- Hardcover: 218 pages
- Publisher: Pantheon Books (April 1991)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0679401687
- ISBN-13: 978-0679401681
- Product Dimensions: 21.3 x 14 x 2.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 979,237 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
An exploration of the world of blindness - of people without faces, strange sounds, the new feel of eating, lovemaking or playing with children. Blindness introduced the author to a new dimension and a different perception of nature and the human personality. This is his story of that experience.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book describes what it is like to go gradually blind. John Hull is a professor of religious education in Birmingham and is regarded as a guru by most British religious education teachers. He has a profound Christian faith which is so secure that it allows him to ask frank and terrifying questions in search of truth. He describes the psychological, physical and spiritual changes which took place in his life over the period of a few years when he lost his remaining sight. The descriptions are startling and fascinating. Reading the book has changed the way I relate to blind people. Passages include the importance/irrelevance of smiling and eye contact, the way a rainstorm lights up a usually silent landscape, the development of a sixth sense which can tell you when you walk past a lamp post, the use of a child to scoop a tiny peanut from the floor, the changes in dreams and a blind persons analysis of Psalm 139. Professor Hulls book has since been republished under a new title, "On sight insight" and his most recent book "In the beginning was Darkness" is due out soon; a blind person's perspective on the bible. John Hull's writings are wise, perceptive and illuminating. Ignore him at peril to your soul!
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
6 reviews
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful
A stunning picture of what it is like to become blind
20 Jan 2002
Format:Paperback
This book was given to me as a gift a few years ago, and while I am neither going blind nor am actually blind, I found many of the ideas and experiences and thoughts and feelings expressed in this book to be very similar to my own. I have some particular cognitive difficulties (prosopagnosia, often called "face blindness") which give me a rather different outlook on life from most people, and I was amazed to see just how much in common my outlook on life was when compared with the author's life experiences. Well, maybe I wasn't that surprized, but it was still an eye-opening (no pun intended) experience for me to read this book in that context.
Needless to say, I enjoyed this book very very much. It reads more like a personal journal or diary than an actual book, and that gives the whole book a very personal experience when reading it.
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Touched by John Hull
4 Sep 2005
Format:Paperback
On the front cover Oliver Sacks is quoted: "Staggering. . . the most extraordinary, precise, deep, and beautiful account of blindness I have ever read." But this book is primarily a message of facing change and developing methods for coping. Of compensating, of reaching out, of accepting your plight and going forward. You sense the author's despair and frustration, but he manages to see his difficulties as challenges. He engages you in the struggles he faces and overcomes. After all, he has a wife and four children, he lectures and attends conferences. Perhaps the most fascinating chapter of all, for me, was how he faced giving a lecture when he could no longer read notes. He eventually learned how to write his speech in his mind so that he could simply read one page as the next ones were being formulated. I pictured it as something like the beginning of a Star Wars movie. John Hull has somelthing to teach us all.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
This is a powerful book
8 Aug 2007
Format:Paperback
I can't remember ever reading anything quite as compelling. I'm not going blind nor do I have any cognitive disabilities. However, if you are a practicing meditator as I am and are interested in the nature of consciousness itself, you will be quite intrigued with this highly descriptive account of both the visual and non-visual aspects of perception. If this book doesn't inspire you to start thinking outside the box, nothing will. That been said, the average reader will find this to be an unforgettable, beautifully written book well worth reading. Highly recommended.
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