The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat

(1) Real Mathematical Analysis, by Charles Pugh is a wonderful introduction to pure mathematics for a mathematically inclined engineer. The back cover starts like this > Was plane geometry your favourite math course in high school? Did you like proving theorems? Are you sick of memorising integrals? (2) The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, by Oliver Sacks. I think it's impossible to read this (or a number of other works of Sacks') and not be mesmerized by the workings of the human brain. Disclaimer: I wouldn't call neuroscience my "field of study" even though I did study it.

That's two books, but: The man who mistook his wife for a hat - Oliver Sacks The origin of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind - Julian Jaynes

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat By neurologist Oliver Sacks is a great book describing some of his very interesting cases. More importantly, his writing style is brilliant.

"The Magicians", "The Magician King", "The Magician's Land" - Lev Grossman. 4/5 "Inside Job" - Connie Willis. 4/5 "Norwegian Wood (Tokio Blues)" - Haruki Murakami. 4/5 "Old Man's War" - John Scalzi. 5/5 "Persepolis" - Marjane Satrapi. 5/5 Non fiction: "The 10,000 year explosion" about recent evolution. 3/5 ton of evidence for their thesis, but lacks predictions. "What if" well known by HN. 5/5 "The nurture assumption" about education, 2/5. Maybe a 4/5 when it was published, but now their ideas are in the water supply. "The man who mistook his wife for a hat", by Oliver Sacks 4/5. Several stories about neurological deficits.

Someone on HN recommended "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" by Oliver Sacks. I was fascinated by how fragile "normal behaviour" is.

V.S. Ramachandran's Phantoms in the Brain changed my life. The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat by Oliver Sacks solidified my interest in neuroscience And The Three Pound Enigma solidified my fascination with medicine in general. If you only read one, read Phantoms in the Brain. It's like the bible of science, providing the crumbs for future research into the deeply interesting and previously philosophical realms of the human brain and who we are.

It depends on your age and level of education. Goedel, Escher, Bach was mind-blowing when I was 19. Four years (and some college) later it's a tedious bore. Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "Memories of My Melancholy Whores" is pretty great. Oliver Sacks' "The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat" is full of amazing case studies that will help you construct a personal theory of mind.