The Island of the Colour-blind

Download or read book The Island of the Colour-blind written by Oliver Sacks and published by Pan Macmillan. This book was released on 2011-06-16 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Sacks is rightly renowned for his empathy . . . anyone with a taste for the exotic will find this beautifully written book highly engaging' – Sunday Times Always fascinated by islands, Oliver Sacks is drawn to the Pacific by reports of the tiny atoll of Pingelap, with its isolated community of islanders born totally colour-blind; and to Guam, where he investigates a puzzling paralysis endemic there for a century. Along the way, he re-encounters the beautiful, primitive island cycad trees – and these become the starting point for a meditation on time and evolution, disease and adaptation, and islands both real and metaphorical in The Island of the Colour-Blind.