Books by Oliver Sacks

Book SynopsisHave you ever seen something that wasn't really there? Heard someone call your name in an empty house? Sensed someone following you and turned around to find nothing? Hallucinations don't belong wholly to the insane. Much more commonly, they are linked to sensory deprivation, intoxication, illness, or injury. In some conditions, hallucinations can lead to religious epiphanies or even the feeling of leaving one's own body. Humans have always sought such life-changing visions, and for thousands of years have used hallucinogenic compounds to achieve them. In Hallucinations, with his usual elegance, curiosity, and compassion, Dr Oliver Sacks weaves together stories of his patients and of his own mind-altering experiences to illuminate what hallucinations tell us about the organization and structure of our brains, how they have influenced every culture's folklore and art, and why the potential for hallucination is present in us all, a vital pTrade Review‘Oliver Sacks is a neurologist, a man of humane eloquence, and a genuine communicator’ Observer‘Sacks writes, basically, adventure stories, accounts of voyages into the unexplained territory of the brain. In doing so, he reveals a landscape far more complex and strange than anything we could infer from our daily interactions’ Sunday Times‘Sacks is above all a clinician, and writes with compassion and clarity . . . The result is a sort of humane discourse on the fragility of our minds, of the bodies that give rise to them, and of the world they create for us’ Daily Telegraph‘In measured prose with a blessed lack of jargon, Sacks explores the ingenuity with which individuals cope with bizarre neurological conditions . . . humane, empathic, he is the doctor you would want’ Independent‘Oliver Sacks has become the world’s best-known neurologist. His case studies of broken minds offer brilliant insight into the mysteries of consciousness’ Guardian'Sacks is at his most engaging when he brings the ostensibly strange into the realm of normality . . . This is where Sacks triumphs. Not just in the clarity with which he teaches us about the obscure phenomology of the human brain, but in the light his writings casts on even our most ordinary experiences.' Daily Telegraph‘The king of pop-neurology reveals how almost all of us have hallucinations’ GQ‘It’s a feat to bring any specialty in medicine vividly to life, and to do so without relinquishing the sensitivity and empathy that characterise the best doctors is something that few achieve. Oliver Sacks has managed it throughout his career . . . Affable, affectionate, respectful and smart, Sacks could be the David Attenborough of the human mind.’ Independent on Sunday'An enthralling, often guiltily comic insight into the pecularities the brain can conjure.' Irish Examiner'Oliver Sacks is a graceful, lucid and elegant prose stylist. Though perhaps above all, he is the witty, warm, humble and deeply compassionate explorer of how our brains influence our world . . . fascinating.' Lady'Hallucinations is an absorbing study of an exotic subject . . . Hallucinatory literature is either transgressive or presented as a search for enlightenment. This new volume sits elegantly between the two extremes and is more rewarding than either - a continuing investigation into what makes us human.' Literary Review'The greatest living ethnographer of those fascinating tribes qho live on the outer and still largely unchartered shores of the land of Mind-and-Brain.' Observer'A very human insight into what happens when our brains go awry.' Psychologies'Sacks writes in the the great tradition of literary doctors. He is humane, relaxed and amused, and loved a good anecdote.' Spectator'Startling and intriguing' Sunday Times‘No more enlightening science book has appeared this year . . . Miss this at your peril.’ Sunday Times Science Book of the Year 'A superb synthesis of the literature on these arresting, disturbing and sometimes terrifying phenomena, and a profound work of humanity.' TLS'Fascinating' * The Times *‘Wide-ranging, compassionate and ultimately revelatory . . . Hallucinations is the keystone of the amazing edifice that is this remarkable thinker’s oeuvre.’ Will Self, GuardianSacks's trip through the world of hallucinations - and his own LSD experiences - explains some of the mesmerising ways our brains can deceive us -- Best Books of 2013 * Sunday Times *

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Book SynopsisCelebrating Fifty Years of Picador BooksIf a man has lost a leg or an eye, he knows he has lost a leg or an eye; but if he has lost a self – himself – he cannot know it, because he is no longer there to know it. In this extraordinary book, Dr. Oliver Sacks recounts the stories of patients struggling to adapt to often bizarre worlds of neurological disorder. Here are people who can no longer recognize everyday objects or those they love; who are stricken with violent tics or shout involuntary obscenities, and yet are gifted with unusually acute artistic or mathematical talents. If sometimes beyond our surface comprehension, these brilliant tales illuminate what it means to be human. A provocative exploration of the mysteries of the human mind, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat is a million-copy bestseller by the twentieth century's greatest neurologist.Part of the Picador Collection, a series showcasing the best of modern literature.Trade ReviewA gripping journey into the recesses of the human mind * Daily Mail *Oliver Sacks has become the world's best-known neurologist. His case studies of broken minds offer brilliant insight into the mysteries of consciousness * Guardian *Populated by a cast as strange as that of the most fantastic fiction . . . Dr Sacks shows the awesome powers of our mind and just how delicately balanced they have to be * Sunday Times *Dr. Sacks's most absorbing book . . . His tales are so compelling [because] many of them serve as eerie metaphors not only for the condition of modern medicine but of modern man * New York Magazine *This book is for everybody who has felt from time to time that certain twinge of self-identity and sensed how easily, at any moment, one might lose it * The Times *A decidedly original approach . . . In addition to possessing the technical skills of a twentieth-century doctor, [Sacks] sees the human condition like a philosopher-poet. The resultant mixture is insightful, compassionate and moving . . . he recounts these histories with the lucidity and power of a gifted short-story writer . . . a masterpiece of clinical writing * New York Times *

