-
An Anthropologist on Mars
- Seven Paradoxical Tales
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis, Oliver Sacks
- Length: 11 hrs and 42 mins
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy for $24.95
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Hallucinations
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Dan Woren, Oliver Sacks
- Length: 9 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Have you ever seen something that wasn't really there? Heard someone call your name in an empty house? Sensed someone following you and turned around to find nothing? Hallucinations don't belong wholly to the insane. Much more commonly, they are linked to sensory deprivation, intoxication, illness, or injury. People with migraines may see shimmering arcs of light or tiny, Lilliputian figures of animals and people.
-
-
Not Just Hallucinations
- By Pamela Harvey on 01-05-13
By: Oliver Sacks
-
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: and Other Clinical Tales
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis, Oliver Sacks - introduction
- Length: 9 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Oliver Sacks' The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat tells the stories of individuals afflicted with fantastic perceptual and intellectual aberrations: patients who have lost their memories and with them the greater part of their pasts; who are no longer able to recognize people and common objects; who are stricken with violent tics and grimaces or who shout involuntary obscenities; whose limbs have become alien; who have been dismissed as retarded yet are gifted with uncanny artistic or mathematical talents.
-
-
"Lest we forget how fragile we are..."
- By ESK on 02-23-13
By: Oliver Sacks
-
Musicophilia
- Tales of Music and the Brain
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Music can move us to the heights or depths of emotion. It can persuade us to buy something, or remind us of our first date. It can lift us out of depression when nothing else can. It can get us dancing to its beat. But the power of music goes much, much further. Indeed, music occupies more areas of our brain than language does - humans are a musical species.
-
-
The Best Of Sacks...
- By Douglas on 11-23-12
By: Oliver Sacks
-
The Mind's Eye
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Oliver Sacks, Richard Davidson
- Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An exploration of vision through the case histories of six individuals - including a renowned pianist who continues to give concerts despite losing the ability to read the score, and a neurobiologist born with crossed eyes who, late in life, suddenly acquires binocular vision, and how her brain adapts to that new skill.
-
-
Blindness
- By Lynn on 05-02-11
By: Oliver Sacks
-
Gratitude
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Dan Woren
- Length: 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
No writer has succeeded in capturing the medical and human drama of illness as honestly and as eloquently as Oliver Sacks. During the last few months of his life, he wrote a set of essays in which he movingly explored his feelings about completing a life and coming to terms with his own death.
-
-
To the Point, Yet Told From the Heart
- By LJT on 01-18-16
By: Oliver Sacks
-
Everything in Its Place
- First Loves and Last Tales
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Dan Woren
- Length: 8 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the best-selling author of Gratitude and On the Move, a final volume of essays that showcase Sacks's broad range of interests - from his passion for ferns, swimming, and horsetails, to his final case histories exploring schizophrenia, dementia, and Alzheimer's.
-
-
Missing Sacks
- By Brandy on 12-02-19
By: Oliver Sacks
-
Hallucinations
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Dan Woren, Oliver Sacks
- Length: 9 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Have you ever seen something that wasn't really there? Heard someone call your name in an empty house? Sensed someone following you and turned around to find nothing? Hallucinations don't belong wholly to the insane. Much more commonly, they are linked to sensory deprivation, intoxication, illness, or injury. People with migraines may see shimmering arcs of light or tiny, Lilliputian figures of animals and people.
-
-
Not Just Hallucinations
- By Pamela Harvey on 01-05-13
By: Oliver Sacks
-
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: and Other Clinical Tales
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis, Oliver Sacks - introduction
- Length: 9 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Oliver Sacks' The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat tells the stories of individuals afflicted with fantastic perceptual and intellectual aberrations: patients who have lost their memories and with them the greater part of their pasts; who are no longer able to recognize people and common objects; who are stricken with violent tics and grimaces or who shout involuntary obscenities; whose limbs have become alien; who have been dismissed as retarded yet are gifted with uncanny artistic or mathematical talents.
-
-
"Lest we forget how fragile we are..."
- By ESK on 02-23-13
By: Oliver Sacks
-
Musicophilia
- Tales of Music and the Brain
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Music can move us to the heights or depths of emotion. It can persuade us to buy something, or remind us of our first date. It can lift us out of depression when nothing else can. It can get us dancing to its beat. But the power of music goes much, much further. Indeed, music occupies more areas of our brain than language does - humans are a musical species.
-
-
The Best Of Sacks...
- By Douglas on 11-23-12
By: Oliver Sacks
-
The Mind's Eye
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Oliver Sacks, Richard Davidson
- Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An exploration of vision through the case histories of six individuals - including a renowned pianist who continues to give concerts despite losing the ability to read the score, and a neurobiologist born with crossed eyes who, late in life, suddenly acquires binocular vision, and how her brain adapts to that new skill.
