Book Review: The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat

Book #62

This book isn’t easy to review, because it’s not a novel, or short story collection; it’s not poetry, or essays. It’s straight up non-fiction in the form of case studies and clinical analysis of different bizarre neurological cases that Oliver Sacks came across. There’s everything from the titular character — a man who really did mistake his wife for his hat — to people with Tourette’s, both severe and manageable; from excesses to people with IQs of 60 but who possess amazing talents.

There is a wide variety of cases presented. My interest in psychology, which will hopefully be my future career, is what led me to pick up this book. There’s only so many academic articles you can read without wanting to smack your head against concrete, so I thought this would be a welcome change, both enlightening and easier to absorb. 

Sacks has a truly wonderful ability to make his writing accessible, while not for a moment relinquishing the jargon he needs to use or ‘dumbing down’ the studies for general consumption. It’s quite enviable. I gained a lot of perspective from reading this, I tried to use what I have already learnt to understand his explanations more, and I really, really enjoyed reading it. It’s an amazing book that shows the extraordinary capabilities of the human mind and psyche and the extent to which, despite all of our advancements in science, we know very little about one of our body’s most important organs.