Reviews

In the remote Micronesian islands of Pingelap and Pohnpei, there are significant populations of colorblind individuals. Sacks, who has written numerous popular books about various neurological oddities (e.g., An Anthropologist on Mars, LJ 2/15/95), visited the islands to study how these people were integrated into the larger cultures. He also traveled to Guam, where he investigated an endemic neurodegenerative disease called lytico-bodig, and the nearby island of Rota to explore its exotic cycad species. As always, Sacks commands a vibrant literary style. His subjects, however, are rather less fascinating than usual, and the book's four segments do not mesh well. Sacks's many fans will want this book, but it is unlikely to win many new ones for him. On those grounds, larger public libraries will want it, but others can pass. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 9/1/96.]‘Gregg Sapp, Univ. of Miami Lib., Coral Gables, Fla.

YA‘Fans of Sacks's previous publications will be enchanted by the newest work of the famous neurologist. Written as a travelogue/medical adventure, the book is actually an account of two separate observational journeys. The first, to an island in Micronesia called Pingelap, was to observe a community with an extraordinary large number of the population suffering from an inherited colorblindness. The author offers a vivid description of this handicap: extreme sensitivity to light, less than one tenth of normal vision, and a lack of fixation of the eyes resulting in repeated "nystagmic jerks." The second voyage was to Guam to observe the sufferers of lytico-bodig. Victims can have progressive paralysis, Parkinson-like symptoms, or even dementia. The clear way in which the author portrays the human spirit coping with vast disabilities will appeal to YAs interested in medical and science oddities. From night fishing with achromotopes on Pingelap to playing catch with a "frozen" bodig sufferer on Guam, Sacks carries readers along on a wave of interest and opens a fascinating, little-known world. Students who are looking for science, medical, or travelogue literature‘or just attention-grabbing reading‘will be swept away by The Island of the Colorblind.‘Carol DeAngelo, formerly at Fairfax County Public Library, VA

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. (Jan.)