A. R. Luria was Professor of Psychology at Lomonosov Moscow State University.
Zasetsky…in eloquent excerpts from a diary, comments on his
struggle to recover the use of his brain… He could not even have
written his journal—3,000 pages that he cannot read himself,
composed with appalling effort over a quarter of a century—had he
not learned to write automatically, without thinking of the
process. It is a remarkable document, affecting in its simplicity,
its pain, its inexorable determination.
*Newsweek*
The book is equally as remarkable a document as Luria’s The Mind of
a Mnemonist… Writing is Zasetsky’s laborious way of thinking. His
achievement is that he has managed, after untold agonies and
frustrations, to describe his unending confusions with terrible
clarity. It would take a lobotomized Samuel Beckett to match
it.
*Time*
A noted Russian neuropsychologist shares the remarkable story of
his 25-year treatment of a young soldier who, in the aftermath of a
serious wound, was forced to relearn even the simplest mental
activities… The book emerges as an intriguing glimpse into the
workings of the human brain—and an eloquent testament to one man’s
determination… Another of Luria’s case histories, The Mind of a
Mnemonist…traces the Kafkaesque experiences of a man with such an
extraordinary memory that he has difficulty forgetting
anything.
*Philadelphia Inquirer*
Originally published almost two decades ago, these fascinating and
enormously informative case histories are now classics, each the
product of almost 30 years of research by the late Soviet
neuropsychologist Aleksandr Romanovich Luria… The Man with a
Shattered World describes the heroic struggle of a young soldier
trying to recover the memory and other mental capacities lost when
a bullet entered his brain. Although different facets of mind are
discussed in each [The Man with a Shattered World and The Mind of a
Mnemonist], in a sense the two books are complementary, as memory
is exaggerated in one and impaired in the other. What we know about
the brain and mind is greatly enriched by either book.
*Boston Globe*
These two books [The Man with a Shattered World and The Mind of a
Mnemonist] are compassionate and vivid portraits—he called them
‘neurological novels’—though they are in fact case histories of two
patients whom Luria observed for 30 years.
*Los Angeles Times*
[In The Mind of a Mnemonist] the Soviet psychologist Aleksandr R.
Luria (1902–77) describes the life and personality of a man (known
as ‘S’) who was found to have a literally limitless memory and
whose burden was that he was able to forget things only by an act
of will… The same publisher reissued The Man with a Shattered
World, Luria’s study of a young soldier who suffers a catastrophic
head injury and has to relearn almost everything. In 1973 one
reviewer called it an intriguing and ‘valuable review of the
strange but precise working of the brain.’ Both are translated by
Lynn Solotaroff.
*New York Times*
This is an important and remarkable book—the product of the
relationship between two remarkable men, one a world authority on
the brain, the other his unfortunate brain-damaged patient… Luria
has created a fascinating and valuable review of the strange but
precise working of the brain for both the general reader and the
scientist. This little book will become a classic.
*Library Journal*
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