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Book SynopsisOliver Sacks is a physician and the author of many books, including The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Awakenings (which inspired the Oscar-nominated film) and Musicophilia. Born in London and educated at Oxford, he held positions at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York University School of Medicine and was Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry at Columbia University. He is the first, and only, Columbia University Artist, and is also a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. In 2008, he was appointed Commander of the British Empire. His memoir, On the Move, was published shortly before his death in August 2015.Trade ReviewFascinating. Music, as Sacks explains, 'can pierce the heart directly'. And this is the truth that he so brilliantly focuses upon – that music saves, consoles and nourishes us. * Daily Mail *An elegantly outlined series of case studies . . . which reveal the depth to which music grips so many people. * Observer *

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Book SynopsisOliver Sacks was born in 1933 in London and was educated at Queen's College, Oxford. He completed his medical training at San Francisco's Mount Zion Hospital and at UCLA before moving to New York, where he soon encountered the patients whom he would write about in his book Awakenings.Dr Sacks spent almost fifty years working as a neurologist and wrote many books, including The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Musicophilia, and Hallucinations, about the strange neurological predicaments and conditions of his patients. The New York Times referred to him as 'the poet laureate of medicine', and over the years he received many awards, including honours from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Royal College of Physicians. In 2008, he was appointed Commander of the British Empire. His memoir, On the Move, was published shortly before his death in August 2015.Trade ReviewWriting simply and beautifully, Sacks uses individual case histories to reveal the infinite complexities of the human mind. * Daily Mail *Sacks' great gift is his capacity to place himself in the position of his subjects, to see the world the way they see it and to empathize with their condition with great compassion but without patronage or pity. * Daily Telegraph *

