The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat: And Other Clinical Tales Paperback

Book was in great condition when we received it. It was purchased for my daughter and she was very please. The book was received in a timely manner.

If u want to better understand how messed up the human brain can be (and how lovely in it's many manifestations u must read this author.

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat was recommended to me awhile back by a colleague of mine. I finally got around to reading it. It is a collection of fascinating neurological case studies. This book is difficult to review, partly because it is non-fiction, but mostly because it is an assortment of medical stories, all independent of each other – so I will just list the thoughts I had while reading in bullet point format:- Sacks often writes with a lot of medical jargon, and references various neurological syndromes, other authors and writings without much further explanation or insight. It’s assumed that the audience has a baseline medical knowledge.- He doesn’t elaborate much on the pathophysiology of many of these conditions – so I would imagine that, again, a person without any medical background would be left with a lot of questions. Hell, I work in medicine, and even I would have appreciated a bit more information.- The book gave off an air of arrogance. Sacks spends a lot of time rambling on about… I’m not exactly sure what, actually (mostly in the introductions to each section)? Sometimes I just couldn’t follow his thought process. I’m like “Where are you going with this? What are you getting at here, man?” Besides that, he often quotes and references other authors and writings – which I would assume most people have never heard of or read themselves – almost as if he was boasting about how well-read he is.- The book is a bit outdated, which I guess is to be expected from a book originally published in the 1970’s (?). Uses a lot of politically incorrect terminology, especially in the section about mentally handicapped patients. With that being said, those terms were ‘in’ at the time.- OVERALL!!! – Super fascinating neurological cases. As a medical professional, I enjoyed reading them, personally. I would say this alone far outweighs the books flaws – especially if you are into medical non-fiction. For this alone, I give the book 4 stars.- I would recommend this book to anyone with an interest in medicine, especially those intrigued by neurology.

Dr. Sacks was brilliant and compassionate and both qualities shine through in this fascinating book. Read it.

This book is very interesting in the first few chapters and then dwindles.

This is perhaps the most famous book by Oliver Sacks and contains many interesting and fascinating stories about people who have lost certain cognitive abilities, as well as those with remarkable and inexplicable abilities, such as the twins with IQ's around 60 who have an amazing ability to calculate consecutive prime numbers of up to six digits. But this is far more than a collection of fascinating stories. It's a paean to the intricacy of the human brain, much of which was are just beginning to understand. Reading this book will almost certainly give someone a greater appreciation for the brain and for human consciousness in general.

This is a really dated book for neuropsychological exploration. Not bad, just dated in its clinical descriptions and underlying assumptions of causality.

Total BS. Every one of these stories and conversations is totally made up. No medical provider would talk to and about their patients this way. Every story cast his patients as simple and he as the hero. His clinical vocabulary is limited at best.