Oliver Sacks

Hallucinations don't belong wholly to the insane. They are commonly linked to sensory deprivation, intoxication, illness, or injury. For thousands of years, humans have used hallucinogenics to achieve them. Here, with elegance, curiosity, and compassion, Oliver Sacks weaves together stories of his patients and of his own mind-altering experiences to illuminate what hallucinations tell us about our brains, our culture, and ourselves. (Bestseller).

"Two weeks before his death, Oliver Sacks outlined the contents of The River of Consciousness, the last book he would oversee. The best-selling 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...

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." 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, where he struggled with drug addiction, and then in New York, where...

Describes the author's work with institutionalized patients at Mount Carmel Hospital and the dramatic effects of the drug L-DOPA on twenty patients suffering from encephalitic Parkinsonism. A series of case studies of some of the people who developed a sleeping-sickness after World War I and remained in a sleep state until given the drug L-Dopa. Also describes their lives, the transformation after awakening, and then describes parts of the film made...

"From the best-selling author of Gratitude and On the Move, a final volume of essays that showcases Sacks's broad range of interests--from his passions 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, his fascination and familiarity with human behavior at its most unexpected and unfamiliar....

Dr. 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...