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The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis, Oliver Sacks
- Length: 9 hrs and 33 mins
- Categories: Health & Wellness, Physical Illness & Disease
Non-member price: $19.75
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Awakenings
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Hailed as a medical classic, and the subject of a major feature film as well as radio and stage plays and various TV documentaries, Awakenings by Oliver Sacks is the extraordinary account of a group of 20 patients. Rendered catatonic by the sleeping-sickness epidemic that swept the world just after the First World War, all 20 had spent 40 years in hospital - motionless and speechless; aware of the world around them but exhibiting no interest in it - until Dr Sacks administered the then-new drug L-DOPA, which caused them, temporarily, to awake from their decades-long slumber.
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Hallucinations
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Have you ever seen something that wasn't really there? Heard someone call your name in an empty house? Sensed someone following you and turned around to find nothing? Dr Oliver Sacks weaves together stories of his patients and of his own mind-altering experiences to illuminate what hallucinations tell us about the organisation and structure of our brains, how they have influenced every culture's folklore and art and why the potential for hallucination is present in us all, a vital part of the human condition.
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kind of long in bits, but a good chore companion
- By Amazon Customer on 16-03-2021
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The Mind's Eye
- By: Oliver Sacks
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- Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
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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 recognise 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.
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Musicophilia
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
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Oliver Sacks’ compassionate tales of people struggling to adapt to different neurological conditions have fundamentally changed the way we think of our own minds. In Musicophilia, he examines the powers of music through the individual experiences of patients, musicians and everyday people - those struck by affliction, by unusual talent and even, in one case, by lightning - to show not only that music occupies more areas of our brain than language does but also that it can torment, calm, organise and heal.
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An Anthropologist on Mars
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis, Oliver Sacks
- Length: 11 hrs and 42 mins
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As with his previous best seller, 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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A wonderful painting of atypical genius
- By Jack on 13-02-2019
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Migraine
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 12 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Migraine is an age-old – the first recorded instances date back over two thousand years – and often debilitating condition, affecting a 'substantial minority' of the population across the globe. In Migraine, Oliver Sacks offers at once a medical account of its occurrence and management; an exploration of its physical, physiological, and psychological underpinnings and consequences; and a meditation on the nature and experience of health and illness.
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Awakenings
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis, Oliver Sacks
- Length: 13 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Hailed as a medical classic, and the subject of a major feature film as well as radio and stage plays and various TV documentaries, Awakenings by Oliver Sacks is the extraordinary account of a group of 20 patients. Rendered catatonic by the sleeping-sickness epidemic that swept the world just after the First World War, all 20 had spent 40 years in hospital - motionless and speechless; aware of the world around them but exhibiting no interest in it - until Dr Sacks administered the then-new drug L-DOPA, which caused them, temporarily, to awake from their decades-long slumber.
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Hallucinations
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Dan Woren
- Length: 9 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Have you ever seen something that wasn't really there? Heard someone call your name in an empty house? Sensed someone following you and turned around to find nothing? Dr Oliver Sacks weaves together stories of his patients and of his own mind-altering experiences to illuminate what hallucinations tell us about the organisation and structure of our brains, how they have influenced every culture's folklore and art and why the potential for hallucination is present in us all, a vital part of the human condition.
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kind of long in bits, but a good chore companion
- By Amazon Customer on 16-03-2021
-
The Mind's Eye
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Oliver Sacks
- Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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 recognise 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.
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Musicophilia
- By: Oliver Sacks
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- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Oliver Sacks’ compassionate tales of people struggling to adapt to different neurological conditions have fundamentally changed the way we think of our own minds. In Musicophilia, he examines the powers of music through the individual experiences of patients, musicians and everyday people - those struck by affliction, by unusual talent and even, in one case, by lightning - to show not only that music occupies more areas of our brain than language does but also that it can torment, calm, organise and heal.
