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Mind's Eye Paperback – January 1, 2011

by Sacks Oliver (Author)
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 625 ratings
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'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 is about the possibility of recovery and the inexorable decline of the ageing individual. From this collision of incompatible truths, tragedy is made ...making this Sacks's most powerful book to date' Sunday Telegraph 'Packed with wisdom, humour, extraordinary human stories and reflections on how we all perceive the world ...He ends with a brilliant discussion of blindness and the ways in which blind people develop visual concepts. Heartily recommended' Reader's Digest
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Previous page
  1. Print length
    272 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Picador USA
  4. Publication date
    January 1, 2011
  5. Dimensions
    8.66 x 5.91 x 0.98 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    9780330508902
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0330508902
  8. See all details
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Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0330508903
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Picador USA (January 1, 2011)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 272 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780330508902
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0330508902
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 6.6 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8.66 x 5.91 x 0.98 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 625 ratings

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Oliver Sacks

Oliver Sacks

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Oliver Sacks was born in 1933 in London and was educated at Queen's College, Oxford. He completed his medical training at San Francisco's Mount Zion Hospital and at UCLA before moving to New York, where he soon encountered the patients whom he would write about in his book Awakenings.

Dr Sacks spent almost fifty years working as a neurologist and wrote many books, including The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Musicophilia, and Hallucinations, about the strange neurological predicaments and conditions of his patients. The New York Times referred to him as 'the poet laureate of medicine', and over the years he received many awards, including honours from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Royal College of Physicians. In 2008, he was appointed Commander of the British Empire. His memoir, On the Move, was published shortly before his death in August 2015.

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
625 global ratings
Dr. Oliver Sacks has a “au courant” sense of observation!
4 Stars
Dr. Oliver Sacks has a “au courant” sense of observation!
In a review by “The Guardian” it alludes “we are all close to being someone else.” The 3 lb. mass---aka the brain---is explored fully with Dr. Sacks and thus the opaque is made pellucid. Even now posthumous author Sacks humble words and melodic British accent resonates in my ear and "The Mind’s Eye” embodied ichor.My pre-med studies in anatomy and physiology at Oxford had not prepared me in the least for real medicine. Seeing patients, listening to them...questions about the quality of life and whether life was even worth living in some circumstances.— Oliver Sacks, MDReading and listening (via audible) to “The Mind’s Eye” on cases regarding agnosia to prosopagnosia (Dr. P) and patients that seem to imitate “hunchback of Notre dame” characters. Dr. Oliver Sacks has a “au courant” sense of observation—as we discover from his written patient records. One engaging case was Lilian Kallir (concert pianist).Some would describe Dr. Sacks as man with a Santa Claus beard, yet after witnessing Sacks “writing his notes on his arm” such characteristics embody the human spirit of his genius. “The Mind’s Eye” does not scream and it instructs gently---like the brush of a butterfly wing on bare skin. Brilliant! Buy and read or listen (audible).
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Top reviews from the United States

Science Struggler
5.0 out of 5 stars Weird Optical Experiences
Reviewed in the United States on September 26, 2012
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This book,"The Mind's Eye", by Oliver Sacks, is fascinating, absorbing, and vastly entertaining. Like most of his other books, it is the true story of his personal experiences; this time, with his sight, along with his neurological analysis of what was happening in his eye and in his brain. The optical "delusions" are fascinating, and perhaps difficult to truly appreciate if you haven't experienced them. I have experienced the loss of three-dimensional vision several times, upon awaking - it only lasted a few seconds, thank goodness - and my daughter has had vision problems in one eye due to detachment and folding of the retina - she sees a normal view in the bottom half of that eye's sight, but on top she sees only a quarter of the scene, and it is turned sideways. And the most amazing thing is not what the (physical) eye sees, but what Sack's brain does with that information. Probably everyone has experienced - whether or not they realized it - the completing of a scene over the natural blind spot of the optic nerve connection at the back of the eye ball, or the continuation of a motion that you didn't actually see. Although he mentions some of his other books - "The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat", and "Awakenings" (made into a wonderful movie starring Robin Williams), you do not have to have read those to appreciate and be highly entertained by "The Mind's Eye." I strongly recommend this book.
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Hassan
4.0 out of 5 stars Bedside Neurology: An in-depth review of Oliver Sacks’ ‘The Mind’s Eye’
Reviewed in the United States on December 14, 2013
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In the most tragic of illnesses and most dire of circumstances, Oliver Sacks finds and describes stories of human resiliency, adaptation and fortitude. In his 2010 collection of essays The Mind’s Eye, the aging, yet prolific, neurologist Oliver Sacks chronicles the lives of five patients, each with different neurological illnesses affecting their abilities to properly see and/or perceive the world in which they live. Although each case is unique, Sacks is able to unite the cases by highlighting a common denominator between all five patients: the ability of each patient, without their full cognitive capacities, to find new and creative ways to navigate their ever-confusing environments. Through his beautifully articulate storytelling, Sacks shows us the power of the human mind to overcome it’s own deficiencies, thereby working to crush the stigma of the neurologically impaired as ‘handicapped’, or even impaired at all.

