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Author: Susan R. Barry
Publisher: The Experiment, LLC
ISBN: 1891011316
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 217
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Book Description
A heartfelt memoir that captures the meeting of two great minds—and, with boundless generosity, shares the joy of what it's like to make, have, and keep a friend later in life To the world, he was Dr. Sacks, the brilliant neurologist behind bestselling books like Musicophilia and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. To professor Susan Barry, he became Dear Oliver—her mentor, friend, and confidant over the course of their unlikely, engrossing ten-year correspondence. It begins with a letter that Sue almost doesn't send. Dear Dr. Sacks . . . You asked me if I could imagine what the world would look like when viewed with two eyes. Sue’s unheard-of case history—as a “stereoblind” patient who acquired 3D vision in adulthood—so fascinates Dr. Sacks that he immediately asks to visit her. As “Stereo Sue,” she becomes the subject of one of his indelible New Yorker pieces—and, as a fellow neuroscientist, his sounding board for every kind of intellectual inquiry. Their shared passions—from classical music to cuttlefish, brain plasticity to bioluminescent plankton—spark a friendship that buoys both of them through life’s crests and falls: as Sue becomes an author in her own right, as she supports her father in his decline, and as Oliver becomes a patient himself—battling cancer that, in a painful twist, robs him of his own vision. Dr. Sacks’s letters to Sue offer his devoted readers an unprecedented glimpse of the man himself—from his legendary compassion and insight to his love of the periodic table (which he kept in his wallet). Throughout Dear Oliver, we are reminded that true friends help each other see the world a little differently.
Author: Susan R. Barry
Publisher: The Experiment, LLC
ISBN: 1891011316
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 217
Get Book Here
Book Description
A heartfelt memoir that captures the meeting of two great minds—and, with boundless generosity, shares the joy of what it's like to make, have, and keep a friend later in life To the world, he was Dr. Sacks, the brilliant neurologist behind bestselling books like Musicophilia and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. To professor Susan Barry, he became Dear Oliver—her mentor, friend, and confidant over the course of their unlikely, engrossing ten-year correspondence. It begins with a letter that Sue almost doesn't send. Dear Dr. Sacks . . . You asked me if I could imagine what the world would look like when viewed with two eyes. Sue’s unheard-of case history—as a “stereoblind” patient who acquired 3D vision in adulthood—so fascinates Dr. Sacks that he immediately asks to visit her. As “Stereo Sue,” she becomes the subject of one of his indelible New Yorker pieces—and, as a fellow neuroscientist, his sounding board for every kind of intellectual inquiry. Their shared passions—from classical music to cuttlefish, brain plasticity to bioluminescent plankton—spark a friendship that buoys both of them through life’s crests and falls: as Sue becomes an author in her own right, as she supports her father in his decline, and as Oliver becomes a patient himself—battling cancer that, in a painful twist, robs him of his own vision. Dr. Sacks’s letters to Sue offer his devoted readers an unprecedented glimpse of the man himself—from his legendary compassion and insight to his love of the periodic table (which he kept in his wallet). Throughout Dear Oliver, we are reminded that true friends help each other see the world a little differently.
Author: Susan R. Barry
Publisher: Bonnier Books UK
ISBN: 1804184942
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 228
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Book Description
"Dear Dr. Sacks . . . You asked me if I could imagine what the world would look like when viewed with two eyes. I told you that I thought I could . . . But, I was wrong." When Susan Barry first wrote to Oliver Sacks, she never expected a response, let alone the deep friendship that blossomed over ten years of letters. Sue, herself a neuroscientist, wrote to share an extraordinary development in her own medical history. Born with problems with her vision, Sue had been told she would never acquire the ability to see in 3D - and yet she did, a development at odds with decades of research. Within days, Oliver replied, "Your letter fills me with amazement and admiration." Sharing an interest in visual perception and a deep love of science, Sue and Oliver began writing back and forth, delving deeper into the mysteries of sight and marvelling at the adaptive capacity of the human body. But in a painful twist of fate, as Sue's vision improved, Oliver's declined, and his characteristic typed letters shifted to handwritten ones. Sue later recognised this to be an early sign of the cancer that ultimately ended his extraordinary life. A funny, fascinating, and intimate glimpse of the great Oliver Sacks, Dear Oliver is also a love letter to scientific inquiry, and a testimony to the power of friendship at any time in life.
