Publisher, Random House Audiobooks (October 2010)

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“An absorbing attempt to unravel the complexities of the human mind.” –Kirkus

“A no-brainer for the smart crowd; Sacks is so cool.” –Library Journal

“A master storyteller with a very engaging style…as a professional who is also a patient, [Sacks] has a unique ability to explain to people what the basic problem is and what the physical effects are…he allows all of us to share this and perhaps take some understanding away with us.” –Gulf News

“Sacks has a seemingly inexhaustible talent for eloquently and humanely explaining our brains’ most arcane and bizarre neurological dysfunctions.” –Time Magazine

“Riveting.” –Booklist

“A new book by Oliver Sacks is always cause for rejoicing.” –Christianity Today

“Sacks knows how to go from ‘aw, what an inspirational story,’ to ‘oooh what an interesting disease,’ from one page to the next, making this a medical page-turner you won’t want to miss.” –Inside Beat

In The Mind’s Eye, Oliver Sacks tells the stories of people who are able to navigate the world and communicate with others despite losing what many of us consider indispensable senses and abilities: the power of speech, the capacity to recognize faces, the sense of three-dimensional space, the ability to read, the sense of sight. For all of these people, the challenge is to adapt to a radically new way of being in the world.

There is Lilian, a concert pianist who becomes unable to read music and is eventually unable even to recognize everyday objects, and Sue, a neurobiologist who has never seen in three dimensions, until she suddenly acquires stereoscopic vision in her fifties.

There is Pat, who reinvents herself as a loving grandmother and active member of her community, despite the fact that she has aphasia and cannot utter a sentence, and Howard, a prolific novelist who must find a way to continue his life as a writer even after a stroke destroys his ability to read.

And there is Dr. Sacks himself, who tells the story of his own eye cancer and the bizarre and disconcerting effects of losing vision to one side.

Sacks explores some very strange paradoxes—people who can see perfectly well but cannot recognize their own children, and blind people who become hyper-visual or who navigate by “tongue vision.” He also considers more fundamental questions: How do we see? How do we think? How important is internal imagery—or vision, for that matter? Why is it that, although writing is only five thousand years old, humans have a universal, seemingly innate, potential for reading?

The Mind’s Eye is a testament to the complexity of vision and the brain and to the power of creativity and adaptation. And it provides a whole new perspective on the power of language and communication, as we try to imagine what it is to see with another person’s eyes, or another person’s mind.

About the Author: Oliver Sacks is the author of Awakenings, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, and many other books, for which he has received numerous awards, including the Hawthornden Prize, a Polk Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and lives in New York City, where he is a practicing neurologist. He recently accepted a new position at Columbia University.