Crashing Through: A True Story Of Risk, Adventure, And The Man Who Dared To See (2007) - Plot & Excerpts
This book is about a guy named Mike May who was blinded at the age of three, lived an aggressively full life, and then, in his forties, got a cutting-edge corneal transplant and saw for the first time in decades. The book was great on three levels:One, you get to see a blind man living life to the fullest: founding companies, studying abroad in Ghana, becoming a record-setting skier, etc. Two, you get to understand his experience of getting sight and what that means to him. You realize what you take for granted, like what color stop signs are or how women walk. You also get to think about vision in a new way: it's a way of touching things without touching them. How transgressive to see a woman's figure, and how amazing to be able to map everything around you just by looking around, right?Three, you get a fascinating case study of brain function and plasticity. After surgery, Mike can immediately understand motion and color, but the rest requires heavy top-down processing. Presumably the parts of his brain responsible for other aspects of vision have been co-opted for other functions. For instance, he can't tell genders or expressions apart without consciously analyzing them, and he can't identify objects without context. He also has trouble with depth, so that he mistakes stripes for the shadows of imaginary steps and in a 2D photo he can't naturally tell the subject from the background. In a particularly embarrassing scene, he asked even his wife if the large, static object near the pallets in Costco was a forklift. She turned white and informed him it was an obese woman. Anyway, read it :)
What I loved about this book:I'm giving this 5 stars because of the fascinating parts about what happens when you restore vision to a blind person, and not because of the writing. It is unbelievable to learn about how we really "see", and I don't doubt that it will be a real surprise to most people.This is the story of Mike May, one of only 20! or so people in recorded history to have been blind for a significant part of their lives and then have their vision restored. The vision science is fascinating. I couldn’t get enough of it and would recommend the book to anyone just for that reason. It will even make you look at your exploring baby in a new way. Although some sections in the middle slow down and seem extraneous, on the whole it is very well written and fast-paced. It is more like a novel than non-fiction in that sense. I read it in just a few evenings. What I didn’t love about this book: * I would have been fine with a book just about the vision. There was a lot in here about the man, his life, his wife, etc. Some of it was inspiring because he was so alive, despite being blind. He is clearly adventurous (some might say reckless) and a risk-taker, but it was a little too sickeningly sweet. I thought the descriptions of his childhood were really good though. His mother was amazing.
What do You think about Crashing Through: A True Story Of Risk, Adventure, And The Man Who Dared To See (2007)?
The central idea of this book is fascinating- Mike May's journey from blindness to vision. Too bad it takes half the book to get to it! The beginning chapters dragged for me- while I appreciated the picture of May growing up blind, I didn't need quite so much background. Once he gains sight, however, and is dealing with the excitement and challenges of the change, the narrative picks up. I think this very compelling story could have been told effectively if the author had spend less time on May's life before the surgery and more time on the experiences afterwards. This was a fast read- definitely worth checking out.
—Gayle
this book is great for optometry nerds and book-lovers alike! it's a thrilling biographical narrative about one man's incredible journey from blindness into sight; but it also teaches us that sight alone does not necessarily equal perception or understanding. Michael May, rendered completely blind at the age of 3, makes the tough decision to undergo a rare stem cell transplant surgery to be able to see again as a grown, married man. May reached such great heights as a blind individual; it was a difficult choice for him to turn his back on the blind community and try to see again after so many years. May finds out that, although the surgery is successful in the most literal sense of the word - his eyes function and he can "see" again - he cannot cognitively comprehend anything he is looking at. The best example of this is the scene where May and his wife are sitting in a coffee shop, people-watching, and she is trying to help him distinguish between a man and a woman based on facial features. Despite his wife's best efforts, May remains completely stumped and does no better than 50/50 at guessing men vs. women in the coffee shop. Very interesting book and makes one realize how much we take for granted in terms of our visual systems and our perception of the world.
—Meg
i liked it at first but soon felt it was being dragged out (like "fly by wire", a entire book about a 4 minute long plane crash into the potomac river).It's an amazing story, i would have appreciated more if it was an autobiography. i was about to quit but instead skimmed through until the book focused on vision and how complex sight is - that got me thriugh the rest of the book, but barely. interesting story. interesting topic.. i didnt care much for May as a character, and kept thinking if he had written it himself, then i may have found it more compeling.
—Colleen