Author: Bill Hayes
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1620404958
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 305
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Book Description
Amazon's Best Biographies and Memoirs of the Year List A moving celebration of what Bill Hayes calls "the evanescent, the eavesdropped, the unexpected" of life in New York City, and an intimate glimpse of his relationship with the late Oliver Sacks. "A beautifully written once-in-a-lifetime book, about love, about life, soul, and the wonderful loving genius Oliver Sacks, and New York, and laughter and all of creation."--Anne Lamott Bill Hayes came to New York City in 2009 with a one-way ticket and only the vaguest idea of how he would get by. But, at forty-eight years old, having spent decades in San Francisco, he craved change. Grieving over the death of his partner, he quickly discovered the profound consolations of the city's incessant rhythms, the sight of the Empire State Building against the night sky, and New Yorkers themselves, kindred souls that Hayes, a lifelong insomniac, encountered on late-night strolls with his camera. And he unexpectedly fell in love again, with his friend and neighbor, the writer and neurologist Oliver Sacks, whose exuberance--"I don't so much fear death as I do wasting life," he tells Hayes early on--is captured in funny and touching vignettes throughout. What emerges is a portrait of Sacks at his most personal and endearing, from falling in love for the first time at age seventy-five to facing illness and death (Sacks died of cancer in August 2015). Insomniac City is both a meditation on grief and a celebration of life. Filled with Hayes's distinctive street photos of everyday New Yorkers, the book is a love song to the city and to all who have felt the particular magic and solace it offers.
Author: Susan R. Barry
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 078674474X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 225
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Book Description
A revelatory account of the brain's capacity for change When neuroscientist Susan Barry was fifty years old, she experienced the sense of immersion in a three dimensional world for the first time. Skyscrapers on street corners appeared to loom out toward her like the bows of giant ships. Tree branches projected upward and outward, enclosing and commanding palpable volumes of space. Leaves created intricate mosaics in 3D. Barry had been cross-eyed and stereoblind since early infancy. After half a century of perceiving her surroundings as flat and compressed, on that day she saw the city of Manhattan in stereo depth for first time in her life. As a neuroscientist, she understood just how extraordinary this transformation was, not only for herself but for the scientific understanding of the human brain. Scientists have long believed that the brain is malleable only during a "critical period" in early childhood. According to this theory, Barry's brain had organized itself when she was a baby to avoid double vision - and there was no way to rewire it as an adult. But Barry found an optometrist who prescribed a little-known program of vision therapy; after intensive training, Barry was ultimately able to accomplish what other scientists and even she herself had once considered impossible. Dubbed "Stereo Sue" by renowned neurologist Oliver Sacks, Susan Barry tells her own remarkable journey and celebrates the joyous pleasure of our senses.
Author: Susan R. Barry
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 1541675169
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 272
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Book Description
A neurobiologist reexamines the personal nature of perception in this groundbreaking guide to a new model for our senses. We think of perception as a passive, mechanical process, as if our eyes are cameras and our ears microphones. But as neurobiologist Susan R. Barry argues, perception is a deeply personal act. Our environments, our relationships, and our actions shape and reshape our senses throughout our lives. This idea is no more apparent than in the cases of people who gain senses as adults. Barry tells the stories of Liam McCoy, practically blind from birth, and Zohra Damji, born deaf, in the decade following surgeries that restored their senses. As Liam and Zohra learned entirely new ways of being, Barry discovered an entirely new model of the nature of perception. Coming to Our Senses is a celebration of human resilience and a powerful reminder that, before you can really understand other people, you must first recognize that their worlds are fundamentally different from your own.
