Understanding Aphasia

Reviews / Votes

"Understanding Aphasia is the long-awaited work of a man who has arguably done more than any living person to describe systematically the many varieties of aphasia and to bring some order and coherence to their study.... This book is an appropriate testament to Goodglasss career, as it succeeds in setting out an orderly description of aphasia and its long history while making clear how difficult and confusing its study can be. It contains many well-chosen examples of the speech, writing, and other performances of individual patients the author has seen, providing an informative introduction to aphasic phenomena for those new to the topic.... This volume thus serves not merely as a summary of this fascinating and contentious field from a man who helped to shape and define it. It constitutes a scholarly yet practical description of aphasic phenomena and the history of their study at the same time as it breaks new ground in attempting to fit the diverse pieces of the puzzle intoa coherent theoretical framework. Understanding Aphasia provides an accessible introduction to the topic for the interested scientist while raising many substantive issues for debate among aphasia researchers.

The text is a must for anyone planning a career in clinical neuropsychology or speech pathology. However, these are only two of the potential target audiences for the book. Potential readership for this text is actually quite diverse. On the one hand, it is written with an elegantly simple prose and presentation of most clinical and conceptual issues at a level comprehensible by any graduate study in psychology (and some advanced undergraduates.) On the other hand, readers with substantial familiarity with one aspect of aphasia (e.g. behavioral neurology, linguistics) will nevertheless find other aspects of the text interesting, informative, intellectually challenging, and occasionally controversial." --CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY

"Goodglass has succeeded in his aim that the book should be accessible to interested readers who are not in the professions that are most concerned with brain-language relationships." --John Marshall in LANGUAGE AND SPEECH