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Book SynopsisTwo weeks before his death, Oliver Sacks outlined the contents of The River of Consciousness, the last book he would oversee . . .The bestselling author of On the Move, Musicophilia, and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Sacks is known for his illuminating case histories about people living with neurological conditions at the far borderlands of human experience. But his grasp of science was not restricted to neuroscience or medicine; he was fascinated by the issues, ideas, and questions of all the sciences. That wide-ranging expertise and passion informs the perspective of this book, in which he interrogates the nature not only of human experience but of all life.In The River of Consciousness, Dr. Sacks takes on evolution, botany, chemistry, medicine, neuroscience, and the arts, and calls upon his great scientific and creative heroes - above all, Darwin, Freud, and William James. For Sacks, these thinkers were constant companiTrade ReviewReading a book published after its authors death, especially if he is as prodigiously alive on every page as Oliver Sacks, as curious, avid and thrillingly fluent, brings both the joy of hearing from him again, and the regret of knowing it will likely be the last time . . . [The] combination of wonder, passion and gratitude never seemed to flag in Sacks’s life; everything he wrote was lit with it. But it was his openness to new ideas and experiences, and his vision of change as the most human of biological processes that synthesized all of his work -- Nicole Krauss * The New York Times Book Review *Millions of Sacks’s books have been printed around the world, and he once spoke of receiving 200 letters a week from admirers. For those thousands of correspondents, The River of Consciousness will feel like a reprieve – we get to spend time again with Sacks the botanist, the historian of science, the marine biologist and, of course, the neurologist * Guardian *An incisive and generous inquiry into human nature * Elle *[Sacks’s] accumulated wisdom of our experience of time and consciousness makes a marvellous discrete series of meditations – and a profoundly moving one, since several of these pieces were written with the knowledge that his experience of both mysteries was soon coming to an end -- Tim Adams * Observer *Compelling . . . Sacks invites readers into his mind where they can experience the world from his unusually insightful perspective * Science News Magazine *A fascinating book * Daily Telegraph *Sacks continues in this latest collection to focus on questions over answers; the result is a work that leaves plenty of room for possibility beyond what might be immediately observed . . . Intellectually, Sacks is, at heart, a philosopher * New York Magazine *A writer of eloquence, he was always ready to see his medical specialist in reaction to the world and humanity . . . His greatest reverence is for the human mind * The Tablet *A joy to read: a delicious supply of information and commentary organized by a gifted writer of a curious and humane intelligence * The Washington Times *Reveals Sacks as a gleeful polymath and an inveterate seeker of meaning in the mold of Darwin and his other scientific heroes Sigmund Freud and William James . . . As this volume reminds us, in losing Sacks we lost a gifted and generous storyteller * Wall Street Journal *True to its title, the book is dictated by a flood of mental energy, thus it is more than mere sentimentality to say that, more than two years after his death, Sacks’s spirit still courses through us. Long may it flow * The Globe and Mail *Fans of the late neurologist have another chance to enjoy this erudite, compassionate storyteller, essayist, and memoirist . . . This collection of 10 essays, some of which appeared previously in The New York Review of Books, was assembled by three colleagues from an outline provided by Sacks two weeks before his death in 2015 . . . A collection of dissimilar pieces that reveal the scope of the author’s interests—sometimes challenging, always rewarding * Kirkus Reviews *Brilliant, beautiful, and funny . . . Sacks was one of the finest science writers – well read, scientifically exact and literary . . . This collection meets the standard of his previous work . . . Sacks's love of the natural world as well as the human one is contagious. The breadth of his interests encourages his readers to expand their own horizons . . . His curiosity and erudition, and his joy in both intellectual and physical life are in full bloom on these pages * Shelf Awareness *The reader is in thrall to Sacks's ability to braid wide reading, research and experience with his neurology patients to reach original and subtle conclusions . . . Darwin and Sacks, with their expansive abilities to look deeply into small matters and uncover, with evident delight, large truths, seem like brothers separated by a mere century * Chicago Tribune *Readers who encountered [Sacks's] mind through Awakenings mind The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat will be delighted by these pieces * The Washington Post *Fascinating . . . meditative . . . A useful introduction to his restless intellect and elegant sentences and a tribute to his scientific and philosophical heroes: Darwin, Freud and William James * San Francisco Chronicle *[Sacks] examines the fallibility of memory, the nature of creativity, the still monumental insights of Charles Darwin, and more - all with his characteristic sensitivity and spirit of optimism * Esquire *An exuberant, fascinating reminder of the brilliant neuroscientist who opened our eyes to hidden worlds . . . [A] wonder-filled collection * People *Reflects the agility of Sacks's enthusiasms, moving from forgetting and neglect in science to Freud's early work on the neuroanatomy of fish . . . Offer[s] a more humane version of what communion between the specialties might bring * Guardian *The writings are stitched through with Sacks's characteristic curiosity and verve, weaving esoteric research, incisive observations, and intimate anecdotes into lucid expositions on the natural world and those who seek to understand it * Wired *The warm genius of Oliver Sacks comes alive . . . Sacks brings the friendly curiosity for which he is so beloved to this ultimate testing ground of character, emerging once more as the brilliant, lovable human he was * Brain Pickings *

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Book SynopsisUncle Tungsten radiates all the delight and wonder of a boy’s adventures, and is an unforgettable portrait of an extraordinary young mind.Oliver Sacks evokes, with warmth and wit, his upbringing in wartime England. He tells of the large science-steeped family who fostered his early fascination with chemistry. There follow his years at boarding school where, though unhappy, he developed the intellectual curiosity that would shape his later life. And we hear of his return to London, an emotionally bereft ten-year-old who found solace in his passion for learning. ‘If you did not think that gallium and iridium could move you, this superb book will change your mind’ – The TimesTrade ReviewThis book is both a heartwarming account of a delightful, eccentric family life and an inspiring record of a remarkable intellectual odyssey. * Mail on Sunday *The amalgamation of personal recollection and scientific history makes a luminous, inspiring book. * Sunday Telegraph *Uncle Tungsten is really about the raw joy of scientific understanding; what it is like to be a precocious child discovering the alchemical secrets of reality for the first time: the sheer thrill of finding intelligible patterns in nature. * Guardian *

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Book SynopsisOliver Sacks is a physician and the author of many books, including The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Awakenings (which inspired the Oscar-nominated film) and Musicophilia. Born in London and educated at Oxford, he held positions at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York University School of Medicine and was Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry at Columbia University. He is the first, and only, Columbia University Artist, and is also a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. In 2008, he was appointed Commander of the British Empire. His memoir, On the Move, was published shortly before his death in August 2015.Trade ReviewSeeing Voices is a manifesto, characteristically humane and impassioned; once more, Sacks proves he is the doyen of science with a human face. * Sunday Times *Empathetic, intelligent and compassionate. * Guardian *A passionate meditation on the richness of sign language. * Independent *Scholarly and carefully documented, Seeing Voices makes the gigantic leap so essential to understanding total deafness. * Sunday Telegraph *

