In his most extraordinary book, "one of the great clinical writers of the 20th century"(The New York Times)recounts the case histories of patients lost in the bizarre, apparently inescapable world of neurological disorders. Oliver Sacks'sThe Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hattells the stories of individuals afflicted with fantastic perceptual and intellectual aberrations: patients who have lost their memories and with them the greater part of their pasts; who are no longer able to recognize people and common objects; who are stricken with violent tics and grimaces or who shout involuntary obscenities; whose limbs have become alien; who have been dismissed as retarded yet are gifted with uncanny artistic or mathematical talents.If inconceivably strange, these brilliant tales remain, in Dr. Sacks's splendid and sympathetic telling, deeply human. They are studies of life struggling against incredible adversity, and they enable us to enter the world of the neurologically impaired, to imagine with our hearts what it must be to live and feel as they do. A great healer, Sacks never loses sight of medicine's ultimate responsibility: "the suffering, afflicted, fighting human subject."

Oliver Sacks was born in London and educated in London, Oxford, California, and New York. He is professor of clinical neurology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He is the author of many books, including Awakenings and A Leg to Stand On.

Preface
PART ONE: LOSSES
Introduction
1 The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
2 The Lost Mariner
3 The Disembodied Lady
4 The Man Who Fell out of Bed
5 Hands
6 Phantoms
7 On the Level
8 Eyes Right!
9 The President's Speech
PART TWO: EXCESSES
Introduction
10 Witty Ticcy Ray
11 Cupid's Disease
12 A Matter of Identity
13 Yes, Father-Sister
14 The Possessed page
PART THREE: TRANSPORTS
Introduction
15 Reminiscence
16 Incontinent Nostalgia
17 A Passage to India
18 The Dog Beneath the Skin
19 Murder
20 The Visions of Hildegard
PART FOUR: THE WORLD OF THE SIMPLE
Introduction
21 Rebecca
22 A Walking Grove
23 The Twins
24 The Autist Artist
Bibliography