One of my goals in 2020 is to read more. See other books I've read or listened to here.
A friend recommended The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks many, many years ago. I distinctly remember buying this book when I lived in NYC. Pretty sure I bought this in the barnes and nobles on West 4th St right by the subway station. I used to stop there on my way to work when I worked in the west village and very fond memories.
Oliver Sacks, a renowned neurologist, is most well known for his l-dopa trials, some of which were documented in the movie Awakenings, writes about more of his interesting case files.
I read a few of these case studies way back when I bought the book (15+ years ago???), and they really stuck with me, so I was excited to pick this one up again. The studies are conversational and really put across the fact that Sacks was more interested on how these people could live with their disorders and damages, rather than what the damages were. Although there is a lot of technical talk in each chapter, there is also a lot of description that make it easy for a leman to read and understand. Each chapter also has a little bit of end notes, mostly written for the book, far after the actual case, which were a wrap up of the case, notes, or observations on the case. I liked the way this books was structured very much and I think it made an otherwise heavy or hard to read book very assessable. This book was written quite a while ago and a lot of the terms and language used was very outdated. It was a little shocking to see the “R” word so frequently and easily used in a medical/clinical book. There is are quite a bit of problematic things in this book, but one must look at it as coming from a certain time. It would not make sense to go back and change the language in this book, but I found myself needing to pause every once in a while. I would recommend this book to anyone interested on medical, neurological, or clinical observations, those who like to read short non fiction case studies, and readers who are interested in the different was the brain can work.
Have you read this book or any book by Oliver Sacks?