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Book SynopsisOliver Sacks died in August 2015 at his home in Greenwich Village, surrounded by his close friends and family. He was 82. He spent his final days doing what he loved: playing the piano, swimming, enjoying smoked salmon – and writing . . . As Dr Sacks looked back over his long, adventurous life his final thoughts were of gratitude. In a series of remarkable, beautifully written and uplifting meditations, in Gratitude Dr Sacks reflects on and gives thanks for a life well lived, and expresses his thoughts on growing old, facing terminal cancer and reaching the end. I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and travelled and thought and written. I have had an intercourse with the world, the special intercourse of writers and readers. Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.Trade ReviewEssays that capture the essence of what it means to have lived and to face death well -- Katie LawFour short beautiful essays by the celebrated late neurologist on his feelings as he came toward the end of his life – a slight but poignant read -- Sally Magnusson * Herald *

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Book SynopsisWhen Oliver Sacks was twelve years old, a perceptive schoolmaster wrote in his report: 'Sacks will go far, if he does not go too far'. It is now abundantly clear that Sacks has never stopped going . . .From its opening pages on his youthful obsession with motorcycles and speed, On the Move is infused with his restless energy. As he recounts his experiences as a young neurologist in the early 1960s, first in California and then in New York, where he discovered a long-forgotten illness in the back wards of a chronic hospital, as well as with a group of patients who would define his life, it becomes clear that Sacks's earnest desire for engagement has occasioned unexpected encounters and travels – sending him through bars and alleys, over oceans, and across continents.With unbridled honesty and humour, Sacks shows us that the same energy that drives his physical passions –bodybuilding, weightlifting, and swimming – also drives his cerebral passions. He writes about his love affairs, both romantic and intellectual, his guilt over leaving his family to come to America, his bond with his schizophrenic brother, and the writers and scientists – Thom Gunn, A. R. Luria, W. H. Auden, Gerald M. Edelman, Francis Crick – who influenced him.On the Move is the story of a brilliantly unconventional physician and writer – and of the man who has illuminated the many ways that the brain makes us human.Trade ReviewDeeply moving. . . a gift to his readers - of erudition, sympathy and an abiding understanding of the joys, trials and consolations of the human condition -- Michiko Kakutani * New York Times *Sacks's empathy and intellectual curiosity, his delight in, as he calls it, "joining particulars with generalities" and, especially, "narratives with neuroscience" - have never been more evident than in his beautifully conceived new book. . .remarkably candid and deeply affecting * Boston Globe *Honest, lucid, passionate, humorous, humane and human (also slightly Martian). . .[a] marvelous memoir, which is as unconventional and singular as the man himself -- Colin McGinn * Wall Street Journal *Absorbing * Chicago Tribune *A fascinating account - a sort of extended case study, really - of Sacks' remarkably active, iconoclastic adulthood. . . .On the Move is filled with both wonder and wonderments * LA Times *Intensely, beautifully, incandescently alive * Newsday *On the Move is as much a dense journal of Sacks's own astonishing, incident-rich life as a meaty handbook on how to live * Globe and Mail *No matter what he writes about - whether struggling to understand what his patients are going through, or describing his love of swimming or photography - Sacks always seems open to learning more. He appears keenly interested in everything and everyone he encounters. He's a wonderful storyteller, a gift he says he inherited from his parents, both of whom were doctors. But as he proves again in his latest . . . book, it's his keen attentiveness as a listener and observer, and his insatiable curiosity, that makes his work so powerful * San Francisco Chronicle *On the Move is entertaining and illuminating and sometimes shocking, and it's given a deep tinge of poignancy by Sacks' public announcement in February that he has terminal cancer. If On the Move is his effort, at age 81 and in the face of death, to record a life well lived, he has succeeded beautifully * Tampa Bay Times *A compelling read. . .The memoir offers a glimpse into one of the greatest minds of our time, made all the more special by the knowledge that it's one of his last gifts to a devoted readership * Men’s Journal *[Sacks'] delving accounts of the invalids he treats have until now stood in stark contrast to his restraint about revealing himself deeply, even though autobiographical threads run through such books as A Leg to Stand On, Uncle Tungsten and Hallucinations. A doctor - concerned, engaging, humane, eccentric and unforthcoming - has occupied the foreground in his self-description. With On the Move, he has finally presented himself as he has presented others: as both fully vulnerable and an object of curiosity. -- Andrew Solomon * New York Times *His truly has been a life lived to the full - and beyond . . . it is the adventure of ideas he has undertaken that has bestowed on his life its remarkable originality -- Will Self * Guardian *[Sacks] could not have written a more breathtaking account of his too-full life. Who knew the most important medical writer of our time was also a complete and total badass? * Men's Fitness *Sacks' zest for life has been extraordinary. . .Coursing through On the Move is his constant sense of joy in the natural world, in scientific epiphanies, and people in all their oddity. . . one of the most singular and inspiring men of our time -- Peter Forbes * Independent *Sacks's accounts are startling in their frankness and express the release of a wise man who, never burdened by snobbery, has also shed that petty encumbrance, embarrassment. . . In February this year Sacks revealed that he has terminal cancer. He wrote in The New York Times that, though not without fear, his predominant feeling is gratitude. "I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return." This book is a remarkable record of those exchanges * London Evening Standard *In this genial and often humorously narrated life, [Sacks] is very much alive and full of passionate energy, as well as of and wry self-awareness . . . He is an astute observer of the life around him. Judging from early motorcycle diaries and writings included here, he could have had an alternative career on the road with Hunter S Thompson * Guardian *Like many of his readers, some months ago I responded with a sense of real personal sadness when reading Sacks' New York Times op-ed announcing his "bad luck" of now facing a terminal cancer. I felt as if a vital window on the world were being closed. On the Move is a glorious memoir that throws open that window and illuminates the world that we have seen through it. In this volume Sacks opens himself to recognition, much as he has opened the lives of others to being recognized in their fullness -- Michael Roth * The Atlantic *This moving book confirms that it is Sacks's expansive passions for learning and for experience that have made his such a vigorous, fascinating and influential life . . .This book is a delight and a fine prompt to return to his earlier work * New Statesman *A lively read and a fascinating insight into a man who changed the way the world sees things. . .revealingand heartbreaking * Courier Mail *What emerges from On the Move is a celebration not just of a life, but of life itself, in all its glorious variousness and possibility. . . [a] joyous whirlwind of a book -- James Bradley * Capital City Daily *A wonderful legacy to leave behind . . .It's an unmitigated pleasure to be in the company of this physician, teacher and storyteller * Big Issue Australia *An affecting read. . .Much will be lost when we can no longer eagerly await the next gift from this dearly loved,stray Santa * The Conversation *