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An Anthropologist on Mars
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis, Oliver Sacks
- Length: 11 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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As with his previous best seller, 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.
-
-
A wonderful painting of atypical genius
- By Jack on 13-02-2019
-
Migraine
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 12 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Migraine is an age-old – the first recorded instances date back over two thousand years – and often debilitating condition, affecting a 'substantial minority' of the population across the globe. In Migraine, Oliver Sacks offers at once a medical account of its occurrence and management; an exploration of its physical, physiological, and psychological underpinnings and consequences; and a meditation on the nature and experience of health and illness.
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The River of Consciousness
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- Length: 5 hrs and 51 mins
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In The River of Consciousness, Dr. Sacks takes on evolution, botany, chemistry, medicine, neuroscience and the arts and calls upon his great scientific and creative heroes - above all, Darwin, Freud and William James. For Sacks these thinkers were constant companions from an early age; the questions they explored - the meaning of evolution, the roots of creativity and the nature of consciousness - lie at the heart of science and of this audiobook.
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More than Once
- By paul on 25-09-2019
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Seeing Voices
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Imaginative and insightful, Seeing Voices offers a way into a world that is, for many people, alien and unfamiliar - for to be profoundly deaf is not just to live in a world of silence but also to live in a world where the visual is paramount. In this remarkable book, Oliver Sacks explores the consequences of this, including the different ways in which the deaf and the hearing impaired learn to categorise their respective worlds - and how they convey and communicate those experiences to others.
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Reaching Down the Rabbit Hole
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What is it like to try to heal the body when the mind is under attack? In this gripping and illuminating audiobook, Dr Allan Ropper reveals the extraordinary stories behind some of the life-altering afflictions that he and his staff are confronted with at the Neurology Unit of Harvard's Brigham and Women's Hospital.Neurologists diagnose and treat serious illnesses of the brain by combining the hard science of medical knowledge with the art of intuitive reasoning.
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Breath from Salt
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Cystic fibrosis was once a mysterious disease that killed infants and children. Now it could be the key to healing millions with genetic diseases of every type - from Alzheimer's and Parkinson's to diabetes and sickle cell anemia. Told from the perspectives of the patients, families, physicians, scientists, and philanthropists fighting on the front lines, Breath from Salt is a remarkable story of unlikely scientific and medical firsts, of setbacks and successes, and of people who refused to give up hope....
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This person, then that person
- By Valerie on 24-12-2020
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Thinking, Fast and Slow
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In Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman takes us on a ground-breaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think and make choices. One system is fast, intuitive and emotional; the other is slower, more deliberative and more logical. Kahneman exposes the extraordinary capabilities-and also the faults and biases-of fast thinking and reveals the pervasive influence of intuitive impressions on our thoughts and behaviour.
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Hard to listen but good content so far.
- By Diego on 04-05-2016
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On the Move: A Life
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Dan Woren
- Length: 11 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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An impassioned, tender and joyous memoir by the author of Musicophilia and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. When Oliver Sacks was twelve years old, a perceptive schoolmaster wrote in his report: 'Sacks will go far, if he does not go too far'. It is now abundantly clear that Sacks has never stopped going. From its opening pages on his youthful obsession with motorcycles and speed, On the Move is infused with his restless energy.
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Oliver Sacks -what an inspiration!
- By Giulia on 19-09-2017
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Shrinks
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A world-renowned psychiatrist reveals the fascinating story of psychiatry's origins, demise, and redemption. Psychiatry has come a long way since the days of chaining "lunatics" in cold cells and parading them as freakish marvels before a gaping public. But as Jeffrey Lieberman reveals in his extraordinary and eye-opening book, the path to legitimacy for "the black sheep of medicine" has been anything but smooth.
