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An Anthropologist On Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales |  | Author: Oliver Sacks
Publisher: Vintage
List Price: $14.95
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as of 11/22/2009 02:17 CST details
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Seller: dustontinas
Rating:  53 reviews
Sales Rank: 8484
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Pages: 327
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.2 x 0.8
ISBN: 0679756973
Dewey Decimal Number: 616.8
EAN: 9780679756972
ASIN: 0679756973
Publication Date: February 13, 1996
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com Review
The works of neurologist Oliver Sacks have a special place in the swarm of mind-brain studies. He has done as much as anyone to make nonspecialists aware of how much diversity gets lumped under the heading of "the human mind." The stories in An Anthropologist on Mars are medical case reports not unlike the classic tales of Berton Roueché in The Medical Detectives. Sacks's stories are of "differently brained" people, and they have the intrinsic human interest that spurred his book Awakenings to be re-created as a Robin Williams movie. The title story in Anthropologist is that of autistic Temple Grandin, whose own book Thinking in Pictures gives her version of how she feels--as unlike other humans as a cow or a Martian. The other minds Sacks describes are equally remarkable: a surgeon with Tourette's syndrome, a painter who loses color vision, a blind man given the ambiguous gift of sight, artists with memories that overwhelm "real life," the autistic artist Stephen Wiltshire, and a man with memory damage for whom it is always 1968. Oliver Sacks is the Carl Sagan or Stephen Jay Gould of his field; his books are true classics of medical writing, of the breadth of human mentality, and of the inner lives of the disabled. --Mary Ellen Curtin
Product Description
To these seven narratives of neurological disorder Dr. Sacks brings the same humanity, poetic observation, and infectious sense of wonder that are apparent in his bestsellers Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. These men, women, and one extraordinary child emerge as brilliantly adaptive personalities, whose conditions have not so much debilitated them as ushered them into another reality.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 53
 Great book of choice to gain more personable insight on neurological disorders September 27, 2009
Hsuan Chen (Atlanta, GA)
`An Anthropologist on Mars' by Oliver Sacks is a great book for those interested in gaining a more personable insight on patients with neurological disorders. The book was a great read for biology nerds like me, providing both entertainment values as well as satisfying my geeky needs to learn about more about abnormality of human beings. It not only describes the clinical importance of these neurological diseases, but it also expressed the thoughts of the subjects through a description of their interviews, life stories, and day-to-day life.
The book was composed of seven independent case studies condone by Sacks with or without the help of his fellow colleagues. The first case was the study of a color blind painter who lost his ability to perceive colors after a car accident. The artist's inner struggles as well as his efforts/attempts to restore his color-associated abilities were recorded almost in a style that is first-person, as if the artist is speaking to the readers directly. There was also detailed explanation of the history and study of the color-blind as well as the current debates on how colors are perceived in the brain in which Sacks passively showed his stance through the experiments he had performed on the artist.
The second case, titled `The Last Hippie' described a case of individual loosing short-term memory and the ability to accumulate memory due to a lesion in the frontal lobe of the brain as a result of a tumor. I feel that this case had the least personal insight to the mind of the patients out of all the cases within this book; however, this is most likely due to the patient's inability to retain memory, causing him to be insensitive to what had happened to him, even the fact that he is blind or has an disorder. Nevertheless, because of the lacking of this aspect in this section, the case of `The Last Hippie' I felt was the most incomplete in this book, and left me lingering and unable to make a conclusion out of this case.
The third case, titled `A surgeon's Life' described an extraordinary case of a surgical doctor with Tourette's syndrome, whom, despises his uncontrollable tics and urges, is able to perform surgery with steady hands and total concentration for as long as 3 hours. I was very intrigued by this story, because it had deepened my understanding of Tourette's. The way Sacks wrote this section of the book reminded me of an episode MTV's television show - Real Life - I have Tourettes. Much like the TV show, it gave the firsthand account from the point of view of the patient; however, because the subject in Sacks book possess so much more medical knowledge and abilities than any of the TV show's subjects, I was able to obtain more medical insight of the disease as well as a theory of Tourette's developed by someone who actually has the disorder.
The fourth case, `To See and Not See' described the struggles of a blind person who had suddenly been `blessed' by vision. While a normal sighted person may believe that giving a blind person `sight' should be a pleasant gift, but that is almost never the case in a blind man's perspective. It seems to me that not only does `sight' not help the blinds to facilitate life functions, it even serves as the source of many difficulties and stress for the blinds.
The Fifth case described a painter who obsessively painted his childhood home because of uncontrollable psychic seizures that force him to live in his memories. This section for me was particularly dull; while there was ample first-person account from the subject itself, there was a lack of reference to other cases with similar characteristics. Eventually, the words of the subject became repetitive and I yearned to move on to the next section.