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Book Synopsis'A mine of treasures, a source of visions, a microcosm of human experience and suffering, the philosopher's stone: Migraine is a remarkable achievement' - Sunday Telegraph. Migraine is an age-old – the first recorded instances date back over two thousand years – and often debilitating condition, affecting a 'substantial minority' of the population across the globe. In Migraine, Oliver Sacks offers at once a medical account of its occurrence and management; an exploration of its physical, physiological, and psychological underpinnings and consequences; and a meditation on the nature and experience of health and illness.Trade ReviewIt delves into the workings of the brain with brilliant complexity, and should be required reading for migraine sufferers or those with an intellectual bent. * Cosmopolitan *Migraine is full of those wondrous insights that have made Oliver Sacks the most accessible and at the same time the most magisterial of doctors. -- Anita Brookner * Spectator *Written with Sacks's customary insight and grace, no book has helped me understand more about the mind-body connection. -- Hilary Mantel * Mail on Sunday *

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Book SynopsisOliver Sacks was born in 1933 in London and was educated at Queen's College, Oxford. He completed his medical training at San Francisco's Mount Zion Hospital and at UCLA before moving to New York, where he soon encountered the patients whom he would write about in his book Awakenings.Dr Sacks spent almost fifty years working as a neurologist and wrote many books, including The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Musicophilia, and Hallucinations, about the strange neurological predicaments and conditions of his patients. The New York Times referred to him as 'the poet laureate of medicine', and over the years he received many awards, including honours from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Royal College of Physicians. In 2008, he was appointed Commander of the British Empire. His memoir, On the Move, was published shortly before his death in August 2015.Trade ReviewThis is a wonderful book, made better by Sacks' exceptionally gentle descriptions of patients. He also captures the unimaginable sadness of the Pacific. * Spectator *There is no one at the present time who writes like Oliver Sacks . . . He is a superb clinician who can take a seemingly arid and obscure medical condition, and convert it into a moving, personal odyssey, a testament of tenacity, courage and will. * Literary Review *Dr Sacks is an elegant and beguiling writer, and when he describes a condition such as achromatopsia (total colour-blindness), he is not content merely to describe it from the outside, but he tries to imagine what the world is like to a person with the condition. * Sunday Telegraph *

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Book SynopsisOliver Sacks is a physician and the author of many books, including The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Awakenings (which inspired the Oscar-nominated film) and Musicophilia. Born in London and educated at Oxford, he held positions at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York University School of Medicine and was Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry at Columbia University. He is the first, and only, Columbia University Artist, and is also a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. In 2008, he was appointed Commander of the British Empire. His memoir, On the Move, was published shortly before his death in August 2015.Trade ReviewLike all the best journals, it has a rich immediacy . . . the book is a rare treat. * Globe and Mail *Sacks’s boundless curiosity is always a reward. * New York Times *

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Book SynopsisOliver Sacks was born in 1933 in London and was educated at the Queen's College, Oxford. He completed his medical training at San Francisco's Mount Zion Hospital and at UCLA before moving to New York, where he soon encountered the patients whom he would write about in his book Awakenings.Dr Sacks spent almost fifty years working as a neurologist and wrote many books, including The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat, Musicophilia, and Hallucinations, about the strange neurological predicaments and conditions of his patients. The New York Times referred to him as the poet laureate of medicine', and over the years he received many awards, including honours from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Royal College of Physicians. In 2008 he was appointed Commander of the British Empire. His memoir, On the Move, was published shortly before his death in August 2015.

