Saturday, August 18, 2007

Oliver Sacks


I find Oliver Sack's books so wonderful I couldn't choose just one to review. Oliver Sacks is a neurologist who was born in England and has lived in New York since the 1960s. You may have seen the film Awakenings (616.832 SAC)which is about him. The book and the film are available at the library. In The man who mistook his wife for a hat(616.8 SAC) and An anthropologist on Mars(616.832 SAC) Dr Sacks presents in a warm and personal way, case histories of people struggling to live with conditions such as Tourette's Syndrome, autism, phantom limb syndrome and epilepsy. He investigates the world of the deaf in Seeing voices(362.42 OLI) and the colourblind in The island of the colourblind(616.8 SAC). He writes from the perspective of a doctor in Migraine, but he has also written as a patient in A leg to stand on(617.584092 SAC). He has even written a memoir of his youth called Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a chemical boyhood(617.584092 SAC). He writes about the truly fascinating human brain in an engaging and easy to understand way.