An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales

To these seven paradoxical tales of neurological disorder and creativity, Oliver Sacks brings the profound compassion and ceaseless curiosity that made “Awakenings” and “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat” international bestsellers. He transports us into the uncanny worlds of his subjects, including an artist who loses his ability to see (or even imagine) color; a surgeon who performs delicate operations in spite of the compulsive tics and outbursts of Tourette’s syndrome; and an autistic professor who holds a Ph.D. in animal science but is so bewildered by the complexity of human emotion that she feels “like an anthropologist on Mars.”

Through these extraordinary people, Sacks explores what it is to feel, to sense, to remember – to be, ultimately, a coherent self in the world.