection has become one of my favorite topics.His readable style without becoming too simplistic is definately his forte (much like Ramanchandran).This is a relatively short book but the cases it contains will give you something to ponder on for a long time. ... Read More
- The Reader Who mistook Dr. Sacks as a Patient.This book is written in an unusual prose; one that is off-putting in the very beginning, but as the author establishes his pace, the writing improves drastically; as does the story line.
Actually, the author is a medical doctor, but he spends microseconds of time defining what he does. The reader is flung into stories of patients and at times, the good doctor uses such demeaning terminology to describe the developmentally disabled. It is cruel, and I mean to tell you that Dr. Sacks should never ... Read More
