With Seeing Voices Dr Sacks launches us on a journey into the world of the deaf - which he explores with the same passion and insight that have illuminated other human conditions for his readers everywhere.

This book begins with the history of deaf people in the 18th century, the often outrageous ways in which they have been treated in the past, and their continuing struggle for acceptance in a hearing world.

And it examines the visual language of the deaf - Sign - which has only in the past decade been recognised fully as a language linguistically complete, rich, and as expressive as any spoken language.