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informative
- By Anonymous User on 25-06-2020
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This Is Going to Hurt
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- By: Adam Kay
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Welcome to the life of a junior doctor: 97-hour weeks, life-and-death decisions, a constant tsunami of bodily fluids and the hospital parking meter earns more than you. Scribbled in secret after endless days, sleepless nights and missed weekends, Adam Kay's This Is Going to Hurt provides a no-holds-barred account of his time on the NHS front line. Hilarious, horrifying and heartbreaking, this diary is everything you wanted to know - and more than a few things you didn't - about life on and off the hospital ward.
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Not for the prudish but well written/read
- By Carron on 11-08-2018
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The Brain that Changes Itself
- By: Norman Doidge
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An astonishing new scientific discovery called neuroplasticity is overthrowing the centuries-old notion that the adult human brain is fixed and unchanging. It is, instead, able to change its own structure and function, even into old age. In this revolutionary look at the brain, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Norman Doidge, M.D., provides an introduction to both the brilliant scientists championing neuroplasticity and the people whose lives they’ve transformed.
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Fascinating - if a little morally questionable
- By Rowan on 27-08-2017
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When Breath Becomes Air
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The New York Times number-one best seller. At the age of 36, on the verge of completing a decade's training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, the next he was a patient struggling to live.
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I am a doctor! I have cancer.
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Livewired
- The Inside Story of the Ever-Changing Brain
- By: David Eagleman
- Narrated by: David Eagleman
- Length: 9 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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How can a blind person learn to see with her tongue or a deaf person learn to hear with his skin? What does a baby born without a nose tell us about our sensory machinery? Might we someday control a robot with our thoughts? And what does any of this have to do with why we dream? The answers to these questions are not right in front of our eyes; they're right behind our eyes. This book is not simply about what the brain is but what it does. Covering decades of research to the present day, Livewired also presents new findings from Eagleman's own research.
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My input
- By Luke on 22-09-2020
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A Leg to Stand On
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis, Oliver Sacks
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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When Oliver Sacks, a physician by profession, injured his leg while climbing a mountain, he found himself in an unusual position - that of patient. The injury itself was severe but straightforward to fix; the psychological effects, however, were far less easy to predict, explain, or resolve: Sacks experienced paralysis and an inability to perceive his leg as his own, instead seeing it as some kind of alien and inanimate object over which he had no control. A Leg to Stand On is both an account of Sacks’ ordeal and subsequent recovery and an exploration of the ways in which mind and body are inextricably linked.
Publisher's Summary
With an introduction by Will Self. A classic work of psychology, this international best seller provides a groundbreaking insight into the human mind.
If a man has lost a leg or an eye, he knows he has lost a leg or an eye; but if he has lost a self - himself - he cannot know it, because he is no longer there to know it.
In this extraordinary book, Dr. Oliver Sacks recounts the stories of patients struggling to adapt to often bizarre worlds of neurological disorder. Here are people who can no longer recognise everyday objects or those they love; who are stricken with violent tics or shout involuntary obscenities; who have been dismissed as autistic or retarded yet are gifted with uncanny artistic or mathematical talents. If inconceivably strange, these brilliant tales illuminate what it means to be human.
A provocative exploration of the mysteries of the human mind, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat is a million-copy best seller by the 20th century's greatest neurologist.
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What listeners say about The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Chris Regan
- 21-02-2019
Fascinating insight into the human mind
This was a really interesting collection of case histories involving patients with a collection of bizarre neurological disorders. I initially wanted to read it (or listen to the audiobook in this case) because the title case sounded so unlikely I needed to understand how it could happen.
It almost sounds like this is a Guinness World Record book. A man who mistook his wife for a hat, a man who woke up every morning thinking he was eighteen, a woman whose body feels completely alien to her. Something you'd flick through absentmindedly every once in awhile.
But Oliver Sacks wrote it with such heart, that it's more about the human ability to persevere and overcome these disabilities. The joy that can still be found in life for many of these people is quite inspiring. Of course it's not the case for all of the patients in this book, but I'm impressed by the determination by so many not to give up.
