BookBrowse Reviews The Country of the Blind by Andrew Leland

The Believer editor and audio producer Andrew Leland first noticed a change in vision when he was in middle school. On wild nights out with friends in the hills around Santa Fe, he had what he initially dismissed as night blindness, but soon tunnel vision was affecting him seriously. When he was in college, a famous specialist diagnosed him with retinitis pigmentosa (RP) — a genetic condition more prevalent among those with Ashkenazi Jewish heritage, as Leland has — and told him his sight would deteriorate slowly in his 20s and 30s, then rapidly in midlife.

Leland, now in his 40s, has resisted that doctor's prediction by maintaining a gradual pattern of vision loss. In the years that he was writing this book, though, he was coming to terms with his eventual complete blindness and had started using a cane and learning braille. Through his research and travels, he came to ...