Seeing Voices

A Journey Into the World of the Deaf

By: Oliver Sacks

Narrated by: Jonathan Davis, Oliver Sacks - introduction

Like The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, this is a fascinating voyage into a strange and wonderful land, a provocative meditation on communication, biology, adaptation, and culture. In Seeing Voices, Oliver Sacks turns his attention to the subject of deafness, and the result is a deeply felt portrait of a minority struggling for recognition and respect - a minority with its own rich, sometimes astonishing, culture and unique visual language, an extraordinary mode of communication that tells us much about the basis of language in hearing people as well. Seeing Voices is, as Studs Terkel has written, "an exquisite, as well as revelatory, work".

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

©1989, 1990 Oliver Sacks (P)2011 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"This book will shake your preconceptions about the deaf, about language and about thought…. Sacks [is] one of the finest and most thoughtful writers of our time." ( Los Angeles Times Book Review)

"Fascinating and richly rewarding…. Sacks is a profoundly wise observer." ( The Plain Dealer)

Historically informative

I really enjoy Oliver Sacks work. This book did not disappoint provided great insight into the history of deafness and of the evolution of Gaudette university.

Very thorough

Oliver Sacks covers the issues very thoroughly and interestingly. It has changed many of my assumptions.

Great explanation of intricacies of deafness.

having a deaf child who is now a grown . I found this very helpful.

Wonderful and awakening

Any additional comments?

I've listened to all of Oliver's medical books, but overlooked Seeing voices again and again. "What's interesting about deafness?" I'd ask myself, and put it off. Just after Oliver died, I got this book as well. I found myself as he described himself; finding deafness uninteresting, thinking of sign language as not a language, but pantomime of sorts and thinking of the deaf as "handicapped".

I listened in wonder as if a veil was pulled back exposing a culture of it's own due completely to having it's own unique language and way of perceiving. This is such a fascinating book I listened in two sittings and wanted it to be twice as long, although I don't know what else he could cover.

If, like myself, you've been eyeing this one, go ahead and get it.

Fascinating Brain Science

From the author who has written many other books on the brain, this book is about how pre-lingual deafness differs from those who learned a spoken language before they lost their ability to hear. The connections of language to thought, the mis-assumptions of hearing people and the impact of using sign language has on the brain are wrapped together in a free-flowing, almost stream of consciousness. There were some bits that were technical enough so that I would like to re-read them. Most, however, was very understandable by the amateur.