Customer Reviews
A disappointment - By: Crookedmouth, 05 Jan 2009 
I suppose that it falls to me to provide a negative review of this book. I've not given the book a low rating because while it didn't meet my expectations, it's certainly well written & interesting.
Having read Dennett's "Consciousness Explained"in which ( I think) this book is referenced, I chose this book hoping that Sacks would provide some insight into how or why a man might mistake his wife for a hat. Unfortunately the book turned out to be a rather less ambitious series of case histories of his patients. True, they're interesting & tragic histories & certainly Sacks does empathise with his patients, treating them as more than just medical subjects. However the book was, for me, profoundly unsatisfying as it didn't go into the mechanics of their problems or shed any insight (at least for a neurological layman like myself) on the inner workings of even undamaged brains. Return to Dennett for that, perhaps?
I was also a little perturbed by the occasional foray into less than scientific discussions about whether the more deeply damaged patients could be thought of as having "souls". I think that I would be deeply concerned if, had I been brain damaged, my neurologist spent any time worrying about the state of my soul!
I didn't find the book hard to get into although I agree that there's plenty of jargon that could/should have been explained (a glossary at least?) & I certainly didn't find it over-academic - quite the reversein places. However, I neither did I manage to get more than half-way through before dropping it so maybe aI missed somethingin the later chapters.
Interesting read - By: K. Koh, 27 Mar 2008 
Fairly well written, & as someone who has no prior backgroundin this field, it was easy to understand & descriptive enough to be interesting. it was not too technical that i got bogged down with terms, unlike some other neurology books i've read.
A little disappointing - By: Ibrahim Ali, 19 Mar 2008 An interesting book though I have to admit I didn't enjoy the writing style. I find Sacks to be overly academic (I'min the medical field myself) & his use of technical jargon can be somewhat off putting. Unlike the popular work Phantoms of the Brains Sacks seems uninterestedin explaining the ideasin scientific termsin any great detail, he instead takes a more anthropological approach & merely details the cases. Whilst the cases themselves are off considerable interest I found his analysis to be lacking. His writing style didn't sit well with me, though this may be more my fault than his, & ultimately I didn't find myself much wiser after having read the book.
The book is still worth reading, however for a non-medical reader I'd recommend the far superior Phantoms of the Brain before approaching this work as it'll help you understand a lot of what Sacks talks about. There were, within the book, one or two cases that viewers of House M.D. would recognise.
A Fascinating Read - By: Zadius Sky, 15 Feb 2008 
A neurologist, Oliver Sacks, discussed & brought to light the neurological disordersin case by casein this book with an interesting choice of the title: "Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat." This is the first book by Sacks that I have read, & I found his writing style to be quite enjoyable.
Not only that, this book contains an extraordinary collection of cases of individuals with neurological disorders that brings one to understand a bit on how human brain works. While this book was first publishedin the early 1970s & the understanding of the human brain mechanism has changed & increased since then, I found this book to be very insightful.
Out of all the cases I have read from this book, I found the following cases (or stories) to be of great interest to me: "Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat," "The Man Who Fell Out of Bed," "Witty Ticcy Ray," "Cupid's disease," & "The Autist Artist."
This book is a fascinating read & deeply recommended.
A lovely book - By: Ned Clarence-Smith, 03 Feb 2008 I first came across Oliver Sacksin a doctor's waiting room. There, lying on the table, was a copy of his first book, "Migraine". Since I suffer from bad headaches, I picked it up & started reading. Thoroughly intrigued by the elegantly written case studies it contained, I asked the doctor if I could borrow it, took it home, & finished it that evening. I then began to notice that Mr. Sacks periodically wrote articles for the New Yorker on strange neurological cases, & every time one came out I read it with delectation. So when I saw Mr. Sack's book "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" at my local bookstore I bought it immediately.
I was not let down. The book is a fascinating compendium of neurological case studies, classified into four parts: Losses, Excesses, Transports, The World of the Simple. Mr. Sacks takes us on a journey through a series of neurological disturbances with extreme effects. Initially, one reads them with appalled fascination, with a feeling of being at the Circus staring at the Bearded Lady or the Elephant Man; I was forcefully reminded of Sylvia Plath's linesin "Lady Lazarus":
The Peanut-crunching crowd
Shovesin to see
Them unwrap me handin foot --
The big strip tease.
But Oliver Sacks writes soberly & with great compassion about his cases, & drags us away from mere peanut-crunching voyeurism to finally contemplate what the cases tell us about what it means to be us.
