The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat: And Other Clinical Tales by Oliver Sacks Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat: And Other Clinical Tales
Book Review: A Fascinating Read
Summary: 5 Stars
A neurologist, Oliver Sacks, discussed and brought to light the neurological disorders in case by case in 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, and 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 published in the early 1970s and the understanding of the human brain mechanism has changed and 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," and "The Autist Artist."
This book is a fascinating read and deeply recommended.
Book Review: A little disappointing
Summary: 3 Stars
An interesting book though I have to admit I didn't enjoy the writing style. I find Sacks to be overly academic (I'm in the medical field myself) and his use of technical jargon can be somewhat off putting. Unlike the popular work Phantoms of the Brains Sacks seems uninterested in explaining the ideas in scientific terms in any great detail, he instead takes a more anthropological approach and 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, and 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.
Book Review: Interesting read
Summary: 4 Stars
Fairly well written, and as someone who has no prior background in this field, it was easy to understand and 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.