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| Eccentrics: A Study of Sanity and Strangeness (Kodansha Globe) | 
| Authors: David Weeks, Jamie James
Publisher: Kodansha Globe
Category: Book
List Price: $15.00
Buy Used: $1.79
You Save: $13.21 (88%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  15 reviews
Sales Rank: 359651
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 280
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.6 x 0.6
ISBN: 1568361564
Dewey Decimal Number: 001.9
EAN: 9781568361567
ASIN: 1568361564
Publication Date: October 15, 1996
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
| Showing reviews 1-5 of 15 | | NEXT » |
maybe a little out dated? March 5, 2007
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
fun to read, it contains a lot of stories about some strange guys like the Emperor Norton, etc. and some other new guys that was fun to go after in the web. since the book is from the nineties it came from a time with a much more less internet and so maybe was not easily availble the common flood of weird facts and people we get today in our computers. nevertheless being also a little weird myself i was atracted to this book in the same spirit I went to all the Oliver Sacks' books, dealing with the last forms of strangeness, next to illness, but much more focused in how to deal with the handicap going into more normal lifes. it would be precious to understand this with the promised statistical data the author talk about not only in the back cover, but at every time, giving just glimpses of his research, and going again into the anecdotic part. so difficult to please everyone, maybe it was not thought as a cientifical research but just a divulgative report. But at the end one feels that something is missing and that would turn this book, research and doctor in the offspring of Dr. KInsey and Ripley, unfortunately didn't happened.
 Eccentricity at Its Finest. December 8, 2006
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I dearly, dearly love this book. It was a wellspring of information about historical eccentricity and also the way 'outside the box' thinkers are and were perceived. The chapter about Emperor Norton was one of my favorites - I'm now a forever fan of the United States' shortlived existance as a monarchy.
The portraits of the individuals featured in the book are compassionate and wonderfully told. It's not at all a dry research tome, but is still full of wonderful information.
Their Own Drummers May 10, 2006
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
As someone who could be politely described as marching to my own drummer, or more brutally as a social cripple, I was drawn to this book about eccentrics. Them's my people. According to David Weeks, eccentrics have never been studied scientifically before the research described here, because psychiatrists only ever study people with real illnesses or pathologies. Eccentrics also usually don't see themselves as being in need of help or as being eligible for study, so therefore they are mostly unknown to science. Another challenge is that the very term "eccentric" has been used inconsistently in different locations and time periods, with the oddballs being treated in every fashion from supportive reverence to outright persecution. Weeks thus embarked on a systematic study of people who called themselves eccentric, or folks who were deemed eccentric by the newly-derived criteria of the study.
However, this is not a very scientific book and the results of the study turn out to be conjectural conclusions and rhetorical questions. We do learn that eccentrics are healthier, both mentally and physically, than the general population; while Weeks provides some pretty good philosophical arguments on how those who flout social conventions have always kept society from getting moribund and inflexible, especially in the arts and sciences. But even though this is all good food for thought, this book (and probably Weeks' study in itself) doesn't reach any real conclusions about what makes eccentrics eccentric. Instead we mostly learn about what makes them just a little different, in healthy and not pathological ways. The book is generally fun to read, thanks to the many anecdotes about real eccentrics and their intriguing peculiarities (my personal favorite is the guy who gained a unique outlook on life by walking around backwards all the time), but even these enjoyable stories take on the aspect of a disconnected list, which further detracts from the scientific goals that Weeks announced at the beginning of the book. [~doomsdayer520~]
Cheers to an ironic topic! April 11, 2006
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
For too long have the wrong people, who don't conform to the standards of the majority, been labeled as insane. I doubt most people will come close to understanding just how much more sane non-conformists can be. After reading this book, I can now understand why we eccentrics, who tend to not be so socially acceptable, are a happier and healthier lot. If you're like me, I've discovered the bulk of my block towards happiness stemmed from others' ignorance draped through my impressionistic eras of living. God bless these authors for getting this research work done and published!
Eccentrics: Start Your Engines April 29, 2005
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This book was great. It was lively, entertaining, spoke of past and present eccentrics and as somebody who cottons to the term "eccentric," this book delivered most of what I hoped it would.
The few objections I had to the book were the random clinical records tossed about in an attempt to distinguish if the persons in question were truly "eccentric" or "mentally ill." Here, I believe the author made a crucial mistake in that he blurred the line between eccentricity and mental illness, thus leaving the reader to wonder -"what's the difference?" or "Does eccentricity really exist?" This was mostly due, in part, to the clinical studie's failing to report significant differences between what groups the author deemed as "eccentric" vs. those who were "mentally ill."
All in all, though, I enjoyed this book and learned some things about some interesting people and that's why I purchased the book in the first place.
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