Customer Reviews
Interesting read - By: K. Koh, 27 Mar 2008 
Fairly well written, & as someone who has no prior backgroundin this field, it was easy to understand & 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.
A little disappointing - By: Ibrahim Ali, 19 Mar 2008 
An interesting book though I have to admit I didn't enjoy the writing style. I find Sacks to be overly academic (I'min the medical field myself) & his use of technical jargon can be somewhat off putting. Unlike the popular work Phantoms of the Brains Sacks seems uninterestedin explaining the ideasin scientific termsin any great detail, he instead takes a more anthropological approach & 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, & 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.
A Fascinating Read - By: Zadius Sky, 15 Feb 2008 
A neurologist, Oliver Sacks, discussed & brought to light the neurological disordersin case by casein 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, & 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 publishedin the early 1970s & the understanding of the human brain mechanism has changed & 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," & "The Autist Artist."
This book is a fascinating read & deeply recommended.
A lovely book - By: Ned Clarence-Smith, 03 Feb 2008 I first came across Oliver Sacksin a doctor's waiting room. There, lying on the table, was a copy of his first book, "Migraine". Since I suffer from bad headaches, I picked it up & started reading. Thoroughly intrigued by the elegantly written case studies it contained, I asked the doctor if I could borrow it, took it home, & finished it that evening. I then began to notice that Mr. Sacks periodically wrote articles for the New Yorker on strange neurological cases, & every time one came out I read it with delectation. So when I saw Mr. Sack's book "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" at my local bookstore I bought it immediately.
I was not let down. The book is a fascinating compendium of neurological case studies, classified into four parts: Losses, Excesses, Transports, The World of the Simple. Mr. Sacks takes us on a journey through a series of neurological disturbances with extreme effects. Initially, one reads them with appalled fascination, with a feeling of being at the Circus staring at the Bearded Lady or the Elephant Man; I was forcefully reminded of Sylvia Plath's linesin "Lady Lazarus":
The Peanut-crunching crowd
Shovesin to see
Them unwrap me handin foot --
The big strip tease.
But Oliver Sacks writes soberly & with great compassion about his cases, & drags us away from mere peanut-crunching voyeurism to finally contemplate what the cases tell us about what it means to be us.
Neurology cases at its best - By: G. N. Piette, 31 May 2006 Romantic science is the way forward, it has all the classical science terms & names of the deficits as to still keep it factual, but more importantly has the element of human contact & understanding the patients as people. If you read this book you shall see thatin some cases of neurology such as autism, that we wouldnt find out their concrete talents & only think of them as hopeless beings, this is evidentin allmost all the chapters, to fully appreciate & understand their illnes one must reach them on a humane level. Do you know what proprioception is? to explain it as our sixth sense, which it is, is eye opening itself, & thats only one chapter.