-
-
Blindness
- By Lynn on 05-02-11
By: Oliver Sacks
-
Gratitude
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Dan Woren
- Length: 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
No writer has succeeded in capturing the medical and human drama of illness as honestly and as eloquently as Oliver Sacks. During the last few months of his life, he wrote a set of essays in which he movingly explored his feelings about completing a life and coming to terms with his own death.
-
-
To the Point, Yet Told From the Heart
- By LJT on 01-18-16
By: Oliver Sacks
-
Everything in Its Place
- First Loves and Last Tales
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Dan Woren
- Length: 8 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the best-selling author of Gratitude and On the Move, a final volume of essays that showcase Sacks's broad range of interests - from his passion for ferns, swimming, and horsetails, to his final case histories exploring schizophrenia, dementia, and Alzheimer's.
-
-
Missing Sacks
- By Brandy on 12-02-19
By: Oliver Sacks
-
On the Move
- A Life
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Dan Woren
- Length: 11 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From its opening minutes on his youthful obsession with motorcycles and speed, On the Move is infused with his restless energy. As he recounts his experiences as a young neurologist in the early 1960s, first in California, where he struggled with drug addiction, and then in New York, where he discovered a long-forgotten illness in the back wards of a chronic hospital, we see how his engagement with patients comes to define his life.
-
-
excellent book from a excellent writer
- By Johan on 05-01-15
By: Oliver Sacks
-
Awakenings
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis, Oliver Sacks
- Length: 13 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Awakenings - which inspired the major motion picture - is the remarkable story of a group of patients who contracted sleeping sickness during the great epidemic just after World War I. Frozen for decades in a trance-like state, these men and women were given up as hopeless until 1969, when Dr. Oliver Sacks gave them the then-new drug L-DOPA, which had an astonishing, explosive, "awakening" effect. Dr. Sacks recounts the moving case histories of his patients, their lives, and their extraordinary transformations.
-
-
Not for the average reader!
- By Margaret on 12-07-15
By: Oliver Sacks
-
The River of Consciousness
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Dan Woren, Kate Edgar
- Length: 5 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A collection of essays that displays Oliver Sacks' passionate engagement with the most compelling and seminal ideas of human endeavor: evolution, creativity, memory, time, consciousness, and experience. The River of Consciousness is one of two books Sacks was working on up to his death, and it reveals his ability to make unexpected connections, his sheer joy in knowledge, and his unceasing, timeless project to understand what makes us human.
-
-
Important but Less Interesting
- By Michael on 11-16-17
By: Oliver Sacks
-
Uncle Tungsten
- Memories of a Chemical Boyhood
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 10 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Long before Oliver Sacks became a distinguished neurologist and best-selling writer, he was a small English boy fascinated by metals - also by chemical reactions (the louder and smellier the better), photography, squids and cuttlefish, H.G. Wells, and the periodic table. In this endlessly charming and eloquent memoir, the he chronicles his love affair with science and the magnificently odd and sometimes harrowing childhood in which that love affair unfolded.
-
-
The curious child
- By Jean on 09-13-16
By: Oliver Sacks
-
Migraine
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 12 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dr. Oliver Sacks argues the migraine cannot be understood simply as an illness, but must be viewed as a complex condition with a unique role to play in each individual's life.
-
-
Why is this an audio book?
- By BW724 on 06-25-19
By: Oliver Sacks
-
Seeing Voices
- A Journey Into the World of the Deaf
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis, Oliver Sacks - introduction
- Length: 5 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
A Rich Experience
- By Douglas on 11-27-12
By: Oliver Sacks
-
A Leg to Stand On
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis, Oliver Sacks - introduction
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dr. Oliver Sacks's books Awakenings, An Anthropologist on Mars and the best-selling The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat have been acclaimed for their compassion in the treatment of patients affected with profound disorders. In A Leg to Stand On, it is Sacks himself who is the patient: an encounter with a bull on a desolate mountain in Norway has left him with a severely damaged leg. But what should be a routine recuperation is actually the beginning of a strange medical journey.
-
-
A very rewarding read but Not for everybody.
- By jeff on 10-29-11
By: Oliver Sacks
-
Proof
- The Science of Booze
- By: Adam Rogers
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A spirited narrative on the fascinating art and science of alcohol, sure to inspire cocktail party chats on making booze, tasting it, and its effects on our bodies and brains. Drinking gets a lot more interesting when you know what's actually inside your glass of microbrewed ale, single-malt whisky, or Napa Cabernet Sauvignon. All of them begin with fermentation, where a fungus called yeast binges on sugar molecules and poops out ethanol. Humans have been drinking the results for 10,000 years. Distillation is a 2,000-year-old technology - invented by a woman - that we're still perfecting today.
