Includes stories of people who are able to navigate the world and communicate with others despite losing what many of us consider indispensable senses and faculties: the power of speech, the capacity to recognize faces, the sense of three-dimensional space, the ability to read, and the sense of sight. This book is a testament to the complexity of vision and the brain and to the power of creativity and adaptation, and it provides a whole new perspective...

"Jane Ellison is a 'super recognizer' able to identify strangers by the slightest facial details. When she spies Bella Valencia in a crowded airport, Jane's convinced she's found the woman responsible for her sister Kit's disappearance and presumed death eleven years earlier. But her attempt to detain Bella ends with Jane herself fired and humiliated. As Bella prepared to marry Will Pease, scion of the uber-wealthy and ruthless Pease family, on Cape...

An unusual and uncommonly moving family memoir, with a twist that give new meaning to hindsight, insight, and forgiveness. The author is face blind--that is, she has prosopagnosia, a rare neurological condition that prevents her from reliably recognizing people's faces. Growing up, unaware of the reason for her perpetual confusion and anxiety, she took what cues she could from speech, hairstyle, and gait. But she sometimes kissed a stranger, thinking...

Traces the stories of six individuals whose lives have been profoundly changed by unusual changes to essential senses and abilities, including a renowned pianist who lost the ability to read scores and a novelist whose ability to read was destroyed by a stroke.