A review by beatsbybeard
An Anthropologist on Mars by Oliver Sacks

4.0

Seven stories of individuals with neurological variations from the norm that illustrate different and valid modes of human experience. There's a painter who loses the ability to see color; a Deadhead who Zens his way to amnesia; a surgeon with Tourette's; a blind man who regains sight; a painter who solely and obsessively paints his hometown in Italy; an autistic artist with an incredible memory; and Temple Grandin, autistic engineer extraordinaire. Sacks's writing is beautifully humane, as usual. He proposes that although we think in terms of mental "disability" for people like these, their circumstances offer just as real and vital an experience as "normal" people have, and even give them benefits of perspective that the rest of us miss out on. Good stuff!