-
-
Great listening to all about booze
- By Atila on 08-02-14
By: Adam Rogers
-
Liquid Rules
- The Delightful and Dangerous Substances That Flow Through Our Lives
- By: Mark Miodownik
- Narrated by: Michael Page
- Length: 7 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We all know that without water we couldn't survive, and that sometimes a cup of coffee or a glass of wine feels just as vital. But do we really understand how much we rely on liquids, or the destructive power they hold? Set over the course of a flight from London to San Francisco, Liquid Rules offers listeners a fascinating tour of these formless substances, told through the language of molecules, droplets, heartbeats, and ocean waves.
-
-
Interesting book!
- By Wayne on 08-04-19
By: Mark Miodownik
-
Ten Drugs
- How Plants, Powders, and Pills Have Shaped the History of Medicine
- By: Thomas Hager
- Narrated by: Angelo Di Loreto
- Length: 8 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Beginning with opium, the “joy plant,” which has been used for 10,000 years, Thomas Hager tells a captivating story of medicine. His subjects include the largely forgotten female pioneer who introduced smallpox inoculation to Britain, the infamous knockout drops, the first antibiotic, which saved countless lives, the first antipsychotic, which helped empty public mental hospitals, Viagra, statins, and the new frontier of monoclonal antibodies. This is a deep, wide-ranging, and wildly entertaining book.
-
-
Informative, entertaining, and thought-provoking.
- By Leyte L. Jefferson on 05-14-19
By: Thomas Hager
-
NeuroTribes
- The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity
- By: Steve Silberman
- Narrated by: William Hughes
- Length: 18 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What is autism: a lifelong disability or a naturally occurring form of cognitive difference akin to certain forms of genius? In truth, it is both of these things and more - and the future of our society depends on our understanding it. Wired reporter Steve Silberman unearths the secret history of autism, long suppressed by the same clinicians who became famous for discovering it, and finds surprising answers to the crucial question of why the number of diagnoses has soared in recent years.
-
-
Good Contrast to "In a Different Key"
- By Gadget on 06-01-16
By: Steve Silberman
-
Soul of an Octopus
- A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness
- By: Sy Montgomery
- Narrated by: Sy Montgomery
- Length: 9 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sy Montgomery's popular 2011 Orion magazine piece, "Deep Intellect", about her friendship with a sensitive, sweet-natured octopus named Athena and the grief she felt at her death, went viral, indicating the widespread fascination with these mysterious, almost alien-like creatures. Since then Sy has practiced true immersion journalism, from New England aquarium tanks to the reefs of French Polynesia and the Gulf of Mexico, pursuing these wild, solitary shape-shifters.
-
-
Fun fluffy
- By mars on 04-27-18
By: Sy Montgomery
Publisher's Summary
To these seven narratives of neurological disorder, Dr. Sacks brings the same humanity, poetic observation, and infectious sense of wonder that are apparent in his best sellers Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. These 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.
PLEASE NOTE: Some changes have been made to the original manuscript with the permission of Oliver Sacks.
Critic Reviews
What listeners say about An Anthropologist on Mars
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Jeff
- 09-22-13
SACKS IS AN ABSOLUTE JOY !!
. The jaw dropping stories in this book mated to Sack`s insight, sensitivity, and remarkable articulation are a balm for the soul and candy for the mind. His humanity and his remarkable ability to communicate the experiences of his patients and his own insight make him unique and unforgetable.
The underlying premise for all these cases which sacks brings to light- is the unusual and unforeseen positive path the disabilities of these patients and disabilities in general can (after breaking through) engender.
I am similar to those stories enclosed-in a way. 10 yrs ago I stepped out of the shower heard a crack and have been in terrible crippling disabling pain ever since. I went from being a very fit,strong and super active father of 2 very small boys to being bedridden and writhing in pain.. Things are marginally better now,but the point is- I started using audible books at the start because I couldnt do anything else-including tv. Audible books not only helped me endure the isolation, pain and loss of a way of life-it replaced my physical world with a mental one (generalization)-one in which I'm now relatively happy. This totally unexpected and unforeseen journey from one state of being to another positive state, is part of what is explored in this book. It is no exaggeration to say that audible books saved my life.
I'm not sure just where this book fits into his bibliography, I've read them as I've come across them. and have pretty much enjoyed them all. The narrator (Jonathan Davis) who has done most if not all his books when sacks hasn't done the work himself is utterly perfect, getting the tone, timing and inflection just right.
This book enriched my mind and soul,altered my perspective and relieved the mind numbing effect of a shockingly dumbed down world- at least for a few hours. Now that's credit worthy!!
90 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Toonie R
- 09-30-17
Too repetitive
The intro part goes on and on with repetitive information and you hear it first in the voice of Oliver Sacks and then most of the same stuff, some verbatim the same, in the voice of Jonathan Davis. All the case histories were interesting but I got bored about halfway through each one due to the repetition of observations.
