Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Sacks, a neurologist and author of the popular The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat ( LJ 2/15/86), developed a serious interest in sign language and deafness after reviewing Harlan Lane's When the Mind Hears ( LJ 10/15/84 ) for the New York Review of Books . In this work, Sacks explores all facets of the deaf world--he meets with deaf people and their families and visits schools for the deaf, spending a good deal of time at Gallaudet University. As he writes, ``I had now to see them in a new, `ethnic light,' as people with a distinctive language, sensibility, and culture of their own.'' The work is divided into three broad sections, throughout which there are numerous, somewhat distracting footnote ``excursions.'' Although there is a wealth of insight and information here, the book tends to drag for the average reader and may disappoint fans of Sacks's previous best seller. Recommended for scholars and graduate collections.-- Debra Berlanstein, Towson State Univ., Baltimore (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

Neurologist Sacks ( The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat ) has interviewed disoriented children who lost the sense of hearing before they acquired language skills. Prelingual deafness, he speculates, may be a hidden scourge that stunts the intellectual and emotional development of untold thousands. At the opposite pole of such impoverishment are the philosophy classes and sign-language theatrical events he attended at Gallaudet University, a liberal-arts college for the deaf in Washington, D.C. In an extraordinarily moving and thought-provoking report, he scrutinizes the history of treatment of the deaf, investigates the expressive capabilities of sign language and gauges the linguistic and social pressures faced by deaf people. The closing section documents a 1988 student revolt at Gallaudet that led to the appointment of the school's first deaf president. Illustrations. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Booklist Review

While not denying the medical or biological status of the deaf, Dr. Sacks' study reveals what more closely resembles the ethnic or cultural quality of those who make up only 0.1 percent of the population. Wandering through the campus of Gallaudet University during the student uprising last year, Sacks was greatly moved by the "passionate soundless conversation" of Sign, an expressive language, finally legitimized by linguists after many years of being effectively quashed. When he was asked to review a book on the deaf, the doctor was inspired to study the acquisition of language, and, more particularly, to investigate the history of Sign and the lot of the deaf (and to show how the two are inextricably intertwined). This led Sacks to deaf communities around the nation, including one in Martha's Vineyard, where Sign is the native language. With his philosopher's penchant for profound discovery and his neurologist's knowledge of biology and the brain, Sacks offers provocative connections and acute observations about the nature of language and culture. As in his previous Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat [BKL F 1 86], Sacks includes entrancing and peculiar case studies. Index. --Benjamin Segedin

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Oliver Sacks was born in London, England on July 9, 1933. He received a medical degree from Queen's College, Oxford University and performed his internship at Middlesex Hospital in London and Mount Zion Hospital in San Francisco. He completed his residency at UCLA.

In 1965, he became a clinical neurologist to the Little Sisters of the Poor and Beth Abraham Hospital. His work in a Bronx charity hospital led him to write the book Awakenings in 1973. The book inspired a play by Harold Pinter and became a film starring Robert De Niro and Robin Williams. His other works included An Anthropologist on Mars, The Mind's Eye, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Uncle Tungsten, Musicophilia, A Leg to Stand On, On the Move: A Life, and Gratitude.

In 2007, he ended his 42-year relationship with the Albert Einstein College of Medicine to accept an interdisciplinary teaching position at Columbia. In 2012, he returned to the New York University School of Medicine as a professor of neurology. He died of cancer on August 30, 2015 at the age of 82.

(Bowker Author Biography)