The Island of the Colorblind [Hardcover]

Oliver Sacks (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 7, 1997

Oliver Sacks has always been fascinated by islands--their remoteness, their mystery, above all the unique forms of life they harbor. For him, islands conjure up equally the romance of Melville and Stevenson, the adventure of Magellan and Cook, and the scientific wonder of Darwin and Wallace.

Drawn to the tiny Pacific atoll of Pingelap by intriguing reports of an isolated community of islanders born totally color-blind, Sacks finds himself setting up a clinic in a one-room island dispensary, where he listens to these achromatopic islanders describe their colorless world in rich terms of pattern and tone, luminance and shadow. And on Guam, where he goes to investigate the puzzling neurodegenerative paralysis endemic there for a century, he becomes, for a brief time, an island neurologist, making house calls with his colleague John Steele, amid crowing cockerels, cycad jungles, and the remains of a colonial culture.

The islands reawaken Sacks' lifelong passion for botany--in particular, for the primitive cycad trees, whose existence dates back to the Paleozoic--and the cycads are the starting point for an intensely personal reflection on the meaning of islands, the dissemination of species, the genesis of disease, and the nature of deep geologic time. Out of an unexpected journey, Sacks has woven an unforgettable narrative which immerses us in the romance of island life, and shares his own compelling vision of the complexities of being human.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In his books An Anthropologist on Mars and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Oliver Sacks details the lives of patients isolated by neurological disorders, shedding light on our common humanity and the ways in which we perceive the world around us. Now he looks at the effects of physical isolation in The Island of the Colorblind. On this journey, he carried with him the intellectual curiousity, kind understanding, and unique vision he has so consistently demonstrated.

Drawn to the Micronesian island of Pingelap by reports of a community of people born totally colorblind, Dr. Sacks set up a clinic in a one-room dispensary. There he listened to patients describe their colorless world in terms rich with pattern and tone, luminance and shadow. Then, in Guam, he investigated a puzzling neurodegenerative paralysis, making housecalls amid crowing cockerels, cycad jungles, and the remains of a colonial culture. The experience affords Sacks an opportunity to elaborate on such personal passions as botany and history and to explore the meaning of islands, the dissemination of species, the birth of disease, and the nature of deep geologic time.

From Publishers Weekly

Neurologist Sacks, famed for his investigations of unusual medical conditions (The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, etc.), went to Micronesia in 1993 to study firsthand two rare disorders: achromatopsia, or total congenital color blindness, which afflicts more than 5% of the population on the islands of Pingelap and Pohnpei; and lytico-bodig, a fatal, progressive neurodegenerative disease common in Guam, causing paralysis, dementia and catatonia. His total immersion in island life makes this luminous, beautifully written report a wondrous voyage of discovery. Most of those born color-blind never learn to read because they can't see the teacher's writing on the board; they can't work outdoors in bright light, and are unable to see fine detail; yet many achromatopes, Sacks found, develop acute compensatory memory skills and curiosity and thus live in a world of heightened reality. On Guam he visited families tragically scarred by lytico-bodig, a disease blamed by some scientists on the natives' ingestion of cycad trees' toxic seeds; other researchers suspect that the cause can be traced to a virus, diet as a whole or genetics. With aplomb, Sacks wears many hats?cultural anthropologist, naturalist, explorer, ethnographer, neuroscientist?as he delves into the islands' volcanic origins, their archeological wonders (e.g., Pohnpei's megalithic ruins, remnants of a monumental civilization), their unique flora and fauna (nocturnal tree-climbing snakes, iridescent ferns, dwarf forests), their bloody colonial history under Spanish and German rule, their still active indigenous myths. As a travel writer, Sacks ranks with Paul Theroux and Bruce Chatwin. As an investigator of the mind's mysteries, he is in a class by himself. Illustrated with drawings, maps. 150,000 first printing; Literary Guild selection; Random House audio.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 298 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1 edition (January 7, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679451145
• ISBN-13: 978-0679451143
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (36 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #302,807 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #35 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Aging > Parkinson's Disease
  • #46 in Books > Medical Books > Allied Health Professions > Optometry

More About the Author

Oliver Sacks was born in London and educated in London, Oxford, California, and New York. He is professor of neurology and psychiatry at Columbia University, and Columbia's first University Artist. He is the author of many books, including Awakenings, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, and Musicophilia. His newest book, The Mind's Eye, will be published in October, 2010.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars fascinating...the best of Sacks, March 7, 2002

By 

Laura Hamilton "mslaura" (Saratoga CA USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Island of the Colorblind (Paperback)

I adore the quirkiness of Oliver Sacks. Such a multifaceted individual...neurologist, botanist, world-traveller, musically talented, and a bona-fide eccentric of the best kind. I have read nearly all of his books and this is one of the best.

