Optimnen: The Official Website of Daniel Tammet
Embracing the Wide Sky Reviews Embracing the Wide Sky Reviews
In 2004, autistic savant Tammet reeled off 22,514 digits of pi from memory, setting a European record. How did he achieve such a feat? Is an autistic mind different from others? Yes and no, Tammet answers in this follow-up to his bestselling memoir, Born on a Blue Day. His own brain may be wired a little differently, but we are all capable of remarkable mental feats, he asserts. Tammet seamlessly blends science and personal experience in a powerful paean to the mysteries and beauty of the brain. Intelligence is a complex phenomenon that synthesizes various skills and abilities. Tammet illustrates this with his own abilities in memory, language and number sense. For example, he points out that his extraordinary memory for numbers is augmented by "the unusual way in which my mind perceives numbers as complex, multi-dimensional, coloured and textured" that allowed him "to compose something like a visual song." Tammet concludes that all humans have something unique to contribute to the world, and he himself has a gift for rendering science accessible and even delightful.
Publishers Weekly Starred Review (27th October 2008)
Born On A Blue Day Reviews Born On A Blue Day Reviews
This remarkable book provides deep insight into a unique mind.
Richard and Judy
This book is a must read for anybody who is interested in how the mind words.
Temple Grandin, author of Animals in Translation and Thinking in Pictures
Of special interest for me, though, is not just what Daniel can so extraordinarily do, but rather his capacity to describe how he does it. Such first-person explanations of savant abilities are extremely rare, in fact nearly non-existent.
Dr Darold Treffert, scientific advisor on the Rain Man movie
His synaesthesia gives him a richly textured, multi-sensory form of memory, and his autism gives him the narrow focus on number and syntactic patterns. The result is a story of a life that is both remarkable and inspiring.
Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, Director Autism Research Centre, Cambridge University