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Book SynopsisOliver Sacks was born in 1933 in London and was educated at Queen's College, Oxford. He completed his medical training at San Francisco's Mount Zion Hospital and at UCLA before moving to New York, where he soon encountered the patients whom he would write about in his book Awakenings.Dr Sacks spent almost fifty years working as a neurologist and wrote many books, including The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Musicophilia, and Hallucinations, about the strange neurological predicaments and conditions of his patients. The New York Times referred to him as 'the poet laureate of medicine', and over the years he received many awards, including honours from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Royal College of Physicians. In 2008, he was appointed Commander of the British Empire. His memoir, On the Move, was published shortly before his death in August 2015.Trade ReviewThe Mind's Eye is about the possibility of recovery and the inexorable decline of the ageing individual. From this collision of incompatible truths, tragedy is made . . . making this Sacks's most powerful book to date. * Sunday Telegraph *Packed with wisdom, humour, extraordinary human stories and reflections on how we all perceive the world . . . He ends with a brilliant discussion of blindness and the ways in which blind people develop visual concepts. Heartily recommended’. * Reader’s Digest *

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Book SynopsisPart travelogue, part autobiography, part medical mystery, this moving book by the poet laureate of medicine (The New York Times) and bestselling author of Awakenings takes us to a tiny Pacific atoll and the island of Guam to explore the genesis of disease, the wonders of botany, and the complexities of being human.Sacks's total immersion in island life makes this luminous, beautifully written report a wonderous voyage of discovery. As a travel writer, Sacks ranks with Paul Theroux and Bruce Chatwin. As an investigator of the mind's mysteries, he is in a class by himself. —Publishers WeeklyFor Oliver Sacks, islands conjure up equally the romance of Melville and Stevenson, the adventure of Magellan and Cook, and the scientific wonder of Darwin and Wallace.Drawn to the tiny Pacific atoll of Pingelap by intriguing reports of an isolated community of islanders born totally color-blind, Sacks finds himself setting up a

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Book SynopsisFrom the renowned neurologist and bestselling author of Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat comes a fascinating investigation of the many manifestations of migraine, including the visual hallucinations and distortions of space, time, and body image which migraineurs can experience.“So erudite, so gracefully written, that even those people fortunate enough never to have had a migraine in their lives should find it equally compelling.” —The New York TimesThe many manifestations of migraine can vary dramatically from one patient to another, even within the same patient at different times. Among the most compelling and perplexing of these symptoms are the strange visual hallucinations and distortions of space, time, and body image which migraineurs sometimes experience. Portrayals of these uncanny states have found their way into many works of art, from the heavenly visions of Hildegard von Bingen to Alice in Wonderland. Dr. Oliver Sacks argues that migraine cannot be understood simply as an illness, but must be viewed as a complex condition with a unique role to play in each individual's life.

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Book SynopsisThe renowned neurologist and bestselling author of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat takes us on a journey into the world of deaf culture, and the underpinnings of the remarkable visual language of the congenitally deaf. This book will shake your preconceptions about the deaf, about language and about thought.... One of the finest and most thoughtful writers of our time. —Los Angeles Times Book ReviewLike The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, this is a fascinating voyage into a strange and wonderful land, a provocative meditation on communication, biology, adaptation, and culture.  In Seeing Voices, Oliver Sacks turns his attention to the subject of deafness, and the result is a deeply felt portrait of a minority struggling for recognition and respect—a minority with its own rich, sometimes astonishing, culture and unique visual language, an extraordinary mode of communication that tells us much about the basis of language in hearing people as well. Seeing Voices is, as Studs Terkel has written, an exquisite, as well as revelatory, work.

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Book SynopsisA deeply moving testimony and celebration of how to embrace life. No writer has succeeded in capturing the medical and human drama of illness as honestly and as eloquently as Oliver Sacks. During the last few months of his life, he wrote a set of essays in which he movingly explored his feelings about completing a life and coming to terms with his own death.“A series of heart-rending yet ultimately uplifting essays….A lasting gift to readers. —The Washington Post“It is the fate of every human being,” Sacks writes, “to be a unique individual, to find his own path, to live his own life, to die his own death.” Together, these four essays form an ode to the uniqueness of each human being and to gratitude for the gift of life.“My predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved. I have been given much and I have given something in return. Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.” —Oliver Sacks “Oliver Sacks was like no other clinician, or writer. He was drawn to the homes of the sick, the institutions of the most frail and disabled, the company of the unusual and the ‘abnormal.’ He wanted to see humanity in its many variants and to do so in his own, almost anachronistic way—face to face, over time, away from our burgeoning apparatus of computers and algorithms. And, through his writing, he showed us what he saw.” —Atul Gawande, author of Being Mortal

