As with his previous bestseller, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Oliver
Sacks uses case studies to illustrate the myriad ways in which neurological cond
itions can affect our sense of self, our experience of the world, and how we rel
ate to those around us. Writing with his trademark blend of scientific rigour an
d human compassion, he describes patients such as the colour-blind painter or th
e surgeon with compulsive tics that disappear in the operating theatre; patients
for whom disorientation and alienation -- but also adaptation -- are inescapabl
e facts of life.
