Product Details
Free Press, January 2007
Hardcover, 240 pages
ISBN-10: 1416535071
ISBN-13: 9781416535072
Born on a Blue Day is a journey into one of the most fascinating minds alive today -- guided by the owner himself. Daniel Tammet is virtually unique among people who have severe autistic disorders in that he is capable of living a fully independent life and able to explain what is happening inside his head.
He sees numbers as shapes, colors, and textures, and he can perform extraordinary calculations in his head. He can learn to speak new languages fluently, from scratch, in a week. In 2004, he memorized and recited more than 22,000 digits of pi, setting a record. He has savant syndrome, an extremely rare condition that gives him the most unimaginable mental powers, much like those portrayed by Dustin Hoffman in the film Rain Man.
Fascinating and inspiring, Born on a Blue Day explores what it' s like to be special and gives us an insight into what makes us all human -- our minds.
"Artists and poets would give their best simile to perceive things with the same kind of vividness...For anyone interested in the workings of a truly 'beautiful mind,' Born on a Blue Day is a banquet."
"Tammet, now 28, manages the feat of introspection -- and self-insight. His book brims with humanity. His approach is honest, eloquent, at times funny, and completely free of pity."
"With all due respect to Stephen Hawking, Bill Gates, and any living Nobel laureates, the most remarkable mind on the planet just might belong to DanielTammet...Tammet displays a surprising level of sensitivity -- and a refreshing lack of sentimentality -- in an account that inspires even as it astonishes."
"Remarkable, revealing, and nearly flawless."
"Something in the way that Mr. Tammet describes the beautiful, aching, hallucinatory process of arriving at his answers illuminates the excitement of all cogitation."