My biggest fault with Sacks is that he can drone on about minutiae in the middle of a scintillating story and lose the interest of his readers. I love a good detailed medical story, and I don't have ADD or anything, but I skipped through many pages of "An Anthropologist on Mars", in spite of the great stories in that book.

In *this* book he keeps the tale lively and doesn't lapse into stupefying detail. It's full of juicy tidbits from a variety of areas: the history and anthropology of the peoples of the Pacific islands, personal anecdotes of the people he meets, a delightful travelogue, descriptions of beautiful ferns and cycad forests, adventure, mystery...

Main story #1: The genetically color-blind people of a small Pacific island. How did they get to be that way? What is it like to live on a small primitive island in a village of color-blind people?

Main story #2: What caused the majority of the population of Guam in the early part of this century to fall ill with a mysterious Parkinsonian-like disease that in some cases wiped out entire families? Oh, and here's the rub...this disease has now almost disappeared. Could it be the cycads? Or not?

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Anthropology and Neurology Meet in Micronesia, July 12, 2000

By 

J. Hardy IV (Snohomish, WA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Island of the Colorblind (Paperback)

Having thoroughly enjoyed `The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat' I opted to make this my second Dr. Sacks outing. Once again the good doctor provides compelling, humane, interesting stories about odd physiological conditions and the cultures that foster and contend with them. In multiple episodes that have him traveling to small volcanic islands in Micronesia, the entertaining neurologist studies a group of people who have been born without the ability to see color. Accompanying him is a Nordic specialist in this genetic trait, and one who also happens to share the same condition. As the troupe moves about the islands, they meet and talk with the achromatopes; the natives and Knut evince a feeling of camaraderie. Dr. Sacks plumbs their depths to hear them describe their world in terms of textures and monochrome shades, completely barren of color. Along the way, he experiences a taste of their `night' lives, the skills they have developed to compensate for their lack of color sight. The next topic in the island hopping takes them to Guam where Sacks sees the patients of an associate who suffer from lytico-bodig, a degenerative condition which causes paralysis [not unlike Dr. Sacks' own neurological patients] and eventual dissolution. Having struck only a certain age bracket on the islands, the mysterious disease has confounded science for almost four decades and has almost killed off its victims. Finally, he treks to Rota to walk among the ancient Cycad plants that have captured his imagination since childhood. This novel appealed to the adventurer's spirit while I was reading it, listening to Dr. Sacks describes the beauty of the island culture and the supremely languid pace of life. Dr. Sacks' writing is not only aesthetically entertaining, but his case studies continue to pique the interest of the intellect. However, one is never so bowled over by the beauty of the surroundings as to forget the real human cases being presented. It is indeed an odd combination, this beauty and tragedy, but one that works very well in this novel producing an enjoyable read.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Neurologist in the South Pacific, October 2, 2001

By 

Dr. Christopher Coleman (HONG KONG) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Island of the Colorblind (Paperback)

This book is a hybrid; part Pacific island travelogue and part neurological exploration. Those of us who know Dr. Sacks's other works will recognize the latter as familiar territory while the former will be a new and somewhat unexpected area of reportage for him. And while colorblindness might not be as exotic as some of Sacks's previous neurological mysteries, the good doctor is able to make it equally fascinating, even introducing us to the concept of colorblind art--patterns created using brightness rather than chroma so that they can be readily seen by the colorblind, but incidentally are not readily discernable by others. And even more fascinating, and certainly much more horrifying, is the polymorphous disease lytico-bodig found on Guam. Sacks is at his best describing this illness, its symptoms, treatment, and the fruitless search for its root cause. The reader is gripped by the story of a single disease that manifests itself very differently in different patients. The "lytico" form is a progressive and eventually fatal paralysis. The "bodig" form a loss of muscular control similar to Parkinson's, with related dementia. The disease's victims are compassionately portrayed and their plight made real though Sacks' vivid writing.

But the very nature of the book may cause the reader problems. How can the travelogue parts compete with such a compelling medical story? Sacks concludes his work (with the exception of almost 100 pages of footnotes, journal citations, and bibliography!) with a brief account of his visit to Rota, (one of two of the titular Cycad Islands [Guam being the other]--although why Sacks didn't use the plural is a mystery), and here the interest is purely botanical. That the book begins with a travelogue and having set the stage gradually moves into the medical mysteries seems natural; that those mysteries are left unresolved (as they must of course, this not being a work of fiction) to rhapsodize about primitive plants seems bizarre. Sacks's comments are well written for the most part--the cycads lead him to experience a sensation of "deep time", an appreciation for things ancient and " a profound sense of being at home, a sort of companionship with the earth." But unless we share his botanical enthusiasm, we are likely to find the juxtaposition of the account of lytico-bodig and cycad reproduction ("the pollen settles on the naked ovules and sends a tube down into them, within which the male germ cells, the spermatozooids, are produced...the spermatozooids, which are motile, powered by cilia, enter the egg cell and fuse with it totally...") a bizarre bit of post-modern prose.