From the onset of The Minds Eye, Oliver Sacks invites you inside the world of five of his patients, allowing you to experience their daily lives, routines and personalities. In that respect, Oliver Sacks’ eleventh book is very much like a work of fiction, with only one difference; Sacks’ writing is, at its core, a medical and neurological set of case studies. The collection of essays, if it weren’t for Sacks’ unique writing style, would be much like a textbook; describing patients as having a certain type of disease and discussing such a disease’s side effects. However, Sacks does not let the neurological deficits of the various patients take away any of their personality or character. In other words, Oliver Sacks’ five patients are people first and neurology patients second.

For instance, one of the five patients, named Patricia H., is an extremely vibrant and effervescent middle-aged women who suffered a stroke that rendered her unable to speak or understand words – a disease known as aphasia. Before describing or even alluding to any form of illness, Sacks uses the first handful of pages to describe Patricia’s life, character and family history. He writes about how ‘she loves to cook’, ‘ran an art gallery on Long Island’ and was married to ‘a man of many parts- a radio broadcaster and a fine pianist who sometimes played at nightclubs’. Sacks puts an image in the readers head of a perfectly normal woman - a strategy that alludes to Sacks’ overall goal of the text; to show how neurological diseases may take away one’s ability to talk, see or listen; but, for the most part, they do not take away a person’s personality or charm. Only after he chronicles Patricia’s personal history and unique attributes does Sacks describe how she lost her ability to speak after suffering a blood clot that left her in a coma for weeks. Sacks goes on to write about how Patricia, even without an ability to speak, ‘remained active and engaged in the world’. Rather than concentrating only on the disease itself (which he still does, even providing very interesting stories about the etymology and history of aphasia), Sacks focuses on how his patients overcome the disease. He highlights how Patricia, and the other four patients (including Sacks himself), adjusts to the fact that they are disabled, not in body but in mind. Sacks turns everyday patients into modern-day heroes by showing their toughness and courage to stay the course, endure strenuous therapy, and assimilate quite seamlessly back into society. Sacks does this (and more) for four other patients; a woman without stereoscopic vision set on working to be able to see again; another woman suffering from Posterior Cortical Atrophy yet maintaining her love of music and cooking by relying heavily on personal memory; a mystery novel writer who losses the ability to read; and finally himself, an eye-cancer survivor whose life was forever changed because of his near-complete loss of vision.

The Minds Eye is, however, still a work of science, deeply relying on neurological diseases, physiology and anatomy. But, to Sacks’ credit, the book has the paradoxical ability to both be extremely scientific yet not at the same time. For example, one of Sack’s patients (Lillian K.) suffers from Posterior Cortical Atrophy, a progressive, albeit gradual, degradation of the brain’s outer cortex in the posterior (back side) of the brain. In order to provide the reader with needed context, Sacks spends pages describing what exactly a highly complex disease such as Posterior Cortical Atrophy is (you have a sense of how complex the various diseases are from their names alone). However, wanting his essays to have a mainstream audience, Sacks describes such extremely technical medical conditions in layman’s terms; simplifying incredibly complex conditions by using the power of his conversational writing. Rather than being overwhelmed with scientific terms, concepts and labels, the reader is given the proper medical and scientific context in a reasonable and sensible manner.

