The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat brings together twenty-four of Oliver Sacks’s most fascinating and beloved case studies. The patients in these pages are confronted with almost inconceivably strange neurological disorders; in Sacks’s telling, their stories are a profound testament to the adaptability of the human brain and the resilience of the human spirit.
Dr. Sacks treats each of his subjects—the amnesic fifty-year-old man who believes himself to be a young sailor in the Navy, the “disembodied” woman whose limbs have become alien to her, and of course the famous man who mistook his wife for a hat—with a deep respect for the unique individual living beneath the disorder. These tales inspire awe and empathy, allowing the reader to enter the uncanny worlds of those with autism, Alzheimer’s, Tourette’s syndrome, and other unfathomable neurological conditions. “One of the great clinical writers of the 20th century” (The New York Times), Dr. Sacks brings to vivid life some of the most fundamental questions about identity and the human mind.
“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.”
Noel Perrin, Chicago Sun-Times
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat is used in high school and university classrooms and has sold millions of copies worldwide. It has become a beloved classic, and remains Oliver Sacks’s most iconic work.