The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: and Other Clinical Tales

By: Oliver Sacks

Narrated by: Jonathan Davis, Oliver Sacks - introduction

Length: 9 hrs and 33 mins

Publisher's summary

In his most extraordinary book, "one of the great clinical writers of the 20th century" (The New York Times) recounts the case histories of patients lost in the bizarre, apparently inescapable world of neurological disorders. Oliver Sacks' The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat tells the stories of individuals afflicted with fantastic perceptual and intellectual aberrations: patients who have lost their memories and with them the greater part of their pasts; who are no longer able to recognize people and common objects; who are stricken with violent tics and grimaces or who shout involuntary obscenities; whose limbs have become alien; who have been dismissed as retarded yet are gifted with uncanny artistic or mathematical talents.

If inconceivably strange, these brilliant tales remain, in Dr. Sacks' splendid and sympathetic telling, deeply human. They are studies of life struggling against incredible adversity, and they enable us to enter the world of the neurologically impaired, to imagine with our hearts what it must be to live and feel as they do. A great healer, Sacks never loses sight of medicine's ultimate responsibility: "the suffering, afflicted, fighting human subject".

PLEASE NOTE: Some changes have been made to the original manuscript with the permission of Oliver Sacks.

©1970, 1981, 1983, 1984, 1985 Oliver Sacks (P)2011 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Dr. Sacks's best book.... One sees a wise, compassionate and very literate mind at work in these 20 stories, nearly all remarkable, and many the kind that restore one's faith in humanity." ( Chicago Sun-Times)

"Dr. Sacks's most absorbing book.... His tales are so compelling that many of them serve as eerie metaphors not only for the condition of modern medicine but of modern man." ( New York magazine)

Oliver Sacks is the Carl Sagan of Neurology

Any additional comments?

He brings the subject of Neurology to the masses and gives wonderful insights about how our minds work from describing the stories of people with exceptional brain abnormalities. His stories are moving, and give great insights into human nature.

Great narrator, sub-par stories

What did you like best about The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: and Other Clinical Tales? What did you like least?

The narrator does a great job. And though some of the stories are interesting, most are left without any resolution. The first story is by far the best, so from there everything is a bit downhill.

Would you recommend The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: and Other Clinical Tales to your friends? Why or why not?

If you are interested in brain research, I would recommend it. Though I have read similar books that I enjoyed more.

What about Jonathan Davis and Oliver Sacks (Introduction) ’s performance did you like?

When he took on the voice of a character, if felt as if that is exactly how they sounded.

Great book and great narration

What made the experience of listening to The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: and Other Clinical Tales the most enjoyable?

The individual case studies were fascinating and well-paced.

What did you like best about this story?

Oliver Sacks pulls on other research as well as canonical literary texts to support his suggestion for a more existential neurological approach.

OLIVER SACKS

Neurological dysfunction is Oliver Sacks field of study and training. The irony is that a tumor attacks his brain to end his life. Of course, he was 82. But somehow, a tumor attacking Sacks’ brain seems an unfair marker for his passing. Sacks opens the eyes of many to the wholeness of being human when a neurological dysfunction changes their lives. Sacks is the famous neurologist who wrote one book that becomes a movie and several that become best sellers.

Sacks is famous to some based on the movie “Awakenings” that recounts an experiment with L-dopa to treat catatonia; a symptom believed to be triggered by Parkinson’s. Patients may spend years in a state of catatonia; i.e. a form of withdrawal from the world exhibited by a range of behaviors from mutism to verbal repetition. Sacks wrote the book, “Awakenings” to tell of his experience in the summer of 1969 in a Bronx, New York hospital. The success and failure of the L-dopa experiment became a life-long commitment by Sacks to appreciate the fullness of life for those afflicted by neurological disorders. With the use of L-dopa, Sacks reawakens the minds and rational skills of patients that had been catatonic for years. In their reawakening, Sacks found that catatonic patients have lives frozen in time. Their mind/body interactions became suspended in the eyes of society. They were always human but they lost their humanness in neurological disorder.

Sacks is saying never give up on patients with neurological disorders. They are whole human beings. The neurologist’s job, as with all who practice medicine, is “first, do no harm”. “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat” illustrates how seriously Sacks took his calling.

Truly great!

The narration was wonderful. The content is truly fascinating. Oliver Sacks does an effortless job at harmonizing the biological human with the spirit of each individual patient's story he shares.

Fascinating

Entertaining yet informative could not put book down. With mild autism and Tourette's in our family, opened more creative ideas to encouraging our life and function as a family.

unfortunate language

The labels used are deficient and limiting, and while Sacks hints at an appreciation of the people he works with, he is a prisoner of his training as his clients are prisoners of their illnesses and society's discomfort.

Dense and dated but undeniably compelling

I found this work to be beautifully written and highly intellectual/clinical but also with emotional intelligence. It is overall very interesting and I enjoyed listening to it. It's definitely not a book to use as background listening and requires real focus as it is fast paced and dense. I did find myself periodically distracted at some of the dated attitudes and terminology that the author applied to some of his patients that these days are considered offensive and reductive, but I'm chalking that up to the time in which this was written.

I wish I could give it 6 stars!

This is the first and so-far only audio book that I have read from cover to cover and then started from the beginning again. I am writing this review at the end of my second read.

The doctor really cares about his patients and works to find the best solutions for their lives.

This book is a mix of medical history, philosophy, and the human condition told by a master storyteller who cares.

Enjoy again and again. It is a deep pond and will always have something for you to ponder anew.

So fascinating !!!

For myself being in the field of psychology and working with individuals with the diagnoses discussed in tis book it was amazing! So intriguing and fascinating. A little dull voiced at times but still such amazing content.