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Book SynopsisWhen neuroscientist Susan Barry was fifty years old, she took an unforgettable trip to Manhattan. As she emerged from the dim light of the subway into the sunshine, she saw a view of the city that she had witnessed many times in the past but now saw in an astonishingly new way. Skyscrapers on street corners appeared to loom out toward her like the bows of giant ships. Tree branches projected upward and outward, enclosing and commanding palpable volumes of space. Leaves created intricate mosaics in 3D. With each glance, she experienced the deliriously novel sense of immersion in a three dimensional world. Barry had been cross-eyed and stereoblind since early infancy. After half a century of perceiving her surroundings as flat and compressed, on that day she was seeing Manhattan in stereo depth for first time in her life. As a neuroscientist, she understood just how extraordinary this transformation was, not only for herself but for the scientific understanding of the human brain. Scientists have long believed that the brain is malleable only during acritical period&rdquo in early childhood. According to this theory, Barry''s brain had organized itself when she was a baby to avoid double vision-and there was no way to rewire it as an adult. But Barry found an optometrist who prescribed a little-known program of vision therapy after intensive training, Barry was ultimately able to accomplish what other scientists and even she herself had once considered impossible. A revelatory account of the brain''s capacity for change, Fixing My Gaze describes Barry''s remarkable journey and celebrates the joyous pleasure of our senses.

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Book SynopsisDr. Oliver Sacks’s books Awakenings, An Anthropologist on Mars, and the bestselling The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat have been acclaimed for their extraordinary compassion in the treatment of patients affected with profound disorders. In A Leg to Stand On, it is Sacks himself who is the patient: an encounter with a bull on a desolate mountain in Norway has left him with a severely damaged leg. But what should be a routine recuperation is actually the beginning of a strange medical journey when he finds that his leg uncannily no longer feels like part of his body. Sacks’s brilliant description of his crisis and eventual recovery is not only an illuminating examination of the experience of patienthood and the inner nature of illness and health but also a fascinating exploration of the physical basis of identity. This 1984 classic is now available in an expanded edition with a new foreword, written by Kate Edgar, executive director of the Oliver Sacks Foundation.

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Book SynopsisTHE INSPIRATION FOR THE NBC SERIES BRILLIANT MINDS • From the bestselling author of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat • Fascinating portraits of neurological disorder in which men, women, and one extraordinary child emerge as brilliantly adaptive personalities, whose conditions have not so much debilitated them as ushered them into another reality.Here are seven detailed narratives of neurological patients, including a surgeon consumed by the compulsive tics of Tourette's syndrome unless he is operating; an artist who loses all sense of color in a car accident, but finds a new sensibility and creative power in black and white; and an autistic professor who cannot decipher the simplest social exchange between humans, but has built a career out of her intuitive understanding of animal behavior.Sacks combines the well honed mind of an academician with the verve of a true storyteller.

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Book SynopsisFrom the bestselling author of Gratitude and Musicophilia, a collection of essays that displays Oliver Sacks's passionate engagement with the most compelling ideas of human endeavor: evolution, creativity, memory, time, consciousness, and experience.Oliver Sacks, scientist and storyteller, is beloved by readers for the extraordinary neurological case histories (Awakenings, An Anthropologist on Mars) in which he explored many now-familiar disorders--autism, Tourette syndrome, face blindness. He was also a memoirist who wrote with honesty and humor about the remarkable experiences that shaped him (Uncle Tungsten, On the Move, Gratitude). In the pieces that comprise The River of Consciousness (many first published in The New York Review of Books, among other places), Dr. Sacks takes on evolution, botany, chemistry, medicine, neuroscience, and the arts, and calls upon his great scientific and creative heroes--abo

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Book SynopsisOliver Sacks was born in 1933 in London and was educated at Queen's College, Oxford. He completed his medical training at San Francisco's Mount Zion Hospital and at UCLA before moving to New York, where he soon encountered the patients whom he would write about in his book Awakenings.Dr Sacks spent almost fifty years working as a neurologist and wrote many books, including The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Musicophilia, and Hallucinations, about the strange neurological predicaments and conditions of his patients. The New York Times referred to him as 'the poet laureate of medicine', and over the years he received many awards, including honours from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Royal College of Physicians. In 2008, he was appointed Commander of the British Empire. His memoir, On the Move, was published shortly before his death in August 2015.

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Book SynopsisOliver Sacks was born in 1933 in London and was educated at the Queen's College, Oxford. He completed his medical training at San Francisco's Mount Zion Hospital and at UCLA before moving to New York, where he soon encountered the patients whom he would write about in his book Awakenings.Dr Sacks spent almost fifty years working as a neurologist and wrote many books, including The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Musicophilia, and Hallucinations, about the strange neurological predicaments and conditions of his patients. The New York Times referred to him as 'the poet laureate of medicine', and over the years he received many awards, including honours from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Royal College of Physicians. In 2008, he was appointed Commander of the British Empire. His memoir, On the Move, was published shortly before his death in August 2015.

