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The stories in An Anthropologist on Mars are medical case reports not unlike the classic tales of Berton Roueché in The Medical Detectives. Sacks's stories are of "differently brained" people, and they have the intrinsic human interest that spurred his book Awakenings to be re-created as a Robin Williams movie.
The title story in Anthropologist is that of autistic Temple Grandin, whose own book Thinking in Pictures gives her version of how she feels--as unlike other humans as a cow or a Martian. The other minds Sacks describes are equally remarkable: a surgeon with Tourette's syndrome, a painter who loses color vision, a blind man given the ambiguous gift of sight, artists with memories that overwhelm "real life," the autistic artist Stephen Wiltshire, and a man with memory damage for whom it is always 1968.
Oliver Sacks is the Carl Sagan or Stephen Jay Gould of his field; his books are true classics of medical writing, of the breadth of human mentality, and of the inner lives of the disabled. --Mary Ellen Curtin --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Most helpful customer reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
This is the mind,
By
This review is from: An Anthropologist On Mars : Seven Paradoxical Tales (Vintage) (Paperback)
Many of us feel removed from the world of medicine. Doctors seem to speak a language beyond our comprehension. Oliver Sacks takes us into his world where we feel immediately at home. He writes of real people and gives us a fascinating, if disturbing, insight into the paradoxes of the human mind. For me the most moving story is 'The Last Hippy'. Greg lost his immediate memory following a massive cerebral tumour. However many times you see him it is always a meeting of strangers. They go to a Grateful Dead concert. Greg is once again a fan. He shouts cheers and sings. Next day the whole experience has gone. We also read of the Tourette's syndrome sufferer whose tics disappear whenever he begins work - as a surgeon. There is the artist who sees only black and white, the autistic/artistic genius. This is a gem of a book which deserves to be read over and over. You will learn something new every time.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fascinating trip into the mysteries of the humain mind,
By
This review is from: An Anthropologist on Mars (Hardcover)
Instructive and touching. Dr Sacks writes well, he gives us scientific facts about strange neurologic cases, but always with real concern and empathy for these people.
5.0 out of 5 stars
The humane psychiatrist,
By "zhanci" (Nashville, USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: An Anthropologist On Mars : Seven Paradoxical Tales (Vintage) (Paperback)
I am filled with awe for a psychiatrist like Sacks, who takes personal interest in every special person he comes across in his professional life. He has the rare insight to recognise each individual as a unique, never-to-be-repeated creation of the Creator, and to accord the respect and awe due to each patient he comes across; even to observe, sometimes with a sense of humour, the relativity of our definitions of 'normaility'. The time Sacks takes to just be with each special person, and appreciate the uniqueness of each, is commendable, and goes way beyond a mere call of duty. When an autistic person, featured in this book, commended that she feels like "an anthropologist on Mars" because she has to study human behaviour and interactions to be socially adaptable, Sacks picked up on her standpoint, and recognised, with unusual humility, that as a psychiatrist of special persons, he too is like an anthropologist on Mars, not always understanding their world, but not being too quick to pronounce them stereotypically abnormal and himself normal...a sensitive, insightful work that reflects a sensitive, insightful author.
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