I've wanted to read this for a long while. It's often referenced in books and texts on the workings of the mind, and Oliver Sacks is a great writer. I was only slightly disappointed.

The book is a bit inaccessible, referencing big names and works in neuropsychology like the reader should be familiar with them. They're not absolutely necessary to understand the content, but the references give you a constantly refreshed sense that you are missing out. It is also a bit dated, reminding you that "idiot" and "retard" used to be clinical designations, but there's no mistaking Sacks as someone who cared more about some of the patients described than the medical community of the day.

And the topic and the way it is handled is definitely fascinating. To truly examine and seek to understand what it is to be a human, we have to look at those who are at the edges or outside, who lack some of the things we take for granted and take for necessary. Sacks does this, and he goes beyond just describing the initial observations, the oddities and strangeness, he seeks to probe what it is "like" to be them and examine and interact with them with that goal in mind.

It is not a book with a lot of answers, but it raises a lot of important questions.