Oliver W. Sacks

Traces the stories of six individuals whose lives have been profoundly changed by unusual changes to essential senses and abilities, including a renowned pianist who lost the ability to read scores and a novelist whose ability to read was destroyed by a stroke.

The Mind's Eye

Oliver Sacks

In The Mind's Eye, Oliver Sacks tells the stories of people who are able to navigate the world and communicate with others despite losing what many of us consider indispensable senses and abilities: the power of speech, the capacity to recognize faces, the sense of three-dimensional space, the ability to read, the sense of sight. For all of these people, the challenge is to adapt to a radically new way of being in the world. There is Lilian, a concert pianist who becomes unable to read music and eventually even to recognize everyday objects; and Sue, a neurobiologist who has never seen in three dimensions, until she suddenly acquires stereoscopic vision in her fifties. There is Pat, who, after years of isolation, reinvents herself as an outgoing and highly social member of her community, although she has aphasia and cannot utter a sentence; and Howard, a prolific novelist who must find a way to continue his life as a writer even after a stroke destroys his ability to read. And there is Dr Sacks himself, who tells the story of his own eye cancer and the bizarre and disconcerting effects of losing vision to one side. Sacks explores here some very strange paradoxes - people who can see perfectly but not recognize their own children, blind people who become hyper-visual, or who navigate by 'tongue vision'. Along the way, he considers more fundamental questions: How do we see? How do we think? How important is internal imagery - or vision, for that matter? Why is it that, although writing is only five thousand years old, humans have a universal, seemingly innate, potential for reading? The Mind's Eye is a testament to the complexity of vision and the brain and to the power of creativity and adaptation. And it provides a whole new perspective on the power of language and communication, as we try to imagine what it is to see with another person's eyes, or another person's mind.

Nadine 

Listened to the audio book of this and it was excellent - particularly good is the introduction and the chapter which are read by Oliver Sacks himself. It's also interesting hearing him talk of his own experiences with the loss of sight.

The bestselling author of The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat describes how we experience the visual world.In The Mind's Eye, Oliver Sacks tells the stories of people who are able to navigate the world and communicate with others despite losing what many of us consider indispensable senses and abilities: the capacity to recognise faces, the sense of three-dimensional space, the ability to read, the sense of sight. For all of these people, the challenge is to adapt to a radically new way of being in the world, and The Mind's Eye is testament to the myriad ways that we, as humans, are capable of rising to this challenge. As such, it's also testament to the human power of creativity and adaptation.

A’ishah Kamaludin

The Mind's Eye was first published a decade ago. Sacks was a practicing neurologist and professor who wrote several popular books about people afflicted with neurological disorders and brain damage.

This book tells the stories of different cases (including Sacks himself) on how people lose the ability to experience the visual world like an average person.

I relate to this book a lot because my ten-year-old son has dyslexia, and it's pretty similar to one of the conditions being discussed in this book - alexia.

To give you some context, alexia refers to losing your acquired reading ability, while dyslexia refers to a developmental reading disability. It means, if your reading problem starts since you were a baby (like my son), it's dyslexia. If someday, when you're older, you suddenly wake up not knowing how to read, that's alexia. I figure this can be a nightmare to all the book lovers.

This book also makes me think that I perhaps, have *mild prosopagnosia or face blindness, which Sacks had, the disability to recognise people's faces. Or that just happens when you have anxiety reading about symptoms of a specific disease or condition, hahah. The other anxiety aftereffect on me is that now I wear glasses more than contact lenses, and try to eat, sleep and move better to care for my eyes and brain.

To be honest with you, I can't remember all the scientific terms mentioned, but I am inspired by the remarkable stories - how these people adapted their condition with courage, resilience, and ingenuity. Sacks is a great storyteller. This is non-fiction, but it keeps you turning pages even with all the terms you never know and will hardly remember.

All in all, an exciting and informative book. I have his other (and claimed to be the best) book, "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat," on my TBR. Stay tuned!

Ben Nathan

I'm a big Oliver Sacks fan and this did not disappoint. Just a very well written book about perception that beautifully integrated anecdotes with science. Lots of learning and very enjoyable.

Carla Schwarze

Teddy Calavera

David Pascuzzo

Rohan Uddin

Caitlin Bohannon

Nelson Zagalo

Patrick Hof

Ryan Hagerty

Matthew Zabel

‘Oliver Sacks is a perfect antidote to the anaesthetic of familiarity. His writing turns brains and minds transparent’ Observer How does the brain perceive and interpret information from the eye? And what happens when the process is disrupted? In The Mind’s Eye, Oliver Sacks tells the stories of people who are able to navigate the world and communicate with others despite losing what many of us consider indispensable senses and abilities: the capacity to recognize faces, the sense of three-dimensional space, the ability to read, the sense of sight. For all of these people, the challenge is to adapt to a radically new way of being in the world – and The Mind’s Eye is testament to the myriad ways that we, as humans, are capable of rising to this challenge.

The Mind's Eye

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