books about aphasia

The Man Who Lost His Language by Sheila Hale
Allen Lane, New York, 2002. Hard Cover. . From the DJ: The Man WHo Lost His Language is both a love story and the story of a quest for medical and scientific knowledge about a common but little-understood illness that could attack any of us, as it attacked the author's husband, John Hale, one of the world's leading historians. A month after he finished writing the book that turned out to be his master-piece, Hale suffered a stroke which deprived him of the power to speak or to write. This beautifully, often dramatically, written book conveys with raw honesty the extremes of emotion and behaviour - rage and contentment, desperation and dignity - that affect people disabled by stroke and those who love and care for them. It gives an accessible account of what is known about stroke and what imparied speech tells us about the relationship between language and intelligence - and how much we all communicate without words. Shiela Hale convincingly and grippingly brings together the personal and the universal. The result is a small, unclassifiable masterpiece