Seeing Voices (Picador Books)

by Oliver Sacks

The renowned neurologist and bestselling author of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat takes us on a journey into the world of deaf culture, and the underpinnings of the remarkable visual language of the congenitally deaf.

"This book will shake your preconceptions about the deaf, about language and about thought.... One of the finest and most thoughtful writers of our time." —Los Angeles Times Book Review

Like The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, this is a fascinating voyage into a strange and wonderful land, a provocative meditation on communication, biology, adaptation, and culture.  In Seeing Voices, Oliver Sacks turns his attention to the subject of deafness, and the result is a deeply felt portrait of a minority struggling for recognition and respect—a minority with its own rich, sometimes astonishing, culture and unique visual language, an extraordinary mode of communication that tells us much about the basis of language in hearing people as well.

Seeing Voices is, as Studs Terkel has written, "an exquisite, as well as revelatory, work."

• ISBN10: 0375704078
• ISBN13: 9780375704079
• Publish Date: 28 November 2000 (first published 2 August 1989)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Vintage
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 240
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780375704079

Reviews

[empressbrooke]

This book is 25 years old, and while I'm certain there are more recent books on the topic of deafness, this one is still worth reading. It's not just about deafness, but about language, and how language shapes our brains, and how important language is to developing as a person. In just 150 pages, Oliver Sacks managed to blow my mind with things which had never occurred to me before.