At times the book was too clinical for my tastes, a little dry and between chapters I had to listen to other audiobooks just to take a break from how intense it gets at times.
The audiobook was narrated by Jonathan Davis and I can't praise him enough. He talks in a fairly neutral American accent, I'd hazard a guess to say it's a transatlantic accent. It's neutral for the most part which helps in the clinical nature of this book but he gives each patient their own unique voice to help differentiate them from the author's voice.
It can be hard getting through such a medically focused book, but I Davis does it perfectly.
5 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 24-01-2021
outdated but interesting
some outdated ways of thinking and terminology, overall interesting listen. people are odd. background listening
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- John
- 28-04-2020
Fascinating topic - poorly delivered
Fascinating cases - long-winded story telling. Author is trying too hard to sound intellectual at the cost of being succinct and engaging.
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- Neil Swann
- 09-09-2018
Everything you want in a good book.
Simply brilliantly written regardless of the lens for critique. I can't wait to start Musicophilia.
1 person found this helpful
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- Adeline
- 27-01-2021
Amazing insights
Fascinating insights into the way in which people experience the world. Interesting insights into the correlations of music and the brain. Enjoyed it and plan to listen to it again.
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- D. John
- 16-09-2019
Good book, slightly let down by the narration
the narration is a but too monotone to remain engaged over long periods, but If broken up it is a great listen!
4 people found this helpful
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- Kate E-J
- 27-01-2019
Fantastic listen!
This book was an amazing listen - the stories were interesting and different from anything I've read before. Sacks' accounts of his different patients are written so you can really imagine the patients there with you. It's really eye-opening about the world of neurological disorders and the methods that doctors can use to try and diagnose and treat the conditions. Definitely worth listening, and brilliant value on audible!
4 people found this helpful
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- Scott at the Junction
- 23-02-2019
beauiful
A beautiful book about humanity, occasionally a bit thick with medical language.
Sacks is an inspiration for us all.
3 people found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 22-12-2020
In Parts
The storytelling of Sacks' is a joy to listen to, but not something to binge, listen to a chapter, perhaps two and take time to reflect on what has been shared. It's a close narration of Sacks' encounters with patients which I am glad he invited us all to hear, though there is a patch of perhaps a little too much jargon near the beginning.
If like myself you've heard this book mentioned for many years, give it a try.
1 person found this helpful
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- eve
- 16-11-2020
The best narrator, for a great book
Many psychological books are often unbearable to listen, but it couldn't be in greater contrast to this!
It is a must read for anyone interested in wonders of human brain, behaviour, and neurology.
I'm glad I've chosen audio for this, as it's a pleasure to listen - I wish this narrator read all the books! It's friendly, engaging, reflective and feels so easy and natural to listen, as if you were talking to him in person. Even my teenage daughter started to listen to this with me - those who have witnessed uncanny criticism of a teen, will understand what a great compliment it is to this great read.
1 person found this helpful
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- Matt Cook
- 04-10-2020
Very interesting and inciteful!
Very good listen, really enjoyed the different story elements and how they fed into the wider narrative.
1 person found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 18-08-2020
Beautiful book
One of the most profound books I have ever read. So important in many ways, it gave a new perspective on the mystery of humanity and the lives we all live, not just those with neurological conditions. Very humbling. Thank you, Oliver Sachs!
1 person found this helpful
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- H W
- 05-03-2020
Delightful
I read this as I started medical school and it was delightful to read again 10 years later!
1 person found this helpful
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- Zada
- 09-06-2019
ramblings of an old doctor with few points
only two stories in the first 6 hours are worth listening to and one of those is on the title! stopped listening after that
2 people found this helpful
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- Pottages
- 25-03-2021
I mistook this for a humorous book
An inspirational insight into our minds, our ability to heal and compensate biologically and neurotically and how we might treat those, we may not initially understand, better.
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