GET LIT: Win a copy of Oliver Sacks' The Mind's Eye

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GET LIT: Win a copy of Oliver Sacks' The Mind's Eye

POSTED: Wednesday, November 10, 2010, 7:00 PM
Knopf, 288 pp., $26.95, Oct. 26
Remember last month's Book Quarterly? It wasn't so long ago that we reviewed Columbia University professor of neurology and psychiatry Oliver Sacks' The Mind's Eye, about folks who go through life without sight, speech or literacy. Tonight, Sacks will give a talk at the Free Library's Central Branch (7:30 p.m., $15, 1901 Vine St., 215-567-4341, freelibrary.org), and in honor of the event we're giving away a copy of his new book. Here's what CP staff writer Holly Otterbein had to say about it back in October:
If the universe snatches a sense from you, it must mean it's stolen one-fifth of your personhood along with it. But in The Mind's Eye, triple-threat neurologist/artist/writer Oliver Sacks assures the young and healthy (for now) that this isn't so. ... Studies show that the auditory parts of the brain in deaf people (or visual parts in the blind) don't atrophy, but instead take on new duties, like a laborer studying IT after his factory is shuttered. ... This spin on aphasia, facial blindness and other inconceivably weird deficiencies is a warm bath for anyone who's currently caring for Bubbe, but Sacks is so committed to a motivational narrative that he doesn't convey the bottomless dread the newly handicapped must feel.
To win a copy, answer the following trivia question:

What 17th-century English poet is said to have composed his best work after losing his eyesight?

E-mail me at carolyn.huckabay@citypaper.net for a chance to win!
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