Everything in Its Place
First Loves and Last Tales
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4.7 • 13 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
From the legendary author of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: a volume of essays on everything from primordial life and the mysteries of the brain to the ancient ginkgo and the power of the written word.
"Magical . . . [Everything in Its Place] showcases the neurologist's infinitely curious mind."—People Magazine
In this volume, Oliver Sacks examines the many passions that defined his life--both as a doctor engaged with the central questions of human existence and as a polymath conversant in all the sciences. Everything in Its Place brings together writings on a rich variety of topics. Why do humans need gardens? How, and when, does a physician tell his patient she has Alzheimer's? What is social media doing to our brains? In several of the compassionate case histories included here, we see Sacks consider the enigmas of depression, psychosis, and schizophrenia for the first time. In others, he returns to conditions that have long fascinated him: Tourette's syndrome, aging, dementia, and hallucinations. In counterpoint to these elegant investigations of what makes us human, this volume also includes pieces that celebrate Sacks's love of the natural world--and his final meditations on life in the twenty-first century.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this lovely collection of previously unpublished essays, the late, celebrated author and neurologist Sacks (The River of Consciousness) muses on his career, his youth, the mental health field, and much more. Readers will learn of influences that molded Sacks's brilliant mind, from the cephalopod specimens at the Natural History Museum in London to the "visionary, mystical" 19th-century scientist Humphry Davy, whom Sacks dubs the "Poet of Chemistry." Of the many remarkable essays on medical conditions, "Travels with Lowell" stands out for its sensitivity and nuance, as Sacks travels the world alongside a photographer with Tourette's, interviewing others with the condition, including one man who could trace incidents of the syndrome back six generations in his family, yet was not officially diagnosed until age 38. Sacks also recalls being consulted in the case of actor/writer Spalding Gray, who became desperately, compulsively depressed after a brain injury in 2001 and died by suicide three years later. Sacks's gentle, ruminative voice is a salve when investigating difficult subject matter, but there are plenty of lighter moments as well, as in a brief discussion of a topic dear to his heart New York City's many and varied streetlamps. Piercingly insightful and delightfully strange, Sacks's final collection is a treat for the chronically curious.
