The good: many of the tales were very interesting and I did a lot of thinking about how I would feel if I had to deal with some of these problems. The bad: the writing was NOT for laypeople -- it was very clinical and there was way too much jargon. Further, it needed a better editing job because Sacks would make prolific use of some term, like "proprioception" (which means the awareness of where one's body is in space) and not define it until many pages or chapters later. Also, Sacks had published a very successful book Awakenings prior to this one and he very frequently referred to patients and situations from it, essentially presupposing that you had read Awakenings already. It was definitely interesting, but I had to bull through to the end. If you want a more accessible introduction to Sacks and some of his fascinating patients, seek out some of his radio work. He gives interviews about his books for NPR and often plays the neurological expert on a great show called Radiolab.

Interesting. Not quite as readable as I'd expected.

An incredible glimpse into the diverse hidden world of the diseased human brain. It is fascinating to read all the personal case studies; but the true benefit of reading this book is that you gain a greater understanding of yourself and the potential of the human spirit to overcome life's obstacles.

The human brain is a pretty fantastic object to study and the stories in this book are interesting but this is nothing more than a book of clinical case studies. If you can understand words like labyrinthectomised, hemiplegic, and athetotic without having to look them up in the dictionary every few minutes you might enjoy it more than I.