Oliver 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, 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."
When 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
A remarkable celebration of Sackss varied interests, told with his characteristic compassion and erudition, and in his luminous prose. From the bestselling author of Gratitude and On the Move, a final volume of essays that showcase Sackss broad range of interests - from his passion for ferns, swimming, and horsetails, to his final case histories exploring schizophrenia, dementia, and Alzheimers. 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 Sackss myriad interests.
These case studies recall the "awakenings" of patients that had responded to L-Dopa after decades of coma-like existence caused by a mysterious sleeping sickness. Rendered in Oliver Sacks'' signature style, this book was the basis for the 1990 film of the same name.
By the author of "Seeing Voices', this is a narrative about the awakening of 20 patients from a zombie-like state they had suffered for over 40 years. A new drug meant the sleeping sickness disease was now treatable. Sacks tells the history, offers his own observations and the patients' reactions
his memoir from Oliver Sacks is both a departure from and an enhancement of his previous psychologically orientated 'medical' writing. Not only is it a beautifully written account of an English childhood - seasoned by a childish passion for science - but it is told from the intimate and revelatory perspective of one of the most important and humane writers on psychology alive today. Oliver Sacks has the literary artistry of W.H. Auden and the intellectual rigour and questioning mind of Stephen Jay Gould. The world authority in his field, this is a remarkable insight into the mind and background of one of the finest and most accessible scientists today. Case history as literature, in the most personal, delightful and fascinating way possible.
