The Mind's eye

Locations
Call Number: 616.855 Sa, Adult Book / Nonfiction / Social Science / Psychology / Sacks, Oliver
On Shelf At: Downtown Library, Malletts Creek Branch, Pittsfield Branch, Traverwood Branch

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	616.855 Sa	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Malletts Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Nonfiction / Social Science / Psychology / Sacks, Oliver	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Pittsfield Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Nonfiction / Social Science / Psychology / Sacks, Oliver	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Traverwood Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Nonfiction / Social Science / Psychology / Sacks, Oliver	4-week checkout	On Shelf

Sight reading -- Recalled to life -- A man of letters -- Face-blind -- Stereo Sue -- Persistence of vision: a journal -- The mind's eye.
In this work the author 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 is eventually unable 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 reinvents herself as a loving grandmother and active member of her community, despite the fact that 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 the author himself, a doctor who tells the story of his own eye cancer and the bizarre and disconcerting effects of losing vision to one side. He explores some very strange paradoxes, people who can see perfectly well but cannot recognize their own children, and blind people who become hyper visual or who navigate by "tongue vision." He also 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? This book 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.

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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Not what I'd hoped submitted by Susan4Pax -prev. sueij- on June 17, 2020, 8:39pm I always loved listening to interviews with Sacks on Science Friday, and this may be the first of his books that I have read. I’ve enjoyed his interviews more, and found this particular book to be less on target than I expected. I plan to pick up other books eventually, and hope to get what I loved about his conversations… great insights combined with great knowledge, packed with great stories, but in a combined whole that still feels cohesive. I didn’t find that as much as I’d hoped in this particular volume, as much as his personal journey was moving.