Books by Oliver Sacks

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Book SynopsisPart travelogue, part autobiography, part medical mystery, this moving book by the poet laureate of medicine (The New York Times) and bestselling author of Awakenings takes us to a tiny Pacific atoll and the island of Guam to explore the genesis of disease, the wonders of botany, and the complexities of being human.Sacks's total immersion in island life makes this luminous, beautifully written report a wonderous voyage of discovery. As a travel writer, Sacks ranks with Paul Theroux and Bruce Chatwin. As an investigator of the mind's mysteries, he is in a class by himself. —Publishers WeeklyFor Oliver Sacks, islands conjure up equally the romance of Melville and Stevenson, the adventure of Magellan and Cook, and the scientific wonder of Darwin and Wallace.Drawn to the tiny Pacific atoll of Pingelap by intriguing reports of an isolated community of islanders born totally color-blind, Sacks finds himself setting up a

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Book SynopsisThe renowned neurologist and bestselling author of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat takes us on a journey into the world of deaf culture, and the underpinnings of the remarkable visual language of the congenitally deaf. This book will shake your preconceptions about the deaf, about language and about thought.... One of the finest and most thoughtful writers of our time. —Los Angeles Times Book ReviewLike 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.

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Book SynopsisTHE INSPIRATION FOR THE NBC SERIES BRILLIANT MINDS • A Contemporary Classics hardcover edition of Dr. Sacks's most extraordinary book, in which the poet laureate of medicine” (The New York Times) recounts fascinating case histories of patients with neurological disorders.An influential landmark in the tradition of writing about the body and the brain, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat tells the stories of individuals afflicted with perceptual and intellectual disorders: 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; whose limbs seem alien to them; who lack some skills yet are gifted with uncanny artistic or mathematical talents.In Dr. Sacks’s splendid and sympathetic telling, his patients are deeply human and his tales are studies of struggles against incredible adversity. A great healer, Sacks never loses sight of medicine’s ultimate responsibility: “the suffering, afflicted, fighting human subject.”Everyman's Library pursues the highest production standards, printing on acid-free paper, with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, European-style half-round spines, and a full-color illustrated jacket. Contemporary Classics include an introduction, a select bibliography, and a chronology of the author's life and times.

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