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4.06 AVERAGE
4.06 AVERAGE
challenging
emotional
funny
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
informative
medium-paced
slow-paced
informative
slow-paced
I loved most of this book and was so interested in the stories of neuro-atypical experiences and minds. The thing that brought it down for me was Sacks' constant use of the term "normal people" and the word "retarded". I know the latter was a commonly accepted medical term for a long time, but ughh. And the use of the word "normal" when referring to people who don't experience Tourette's / autism / amnesia is not only very ableist, but also seems like a bizarrely inadequate word choice from someone who studies the mind and the infinitely diverse ways in which minds work, perceive, and experience.
adventurous
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
Although I am not a scientist, and cannot pretend to fully understand everything that Sacks explains down to his footnotes, his presentations and perspectives on real human beings with incredibly difficult physical, mental and/or neurological disabilities are absolutely brilliant. A color-blind painter, a surgeon with Tourette's syndrome, a blind man who regained partial sight late in life . . . seven amazing stories, all based on Sacks' personal interactions with the individuals, and concluding with autistic genius Temple Grandin. Sacks' ability to tell his stories in a way that non-scientists can appreciate continually amazes me.
informative
reflective
medium-paced
informative
slow-paced
This collection was okay until it got to the autistic chapters and then it got kind of weird. The analysis of autistic people was unnerving. Even for the time it was written—Sacks really believing that autistic people don’t have any feelings just because they don’t display them the same way as neurotypical people invalidated the entirety of his work.
I am a big fan of Oliver Sacks' work and found his contributions to Radiolab in particular a real highlight. This is not a book that has held up well at all. Frequently objectifying, filled with language that rings profoundly false in 2019 and sorely needing the research that's been done between its publication and now. It's second-to-last chapter about an autistic boy is unacceptable now and was unacceptable then.