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Book SynopsisTHE INSPIRATION FOR THE NBC SERIES BRILLIANT MINDS • A Contemporary Classics hardcover edition of Dr. Sacks's most extraordinary book, in which the poet laureate of medicine” (The New York Times) recounts fascinating case histories of patients with neurological disorders.An influential landmark in the tradition of writing about the body and the brain, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat tells the stories of individuals afflicted with perceptual and intellectual disorders: patients who have lost their memories and with them the greater part of their pasts; who are no longer able to recognize people and common objects; whose limbs seem alien to them; who lack some skills yet are gifted with uncanny artistic or mathematical talents.In Dr. Sacks’s splendid and sympathetic telling, his patients are deeply human and his tales are studies of struggles against incredible adversity. A great healer, Sacks never loses sight of medicine’s ultimate responsibility: “the suffering, afflicted, fighting human subject.”Everyman's Library pursues the highest production standards, printing on acid-free paper, with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, European-style half-round spines, and a full-color illustrated jacket. Contemporary Classics include an introduction, a select bibliography, and a chronology of the author's life and times.

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Book SynopsisFrom the best-selling author of Gratitude and On the Move, a final volume of essays that showcase Sacks's broad range of interests—from his passion for ferns, swimming, and horsetails, to his final case histories exploring schizophrenia, dementia, and Alzheimer's.Oliver Sacks, scientist and storyteller, is beloved by readers for his neurological case histories and his fascination and familiarity with human behavior at its most unexpected and unfamiliar. Everything in Its Place is a celebration of Sacks's myriad interests, told with his characteristic compassion and erudition, and in his luminous prose.

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Book SynopsisOliver Sacks was born in 1933 in London and was educated at the Queen's College, Oxford. He completed his medical training at San Francisco's Mount Zion Hospital and at UCLA before moving to New York, where he soon encountered the patients whom he would write about in his book Awakenings.Dr Sacks spent almost fifty years working as a neurologist and wrote many books, including The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat, Musicophilia, and Hallucinations, about the strange neurological predicaments and conditions of his patients. The New York Times referred to him as the poet laureate of medicine', and over the years he received many awards, including honours from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Royal College of Physicians. In 2008 he was appointed Commander of the British Empire. His memoir, On the Move, was published shortly before his death in August 2015.

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Book Synopsis‘Oliver Sacks is a perfect antidote to the anaesthetic of familiarity. His writing turns brains and minds transparent’ - ObserverWhen Oliver Sacks, a physician by profession, injured his leg while climbing a mountain, he found himself in an unusual position – that of patient. The injury itself was severe, but straightforward to fix; the psychological effects, however, were far less easy to predict, explain, or resolve: Sacks experienced paralysis and an inability to perceive his leg as his own, instead seeing it as some kind of alien and inanimate object, over which he had no control.A Leg to Stand On is both an account of Sacks’ ordeal and subsequent recovery, and an exploration of the ways in which mind and body are inextricably linked.Trade ReviewOliver Sacks is a neurologist, a man of humane eloquence, and a genuine communicator. The value of this book lies in its willingness to combine the technical and the demonic, to admit poetry and philosophy and the religious impulse. It is also intensely personal, and affirms the community of human experience. * Observer *In every way a marvellously rich and thoughtful tale. * Sunday Telegraph *A remarkable, generous, vivid and thoroughly intelligent piece of writing. * Sunday Times *

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Book SynopsisNeurologist Oliver Sacks investigates the complex relationship between the brain and the mind and, almost impossibly, manages to make his subject matter not only accessible to the general reader, but utterly absorbing. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat tells the stories of individuals suffering from perceptual and intellectual disorders: patients who have lost their memories and with them the greater part of their pasts; who are no longer able to recognize people and common objects; whose limbs seem alien to them; who lack some skills yet are gifted with uncanny artistic or mathematical talents. Their struggles are recounted with sympathy and respect. A great healer, Sacks never loses sight of medicine's ultimate responsibility to assist 'the suffering, afflicted, fighting human subject'.A work of profound humanity.Trade ReviewPopulated by a cast as strange as that of the most fantastic fiction . . . Dr Sacks shows the awesome powers of our mind and just how delicately balanced they have to be. * Sunday Times *This book is for everybody who has felt from time to time that certain twinge of self-identity and sensed how easily, at any moment, one might lose it. * The Times *Oliver Sacks has become the world's best-known neurologist. His case studies of broken minds offer brilliant insight into the mysteries of consciousness * Guardian *Insightful, compassionate, moving . . . the lucidity and power of a gifted writer * New York Times Book Review *

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