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Oliver Sacks

Biography

Oliver Sacks

Dr. Oliver Sacks spent more than 50 years working as a neurologist and writing books about the neurological predicaments and conditions of his patients, including THE MAN WHO MISTOOK HIS WIFE FOR A HAT, MUSICOPHILIA and HALLUCINATIONS. The New York Times referred to him as “the poet laureate of medicine,” and over the years he received many awards, including honors from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and the Royal College of Physicians. His memoir ON THE MOVE was published shortly before his death in August 2015.

Oliver Sacks

Books by Oliver Sacks

by Oliver Sacks - Essays, Nonfiction, Science

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' myriad interests --- from his passion for ferns, swimming and horsetails, to his final case histories exploring schizophrenia, dementia and Alzheimer's --- told with his characteristic compassion and erudition, and in his luminous prose.

by Oliver Sacks - Nonfiction, Science

Oliver Sacks is beloved by readers for the extraordinary neurological case histories in which he explored many now-familiar disorders. He was also a memoirist who wrote with honesty and humor about the remarkable experiences that shaped him. In the pieces that comprise 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. The questions they explored --- the meaning of evolution, the roots of creativity, and the nature of consciousness --- lie at the heart of science and of this book.

by Oliver Sacks - Memoir, Nonfiction

From its opening pages on his youthful obsession with motorcycles and speed, ON THE MOVE is infused with Oliver Sacks’ restless energy. As he recounts his experiences as a young neurologist in the early 1960s, first in California, where he struggled with drug addiction, and then in New York, where he discovered a long-forgotten illness in the back wards of a chronic hospital, we see how his engagement with patients comes to define his life.

by Oliver Sacks - Essays, Nonfiction

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. “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.

by Oliver Sacks - Nonfiction, Science

Hallucinations range from the shimmering zigzags of a visual migraine to powerful visions brought on by fever, injuries, drugs, sensory deprivation, exhaustion, or even grief. Drawing on his own experiences, a wealth of clinical cases from among his patients, and famous historical examples ranging from Dostoevsky to Lewis Carroll, legendary neurologist Oliver Sacks investigates the mystery of these sensory deceptions: what they say about the working of our brains, how they have influenced our folklore and culture, and why the potential for hallucination is present in us all.