The Mind’s Eye
by Oliver Sacks, 2010

It’s hard to get past the overwhelming sensation that this book is just sad. It describes the neural and visual states of people who have lost certain visual abilities (through a stroke, mental illness, eye injury, etc.). While scientifically interesting, these cases are just heart-breaking. One case study covers people who lose the ability to recognize faces. Another person wakes up and can no longer read text. Others can not see in three dimensions; the whole world is flat. Others cannot visualize images in their minds. Others are just blind. The author was a neurologist who studied these kind of cases for much of his life. His more famous books are “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat” and “An Anthropologist on Mars”. While I do like neurology, I had trouble finishing this book due to its difficult subject matter and somewhat slow pace. Maria read it independently of me and thought it was well-written and thought-provoking.

I listened to this book on CD. It would be interesting to get a blind person’s take on this audiobook.