{ "item_title" : "The Country of the Blind", "item_author" : [" Andrew Leland "], "item_description" : "FINALIST FOR THE PULITZER PRIZENamed one of the best books of the year by: THE NEW YORKER - THE WASHINGTON POST - THE ATLANTIC - NPR - PUBLISHERS WEEKLY - LITHUBFascinating...The great strength of this memoir is its voracious, humble curiosity. - The Atlantic, The 10 Best Books of the Year A witty, winning, and revelatory personal narrative of the author's transition from sightedness to blindness and his quest to learn about blindness as a rich culture all its own. We meet Andrew Leland as he's suspended in the liminal state of the soon-to-be blind: he's midway through his life with retinitis pigmentosa, a condition that ushers those who live with it from sightedness to blindness over years, even decades. He grew up with full vision, but starting in his teenage years, his sight began to degrade from the outside in. Soon-- but without knowing exactly when--he will likely have no vision left. Full of apprehension but also dogged curiosity, Leland embarks on a sweeping exploration of the state of being that awaits him: not only the physical experience of blindness but also its language, politics, and customs. He negotiates his changing relationships with his wife and son, and with his own sense of self, as he moves from his mainstream, typical life to one with a disability. Part memoir, part historical and cultural investigation, The Country of the Blind represents Leland's determination not to merely survive this transition but to grow from it--to seek out and revel in that which makes blindness enlightening. Brimming with warmth and humor, it is an exhilarating tour of a new way of being.", "item_img_path" : "https://covers4.booksamillion.com/covers/bam/1/98/488/142/1984881426_b.jpg", "price_data" : { "retail_price" : "29.00", "online_price" : "29.00", "our_price" : "29.00", "club_price" : "29.00", "savings_pct" : "0", "savings_amt" : "0.00", "club_savings_pct" : "0", "club_savings_amt" : "0.00", "discount_pct" : "10", "store_price" : "29.00" } }

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A stigma continues to exist around blindness, even though blind people are a vital part of society as writers, actors, engineers, artists and more. Blindness has reliably appeared at or near the top of the list of “most-feared disabilities” in polls and surveys for decades, a fact Andrew Leland relays in his debut book, The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight. Through eloquent prose, Leland vividly details his experiences with retinitis pigmentosa (RP), a genetic disorder that has slowly caused his vision to deteriorate and will eventually result in total blindness. Because he still has some sight, he is able to “perceive everything with a paradoxical double vision: through sighted eyes, and through blind ones.”

"There are very few blind people who live their lives carrying around the constant feeling of aggrieved sadness and tragedy.” Read our interview with Andrew Leland.

Providing a raw and honest depiction of what it is like to straddle two worlds, Leland lays his feelings and the realities of his condition out on the table, in particular the impact of RP on his personal interactions. Along the way, he chronicles the backstory of how he discovered he had RP, the genetic aspects of the disease and a general history of blindness. Other chapters focus on topics such as both low- and high-tech sight-assisted gadgets for blind people, national blindness organizations and their differing philosophies, blind activists (including folks from the Disabled Students’ Program at UC Berkeley) and medical therapies for blindness (such as the gene-editing tool CRISPR, gene therapy and wearable technology). Leland interviews myriad people with varying levels of blindness to get diverse perspectives, interspersing their accounts with statistics and expert commentary. The Country of the Blind does not leave readers with a sense of sadness—quite the opposite. By mixing reality checks with wit, Leland’s prose exudes hope and authenticity. As he movingly writes, “As I lose my vision, I want to cultivate this picture of blindness—in Oscar [his son], and Lily [his wife], in myself, and in the world—of a blind person who’s an active protagonist in his own life.”