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The Island of the Colorblind
Drawn to the tiny Pacific atoll of Pingelap by intriguing reports of an isolated community of islanders born totally color-blind, Sacks finds himself setting up a clinic in a one-room island dispensary, where he listens to these achromatopic islanders describe their colorless world in rich terms of pattern and tone, luminance and shadow. And on Guam, where he goes to investigate the puzzling neurodegenerative paralysis endemic there for a century, he becomes, for a brief time, an island neurologist, making house calls with his colleague John Steele, amid crowing cockerels, cycad jungles, and the remains of a colonial culture.
The islands reawaken Sacks' lifelong passion for botany--in particular, for the primitive cycad trees, whose existence dates back to the Paleozoic--and the cycads are the starting point for an intensely personal reflection on the meaning of islands, the dissemination of species, the genesis of disease, and the nature of deep geologic time. Out of an unexpected journey, Sacks has woven an unforgettable narrative which immerses us in the romance of island life, and shares his own compelling vision of the complexities of being human.
Book Details
- Publisher: Vintage
- Publish Date: Jan 12nd, 1998
- Pages: 336
- Language: English
- Edition: undefined - undefined
- Dimensions: 8.02in - 5.17in - 0.72in - 0.75lb
- EAN: 9780375700736
- Categories: • Essays• General• Life Sciences - Human Anatomy & Physiology
About the Author
More books by Oliver Sacks
What people are saying
“Would you happen to have a Ben Hur 1860? The third edition, the one with the erratum on page 116.” Don’t follow me on Facebook because I’m not there.
@NBallingrud @Sulli864 Love association copies like this. Here’s another from our shelf. Oliver Sacks’ THE ISLAND OF THE COLORBLIND inscribed and with a TLS inserted. And, yes, this pristine copy was priced at $3.00. https://t.co/51ZD6DRQCk
Investing in investors @hummingbirdvc, https://t.co/QXmBRloVpR
Bonus - some good ones also worth checking Energy and Civilization - Vaclav Smil The End of Theory - Richard Bookstaber The Island of the Colorblind - Oliver Sacks This Will Make You Smarter - John Brockman The Origins of Creativity - Edward Wilson How to Solve It - George PĂłlya
Praise for this book
"An explorer of that most wonderous of islands, the human brain," writes D.M. Thomas in The New York Times Book Review, "Oliver Sacks also loves the oceanic kind of islands." Both kinds figure movingly in this book--part travelogue, part autobiography, part medical mystery story--in which Sacks's journeys to a tiny Pacific atoll and the island of Guam become explorations of the time, and the complexities of being human.
"Sacks's total immersion in islands life makes this luminous, beautifully written report a wonderous voyage of discovery. As a travel writer, Sacks ranks with Paul Theroux and Bruce Chatwin. As an investigator of the mind's mysteries, he is in a class by himself."
--Publishers Weekly
What people are saying
“Would you happen to have a Ben Hur 1860? The third edition, the one with the erratum on page 116.” Don’t follow me on Facebook because I’m not there.
@NBallingrud @Sulli864 Love association copies like this. Here’s another from our shelf. Oliver Sacks’ THE ISLAND OF THE COLORBLIND inscribed and with a TLS inserted. And, yes, this pristine copy was priced at $3.00. https://t.co/51ZD6DRQCk
Investing in investors @hummingbirdvc, https://t.co/QXmBRloVpR
Bonus - some good ones also worth checking Energy and Civilization - Vaclav Smil The End of Theory - Richard Bookstaber The Island of the Colorblind - Oliver Sacks This Will Make You Smarter - John Brockman The Origins of Creativity - Edward Wilson How to Solve It - George PĂłlya