The Sixth and seventh case examined cases of gifted individuals with autism; one with a photographic memory and can draw anything by memory who eventually was also discovered to be a musical savant, the other a talented engineer who seemingly has the social skills which often are lacked in autistic individuals. The talented engineer, who described herself as `an anthropologist on Mars', reminded me greatly of the character Bones, from the TV series `Bones'. Both are tremendously intelligent, yet only able to perform semi normal social interactions through logics, not emotions.
Within each case, Sacks gave his account of the situation of the patient, then, when possible, he gave the situation in the words of his patients. For me, that was very important because it gave me room to interpret whether if I agree with Sacks on his theory or not. Then, to aid his readers in interpreting the case for themselves, Sacks provided relevant literature and past researches that helped explain the disorder, presented theories, or drew similarities between the subject and other patients with similar disorders.
It is the personal aspect of the stories that really astonished me - I have read papers, books, and articles on the majority of the disorders in the book, but I have never had the chance to know patients with these disorders on a personal level; Sacks gave his reader a chance to know the disorders in a more intimate level, as if the reader is getting to know the patient while in the process of reading the book.
It was obvious that Sacks made a tremendous effort to get to know his subject as a person, not as the case of their disorder, in order to give his readers a more intimate perspective on these cases. For example, in a letter Sacks wrote to a friend, he said " ...I have seen something of his odd skills and defects - I have yet to see him as a mind and person. Perhaps a week of being with him will show me this." when describing the autistic prodigy of drawing and music. It turned out that not only did he spend a week with his subject, he seemingly had tried to build a relationship with his subject and gave the autistic prodigy more visits afterwards. Sacks' care for these subjects also seeped through unintentionally and was expressed covertly in the book. For example, after taking the `last hippie' to the concert of his favorite band, Sacks gave this account "...I feared that if I stopped playing the Dead, or talking about them, for a single moment, all memory of the concert would go from his mind." As a result, there was a genuine sense of disappointment from Sacks when, the next morning, the `last hippie' does not recall the concert, in which he had indeed described as `the time of his life'.
I would strongly recommend this book to people who are interested in seeing the disorders in a different perspective. However, I would not recommend people with no biological/neurological background to read this book. Although the cases themselves are interesting, but it takes some basic knowledge of neurology to appreciate the literature references that Sacks had imbedded in the book. Without this appreciation of literature, the readers cannot make any sort of conclusion for themselves, and the book becomes something like the MTV's Real Life - a mere account of the life of people with these diseases.
Anthropologist account to all and others August 9, 2009
Wesley A. Ornick (Morgantown, WV)
love music, all aspects of it and to hear and read a neurologist's findings and stories of connectiveness associated with music, people's emotions and reactions -- very informative and paints a picture many, if not all can understand. Music is very underappreciated. When you get down to basic scales and progressions and read about how they affect different individuals' lives, it really turns into something else I never considered. A very informative and conscious-opening set of descriptions and accounts...loved it after seeing a program on public t.v. here highlighting the author's life and work.
To understand one individual's perceptions of daily life, tasks and how he completes each and to understand their perceptions from their point of view is very interesting.
 Very interesting read March 28, 2009
Zoe (Sydney AUSTRALIA)
The book is very intriguing! Everyone is different one way or another, in this book, Sacks explores some of the more extreme cases, and talks about their life story to show how he/she has overcome with 'not being normal'. Sacks explain concepts in layman terms so that even people who are not in the medical field would not fall asleep whilst trying to grasp the situation.
Any "House" fans like myself will definately enjoy this book.
 Depends on what you are looking for February 26, 2009
Marcelo Ale
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
If you are looking for a book to open your mind to the wild effects of brain damage, you will be disappointed.
The main purpose seems to be to tell us about the daily life of people suffering from some specific conditions, how the are, how they feel, how they deal with it. Not that this might be lacking of interest but, again, depends on expectations.
More questionable is that seemingly the author takes psychoanalysis seriously. Makes the same impression of a book on medical science by an author lending credibility to homeopathy.
Interesting book, some parts are better than others February 16, 2009
Chris Travers (Chelan, WA)
The first chapter, The Case of the Colorblind Artist was extremely fascinating and wide-ranging in its approach to how we see color and what color means. However, it was somewhat downhill from there.
The second chapter was also quite interesting ("The Last Hippy") but as I went forward, the material seemed to get less cohesive, and the book explored the topics less and less.
In the end, I decided to give this work 4 stars because all of it was interesting even if some of it was quite a bit more interesting than others.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 53
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