Why did I love this book?
Oliver Sacks is a legend, a physician-writer like no other. I could recommend any of his books, but An Anthropologist on Mars is a fun place to start. It’s a collection of seven narratives about patients with a diversity of neurological conditions. Most notable, though, are Sacks’ methods, akin to an anthropologist engaging in field research. He explains, “The exploration of deeply altered selves and worlds is not one that can be fully made in a consulting room or office…With this in mind, I have taken off my white coat, deserted, by and large, the hospitals where I have spent the last twenty-five years, to explore my subjects’ lives as they live in the real world…”.
4 authors picked An Anthropologist on Mars as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
As with his previous bestseller, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, in An Anthropologist on Mars Oliver Sacks uses case studies to illustrate the myriad ways in which neurological conditions can affect our sense of self, our experience of the world, and how we relate to those around us.
Writing with his trademark blend of scientific rigour and human compassion, he describes patients such as the colour-blind painter or the surgeon with compulsive tics that disappear in the operating theatre; patients for whom disorientation and alienation - but also adaptation - are inescapable facts of life.
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