From 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.
From the best-selling author of Gratitude, On the Move,
and Musicophilia, a collection of essays that displays
Oliver Sacks's passionate engagement with the most compelling and
seminal ideas of human endeavor. evolution, creativity, memory,
time, consciousness, and experience.
“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.
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.
Have 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 The Mind’s Eye, Oliver Sacks tells the stories of
people who are able to navigate the world and communicate with
others despite losing what many of us consider indispensable senses
and abilities. the power of speech, the capacity to recognize
faces, the sense of three-dimensional space, the ability to read,
the sense of sight.
Music can move us to the heights or depths of emotion. It can
persuade us to buy something, or remind us of our first date. It
can lift us out of depression when nothing else can. It can get us
dancing to its beat. But the power of music goes much, much
further.
