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The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (Picador) | 
| Author: Oliver Sacks
Publisher: Picador
Category: Book
List Price: £7.99
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New (9) Used (18) from £3.34
Avg. Customer Rating:  25 reviews
Sales Rank: 969
Media: Paperback
Edition: New edition
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 5.2 x 0.8
ISBN: 0330294911
Dewey Decimal Number: 150
EAN: 9780330294911
ASIN: 0330294911
Publication Date: November 7, 1986
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Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
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| Customer Reviews: Read 20 more reviews...
 Simply amazing... January 10, 2009
Well maybe not all that simple, but truly amazing. This is one of the first (and to my mind best) of the popular science books. The author, Sacks, uses terminology which cause the text to be somewhat hard-going at times. However, the glimpse into the lives of people whose brain misfunctioning causes them to live and see the world in extraordinary ways is stranger and more wonderful than any fiction.
The over-arching question Sachs poses to the reader is "What is it to be human", and the case histories of his patients cause us to reassess our thinking about the human-mind. These patient's possess minds just like our own but with either an excess or deficit of some function which leads to extremes which I did not imagine possible before reading the book.
Perhaps with the popularisation of some of the cases, in films like Rain-man and Memento, the book will have less of an impact on modern audiences. I would hope that it does not.
 A disappointment January 5, 2009
I suppose that it falls to me to provide a negative review of this book. I've not given the book a low rating because while it didn't meet my expectations, it's certainly well written and interesting.
Having read Dennett's "Consciousness Explained" in which ( I think) this book is referenced, I chose this book hoping that Sacks would provide some insight into how or why a man might mistake his wife for a hat. Unfortunately the book turned out to be a rather less ambitious series of case histories of his patients. True, they're interesting and tragic histories and certainly Sacks does empathise with his patients, treating them as more than just medical subjects. However the book was, for me, profoundly unsatisfying as it didn't go into the mechanics of their problems or shed any insight (at least for a neurological layman like myself) on the inner workings of even undamaged brains. Return to Dennett for that, perhaps?
I was also a little perturbed by the occasional foray into less than scientific discussions about whether the more deeply damaged patients could be thought of as having "souls". I think that I would be deeply concerned if, had I been brain damaged, my neurologist spent any time worrying about the state of my soul!
I didn't find the book hard to get into although I agree that there's plenty of jargon that could/should have been explained (a glossary at least?) and I certainly didn't find it over-academic - quite the reverse in places. However, I neither did I manage to get more than half-way through before dropping it so maybe aI missed something in the later chapters.
 Interesting read March 27, 2008
Fairly well written, and as someone who has no prior background in this field, it was easy to understand and 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 March 19, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
An interesting book though I have to admit I didn't enjoy the writing style. I find Sacks to be overly academic (I'm in the medical field myself) and his use of technical jargon can be somewhat off putting. Unlike the popular work Phantoms of the Brains Sacks seems uninterested in explaining the ideas in scientific terms in any great detail, he instead takes a more anthropological approach and 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, and 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 February 15, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
A neurologist, Oliver Sacks, discussed and brought to light the neurological disorders in case by case in 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, and 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 published in the early 1970s and the understanding of the human brain mechanism has changed and 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," and "The Autist Artist."
This book is a fascinating read and deeply recommended.
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