More than anything, The Mind’s Eye is a bedside book. The collection of essays feels as if it were meant to be read comfortably next to a crackling fire with a hot cup of something delicious in hand. It is much more of a fun read than a set of neurological case studies, and that’s the power that Sacks has; he invites you in the world of the neurologically impaired, not from a medical perspective, but from the perspective of a omnipresent third-eye looking in; quietly overseeing the lives of Lillian, Pat, and others. Being a cancer-patient himself, Oliver Sacks wants you to see what he sees in his patients and also what he hopes to find in himself; a super-human ability to overcome, to endure, and ultimately, to prevail.

However, The Minds Eye, like most anything in life, does have a few shortcomings. Being a collection of essays, the respective chapters of the book seem to lack coherence. Each of the cases is starkly different than the rest, with each chapter dedicated to each patient (including Sacks’ own review of his vision loss). In that sense, each chapter seems like a book unto itself. Also, throughout the various essays, Sacks continually referenced his older literary texts (The Man that Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Awakenings, etc.) without much explanation or context; references that I assume must have been very confusing for readers unfamiliar with Sacks’ quite expansive body of work.

Given the book’s few flaws, Oliver Sacks’ The Mind’s Eye is still a fantastic read for any type of booklover. Science-oriented readers will thoroughly enjoy Sacks’ explorations of various neurological diseases, while the non-science bookworm can find appreciation in Sacks’ beautiful prose and the book’s unique narrative structure. Because of Oliver Sacks’ fantastic ability as a storyteller and writer, I highly recommend The Mind’s Eye to anyone who wants to navigate the world of the mind and find splendor in the human quality of perseverance.
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Allyson M. W. Dyar
5.0 out of 5 stars The Eyes Have It
Reviewed in the United States on May 20, 2021
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Although they aren't reviewed here, I have read, I believe, at least half of Dr Sack's works. As you would surmise, I am a big fan of his.

I watched the two hour special that ran on PBS detailing his life and his pending death due to melanoma that had metastasized. This book touches on this as he is the last patient discussed in his book as he was diagnosed with ocular melanoma.

<i>The Mind's Eye</i> is about the sense of sight, specifically, what happens when their eyesight fails them. Not that they become blind, but they are no longer to use their vision the way they were used to. If the book demonstrates over and over again, it our ability to adapt to the situation and thrive. This isn't to say that this is easy but with perseverance, we can overcome.

My only qualm with the book is knowing that as I was reading Dr Sacks' experience with his ocular melanoma and having one eye not quite in sync with the other, knowing that he would succumb to his cancer. His chapter was a melancholy read.

As with his other books, I cannot recommend this book any higher. For anyone interested in patient experiences and the ability to overcome, this is a book for you. You will not be disappointed.
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Alejandro López
5.0 out of 5 stars Bien
Reviewed in Mexico on February 2, 2022
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El libro es muy bueno y llegó en excelentes condiciones.
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Pau Fernández
5.0 out of 5 stars Buen libro
Reviewed in Spain on March 19, 2019
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Los de Oliver Sacks en general me gustan y este está en la línea. Lo que más me ha gustado es que al ser más mayor, en este libro el paciente era muchas veces él mismo, y los detalles sobre lo que le ocurría eran en primera persona.
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Suji
5.0 out of 5 stars Awesome
Reviewed in India on December 14, 2018
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Nice
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Gonzalez Nicolas
5.0 out of 5 stars The mind's eye
Reviewed in France on April 13, 2018
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Very very instructive, interesting ! A lot of lessons learnt and true life experiences. I have particularly appreciated Sue's story
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ringerfiona1900
5.0 out of 5 stars I always enjoyed Oliver Sacks works
Reviewed in Canada on July 20, 2014
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I always enjoyed Oliver Sacks works, I have many of his books and are a great read, This is a wonderful book, I am not finished reading yet, but it is great..it was well worth the purchase, As always great service, as described by seller @ arrived on time in great condition, thumbs up!
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