13 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Julie
- 03-05-15
Enlightening and Inspiring
I really like listening to Oliver Sack's books; the narrators help bring the anecdotes to life and present the drier explanations of neurological anatomy and science clearly (and allow me to drift a bit, without completely skipping material which is fascinating, but fairly difficult).
This book focuses on the inspiring abilities of several individuals to live with and positively leverage potentially debilitating neurological disorders. While I've seen other material about Temple Grandin and Steven Wiltshire, I really appreciated the more in-depth and intimate information about how they and the other "Martians" in this book live, apply their exceptional talents, and face the existential challenge of being so very different in a society where "difference" is not understood, accommodated, or accepted.
14 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- serine
- 02-02-16
Wonderfully unusual cases
Oliver sacks provides entertaining and informative stories of people living with various brain abnormalities. In this book, sacks focused on abnormalities that often compelled the individual to record their environment in extreme ways. For example, Sacks suggest maybe we are all hardwired for recording history, since our only tools for millions of years were our brains and voices, and we handed down an oral history of human existence, throughout the generations. However, in some individuals, the areas responsible for this are overly active, and often the other parts of the brain are under-active. This results in echolalia, a perfect recording of the environment that can be reproduced over and over, a perfect memory that can produce drawings of whole cities-- even years after the artist saw it, a replication of various sounds-- such as instruments, an obsession on preserving the past-- as with someone stuck in the past and unable to live in the present day.
Sacks also gives a wonderful account of his interviews and examinations of Temple Grandin. Instead of seeing her brain as defective, Sacks truly wants to understand how she might simply think differently. Even when Grandin herself views her brain as defective, it is clear Sacks is more interested in understanding the way her brain works than he is in judging if it's defective or not.
Sacks is an excellent writer. The pages flew by and in no time, the book was sadly over. I love him so much; time to start a new Sacks book.
17 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- PhreshMeet
- 09-20-17
First two stories are great
He tends to go and on. The first two stories are fascinating. The others not so much.
4 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Douglas
- 09-12-12
Sachs The Scientist
Some readers complain of the overly metaphysical nature of Oliver Sachs' The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat (and I do agree that he seems to mistake, surprisingly often for such an educated man, "personality" for "the soul" in that book and that he does ramble a bit into the etheric realms in "Hat," clouding his scientific points.) For those, I would recommend Anthropologist on Mars. This is the best of Sachs, as he returns to what makes Awakenings so good to read: it brings complex medicine to the layman's terms (without dumbing down) and it includes the human element of neurology and neurological conditions without the threats of floating off into abstract philosophy as in "Hat."
18 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- M. Levine
- 01-21-13
Dr. Sacks is Fascinating
Now I want to be a neurologist. Too bad my only qualifications are listening to Oliver Sacks' books... I would have been great!
22 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Jessica Smith
- 05-18-21
Good performance; insights dated
I have read or listened to almost all of Sacks's work and consider myself a fan. In this collection, he has some interesting insights about memory. But the collection was published in 1995 and there has been major progress in the way we understand and treat autism (it's 2021). The last couple of chapters feel really dated and even offensive in their lack of understanding/empathy toward the subjects-- even if this was perhaps groundbreaking at the time.
3 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- C Turner
- 04-30-18
Anthropologist with a philosopher’s mind
This is the kind of book you wish you had read with others merely because it has revelations and insights everyone should have and you want everyone to have them with you.
Some parts feel like anthropological Notes, others medical, others like the intimate impressions in a poetic diary, and you’re not sure as a reader if you’ve just experienced a new revelation or something that you understood all along.
Oliver Sacks is one of a kind. I miss him greatly.
3 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Mr
- 07-07-15
Humility and Deep Thought
I really enjoyed the open-ended style in which the author framed his understanding. From a basis of such extensive experience, he drew me along on an inquisitive journey of real and practical use to my life circumstances.
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Kindle Customer
- 07-07-14
Thoughtful, melancholy and inspiring
What did you like most about An Anthropologist on Mars?
Looks at some difficult and hard to talk about subjects in an often positive and uplifting light. Takes the line of some people being more 'different' than 'damaged' and often strives to see the best in these situations. You also get to feel very up close and personal to the people involved.
What did you like best about this story?
Person-centred outlook on neurological conditions.
Have you listened to any of Oliver Sacks and Jonathan Davis ’s other performances? How does this one compare?
No.
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
Yes. And very nearly did.
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Sydney
- 10-04-13
Wonderful as always
Oliver Sacks is hard to beat for fascinating, humane, and beautifully written stories of neurology and the human condition, and this book is full of the mix of sadness of wonder one expects. Docked a point for the reader, who is a little flat; what a shame it's not read by Sacks himself.