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by: Oliver Sacks  List Price: $14.95 Amazon.com's Price: $10.17 You Save: $4.78 (32%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Binding: PaperbackDewey Decimal Number: 616.8 EAN: 9780679756972 Edition: 1 ISBN: 0679756973 Label: Vintage Manufacturer: Vintage Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 327 Publication Date: February 13, 1996 Publisher: Vintage Release Date: February 13, 1996 Studio: Vintage Related Items:
Browse for similar items by category: Click to Display Editorial Review: Amazon.com: The works of neurologist Oliver Sacks have a special place in the swarm of mind-brain studies. He has done as much as anyone to make nonspecialists aware of how much diversity gets lumped under the heading of "the human mind." The stories in An Anthropologist on Mars are medical case reports not unlike the classic tales of Berton Roueché in The Medical Detectives. Sacks's stories are of "differently brained" people, and they have the intrinsic human interest that spurred his book Awakenings to be re-created as a Robin Williams movie. The title story in Anthropologist is that of autistic Temple Grandin, whose own book Thinking in Pictures gives her version of how she feels--as unlike other humans as a cow or a Martian. The other minds Sacks describes are equally remarkable: a surgeon with Tourette's syndrome, a painter who loses color vision, a blind man given the ambiguous gift of sight, artists with memories that overwhelm "real life," the autistic artist Stephen Wiltshire, and a man with memory damage for whom it is always 1968. Oliver Sacks is the Carl Sagan or Stephen Jay Gould of his field; his books are true classics of medical writing, of the breadth of human mentality, and of the inner lives of the disabled. --Mary Ellen Curtin Product Description: To these seven narratives of neurological disorder Dr. Sacks brings the same humanity, poetic observation, and infectious sense of wonder that are apparent in his bestsellers Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. These 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. Average Rating:
 Rating:  - Incredible experiencesThese are seven stories of people with some neurological aberration. These are all stories of real people, everyday difficulties, of denial & acceptance, of the indomitable human spirit. A painter's colorful world goes gray with impeccable tonality. A monk revels in a Grateful Dead concert & has no memory of it the day after as he awaits his deceased father. An autistic child paints in breathtaking detail from memories that formed within seconds. A blind man cannot adjust to the gift ... Read More Rating: - amazingly inspirationalAMAZING book. Hands down, one of my favorites! The book is so incredibly inspirational! Everyone has a 'disability' one way or another, in this book, Sacks explores some of the extreme cases, and takes their life story to show how he/she has overcome with 'not being normal'. Sacks does a great job writing the book for people not in the medical field -- he takes the time to explain the situation without coming close to making the reader fall asleep. I never get sick of this book. ... Read More Rating: - AmazingThis book introduces the reader to a collection of weird neurological conditions accompanied by stories and supplemental background information relating to each example. Its focus is on the stories of patients encountered by the author during the course of his career. Sacks has a great eye for the details that make his characters interesting; his descriptions of his patients bizarre behavior are spot on. His tone is warm, friendly and has a touch of humor to it which I find most endearing. ... Read More Rating: - An Anthropologist on MarsIf you are interested at all in brain research, you will find this book fascinating. The author celebrates the human strength to overcome disabilities and the true creative drive that may be buried in each of us. I highly recommend this book for learning and also for inspiration. Rating:  - Brilliant, But Blind To Childhood And Prenatal Emotional TraumaAlthough I don't agree with many of Oliver Sacks's conclusions, I found this fascinating book a worthwhile read. It is packed with superior case material - and largely presented in a very readable format (and unlike in some of his other books, he reins in his footnotes!). Some of the chapters, like "Prodigies" or "An Anthropologist On Mars" or "To See Or Not To See," are downright brilliant and provide wonderful and unusual insights into the workings of the human brain - and the universals of human experience. ... Read More 
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