The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (Picador) - Hardcover

Oliver Sacks

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0715620673 ISBN 13: 9780715620670

Publisher: GERALD DUCKWORTH & CO LTD, 1986

Synopsis

"The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" is populated by a cast as strange as that of the most fantastic fiction. The subject of this strange and wonderful book is what happens when things go wrong with parts of the brain most of us don't know exist ...Dr Sacks shows the awesome powers of our mind and just how delicately balanced they have to be' - "Sunday Times". 'Who is this book for? Who is it not for? It 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". 'This is, in the best sense, a serious book. It is, indeed, a wonderful book, by which I mean not only that it is excellent (which it is) but also that it is full of wonder, wonders and wondering. He brings to these often unhappy people understanding, sympathy and respect. Sacks is always learning from his patients, marvelling at them, widening his own understanding and ours' - "Punch".

About this title

About the Author

Oliver Sacks was educated in London, Oxford, California and New York. He is a professor of clinical neurology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He is the author of many books, including Musicophilia and Awakenings.

From Publishers Weekly

A neurologist who claims to be equally interested in disease and people, Sacks (Awakenings, etc.) explores neurological disorders with a novelist's skill and an appreciation of his patients as human beings. These cases, some of which have appeared in literary or medical publications, illustrate the tragedy of losing neurological facultiesmemory, powers of visualization, word-recognitionor the also-devastating fate of those suffering an excess of neurological functions causing such hyper states as chorea, tics, Tourette's syndrome and Parkinsonism. Still other patients experience organically based hallucinations, transports, visions, etc., usually deemed to be psychic in nature. The science of neurology, Sacks charges, stresses the abstract and computerized at the expense of judgment and emotional depthsin his view, the most important human qualities. Therapy for brain-damaged patients (by medication, accommodation, music or art) should, he asserts, be designed to help restore the essentially personal quality of the individual. First serial to New York Review of Books, The Sciences and Science; Reader's Subscription alternate. January
Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: GERALD DUCKWORTH & CO LTD
• Publication date: 1986
• ISBN 10: 0715620673
• ISBN 13: 9780715620670
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 234