Author: George Johnson
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 030776544X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 401
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Book Description
Are there really laws governing the universe? Or is the order we see a mere artifact of the way evolution wired the brain? And is what we call science only a set of myths in which quarks, DNA, and information fill the role once occupied by gods? These questions lie at the heart of George Johnson's audacious exploration of the border between science and religion, cosmic accident and timeless law. Northern New Mexico is home both to the most provocative new enterprises in quantum physics, information science, and the evolution of complexity and to the cosmologies of the Tewa Indians and the Catholic Penitentes. As it draws the reader into this landscape, juxtaposing the systems of belief that have taken root there, Fire in the Mind into a gripping intellectual adventure story that compels us to ask where science ends and religion begins. "A must for all those seriously interested in the key ideas at the frontier of scientific discourse."--Paul Davies
Author: Oliver Sacks
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0345805887
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 465
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Book Description
From the bestselling author of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat • Fascinating portraits of neurological disorder in which men, women, and one extraordinary child emerge as brilliantly adaptive personalities, whose conditions have not so much debilitated them as ushered them into another reality. Here are seven detailed narratives of neurological patients, including a surgeon consumed by the compulsive tics of Tourette's syndrome unless he is operating; an artist who loses all sense of color in a car accident, but finds a new sensibility and creative power in black and white; and an autistic professor who cannot decipher the simplest social exchange between humans, but has built a career out of her intuitive understanding of animal behavior. Sacks combines the well honed mind of an academician with the verve of a true storyteller.
Author: Martin Ganda
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
ISBN: 0316241342
Category : Young Adult Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 315
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Book Description
The New York Times bestselling true story of an all-American girl and a boy from Zimbabwe and the letter that changed both of their lives forever. It started as an assignment... Everyone in Caitlin's class wrote to an unknown student somewhere in a distant place. Martin was lucky to even receive a pen-pal letter. There were only ten letters, and fifty kids in his class. But he was the top student, so he got the first one. That letter was the beginning of a correspondence that spanned six years and changed two lives. In this compelling dual memoir, Caitlin and Martin recount how they became best friends—and better people—through their long-distance exchange. Their story will inspire you to look beyond your own life and wonder about the world at large and your place in it.
Author: Charles Dickens
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 558
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Book Description
The story of Oliver Twist - orphaned, and set upon by evil and adversity from his first breath - shocked readers when it was published. After running away from the workhouse and pompous beadle Mr Bumble, Oliver finds himself lured into a den of thieves peopled by vivid and memorable characters - the Artful Dodger, vicious burglar Bill Sikes, his dog Bull's Eye, and prostitute Nancy, all watched over by cunning master-thief Fagin. Combining elements of Gothic Romance, the Newgate Novel and popular melodrama, Dickens created an entirely new kind of fiction, scathing in its indictment of a cruel society, and pervaded by an unforgettable sense of threat and mystery.
Author: Sean B. Carroll
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307952347
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 594
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Book Description
The never-before-told account of the intersection of some of the most insightful minds of the 20th century, and a fascinating look at how war, resistance, and friendship can catalyze genius. In the spring of 1940, the aspiring but unknown writer Albert Camus and budding scientist Jacques Monod were quietly pursuing ordinary, separate lives in Paris. After the German invasion and occupation of France, each joined the Resistance to help liberate the country from the Nazis and ascended to prominent, dangerous roles. After the war and through twists of circumstance, they became friends, and through their passionate determination and rare talent they emerged as leading voices of modern literature and biology, each receiving the Nobel Prize in their respective fields. Drawing upon a wealth of previously unpublished and unknown material gathered over several years of research, Brave Genius tells the story of how each man endured the most terrible episode of the twentieth century and then blossomed into extraordinarily creative and engaged individuals. It is a story of the transformation of ordinary lives into exceptional lives by extraordinary events--of courage in the face of overwhelming adversity, the flowering of creative genius, deep friendship, and of profound concern for and insight into the human condition.
