Neurology

  (out of 5 stars)

Neurologist Oliver Sacks catalogs his experiences with patients suffering unusual neurological conditions in his book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales. As the title suggests, the book is a collection of first-hand case studies witnessed by Sacks during his days treating these patients. I've collected several of Sacks' books, and having decided to start reading his work with this book, it may be a while before I pick up the next.

This was easily one of the more disappointing reads of the year. Sacks comes highly rated as an author, and in the few video lectures and discussions I've watched of him, I had high expectations for Mistook. However, the format is just dreadful, and the writing, while presenting interesting subjects, reads more like a dictation from a doctor to his fellow practitioners than a discourse meant for popular science readers.

Each chapter is self-contained, excepting a bare few references to similar cases across a couple of chapters, and presents Sacks' version of neurological patient exhibiting unusual behavior and/or symptoms. There is no apparent pattern to the stories, they are just thrown together as a collection of essays with no attempt to draw a narrative. Even within each chapter, the flow is simply bad as a specific detail might garner two full pages of description while an equally-deserving (and necessary) set of details are all packed into a single sentence. The balance is just wrong, and again, it feels like Sacks is writing a case study for a fellow neurologist and then, at the last minute, remembered to "dumb it down" a bit for some of his readers.

Wholly clinical in its treatment of the subjects, the book does not try hard to draw the reader in and compel him to understand and explore the subject matter. The reader is left with a few interesting stories handled in a clinical manner which a few minutes of reading Wikipedia articles would have matched in terms of pleasurable reading. While undoubtedly of interest to many, and admitting that I seem to be in the minority in being disappointed by Mistook, the book is simply a let down to this reader who is greatly interested in the neurological behaviors Sacks witnessed. Two and one-half stars.