A fictionalized autobiography in which the voice of Laurent Clerc describes his boyhood in France as a deaf student and his development of his own progressive methods to teach the deaf.

Using original sources, this unique book focuses on the Deaf community during the 19th century. Largely through schools for the deaf, deaf people began to develop a common language and a sense of community. A Place of Their Own brings the perspective of history to bear on the reality of deafness and provides fresh and important insight into the lives of deaf Americans.

Like The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, this is a fascinating voyage into a strange and wonderful land, a provocative meditation on communication, biology, adaptation, and culture. In Seeing Voices, Oliver Sacks turns his attention to the subject of deafness, and the result is a deeply felt portrait of a minority struggling for recognition and respect — a minority with its own rich, sometimes astonishing, culture and unique visual language, an extraordinary mode of communication that tells us much about the basis of language in hearing people as well. Seeing Voices is, as Studs Terkel has written, "an exquisite, as well as revelatory, work."

The authoritative statement on the deaf, their education, and their struggle against prejudice.

This volume offers the first translation of 19th-century Deaf French activist Ferdinand Berthier's biographical sketches of the four men who influenced him most in shaping his unswerving beliefs about Deaf French education.