An impassioned, tender and joyous memoir by the author of Musicophilia and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.
Oliver Sacks was born in 1933 in London and was educated at Queen's
College, Oxford. He completed his medical training at San
Francisco's Mount Zion Hospital and at UCLA before moving to New
York, where he soon encountered the patients whom he would write
about in his book Awakenings.
Dr Sacks spent almost fifty years working as a neurologist and
wrote many books, including The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat,
Musicophilia, and Hallucinations, about the strange neurological
predicaments and conditions of his patients. The New York Times
referred to him as 'the poet laureate of medicine.' His memoir, On
the Move, was published shortly before his death in August
2015.
For more information, please visit www.oliversacks.com.
Deeply moving. . . a gift to his readers - of erudition, sympathy
and an abiding understanding of the joys, trials and consolations
of the human condition
*New York Times*
Sacks's empathy and intellectual curiosity, his delight in, as he
calls it, "joining particulars with generalities" and, especially,
"narratives with neuroscience" - have never been more evident than
in his beautifully conceived new book. . .remarkably candid and
deeply affecting
*Boston Globe*
Honest, lucid, passionate, humorous, humane and human (also
slightly Martian). . .[a] marvelous memoir, which is as
unconventional and singular as the man himself
*Wall Street Journal*
Absorbing
*Chicago Tribune*
A fascinating account - a sort of extended case study, really - of
Sacks' remarkably active, iconoclastic adulthood. . . .On the Move
is filled with both wonder and wonderments
*LA Times*
Intensely, beautifully, incandescently alive
*Newsday*
On the Move is as much a dense journal of Sacks's own astonishing,
incident-rich life as a meaty handbook on how to live
*Globe and Mail*
No matter what he writes about - whether struggling to understand
what his patients are going through, or describing his love of
swimming or photography - Sacks always seems open to learning more.
He appears keenly interested in everything and everyone he
encounters. He's a wonderful storyteller, a gift he says he
inherited from his parents, both of whom were doctors. But as he
proves again in his latest . . . book, it's his keen attentiveness
as a listener and observer, and his insatiable curiosity, that
makes his work so powerful
*San Francisco Chronicle*
On the Move is entertaining and illuminating and sometimes
shocking, and it's given a deep tinge of poignancy by Sacks' public
announcement in February that he has terminal cancer. If On the
Move is his effort, at age 81 and in the face of death, to record a
life well lived, he has succeeded beautifully
*Tampa Bay Times*
A compelling read. . .The memoir offers a glimpse into one of the
greatest minds of our time, made all the more special by the
knowledge that it's one of his last gifts to a devoted
readership
*Men’s Journal*
[Sacks'] delving accounts of the invalids he treats have until now
stood in stark contrast to his restraint about revealing himself
deeply, even though autobiographical threads run through such books
as A Leg to Stand On, Uncle Tungsten and Hallucinations. A doctor -
concerned, engaging, humane, eccentric and unforthcoming - has
occupied the foreground in his self-description. With On the Move,
he has finally presented himself as he has presented others: as
both fully vulnerable and an object of curiosity.
*New York Times*
His truly has been a life lived to the full - and beyond . . . it
is the adventure of ideas he has undertaken that has bestowed on
his life its remarkable originality
*Guardian*
[Sacks] could not have written a more breathtaking account of his
too-full life. Who knew the most important medical writer of our
time was also a complete and total badass?
*Men's Fitness*
Sacks' zest for life has been extraordinary. . .Coursing through On
the Move is his constant sense of joy in the natural world, in
scientific epiphanies, and people in all their oddity. . . one of
the most singular and inspiring men of our time
*Independent*
Sacks's accounts are startling in their frankness and express the
release of a wise man who, never burdened by snobbery, has also
shed that petty encumbrance, embarrassment. . . In February this
year Sacks revealed that he has terminal cancer. He wrote in The
New York Times that, though not without fear, his predominant
feeling is gratitude. "I have loved and been loved; I have been
given much and I have given something in return." This book is a
remarkable record of those exchanges
*London Evening Standard*
In this genial and often humorously narrated life, [Sacks] is very
much alive and full of passionate energy, as well as of and wry
self-awareness . . . He is an astute observer of the life around
him. Judging from early motorcycle diaries and writings included
here, he could have had an alternative career on the road with
Hunter S Thompson
*Guardian*
Like many of his readers, some months ago I responded with a sense
of real personal sadness when reading Sacks' New York Times op-ed
announcing his "bad luck" of now facing a terminal cancer. I felt
as if a vital window on the world were being closed. On the Move is
a glorious memoir that throws open that window and illuminates the
world that we have seen through it. In this volume Sacks opens
himself to recognition, much as he has opened the lives of others
to being recognized in their fullness
*The Atlantic*
This moving book confirms that it is Sacks's expansive passions for
learning and for experience that have made his such a vigorous,
fascinating and influential life . . .This book is a delight and a
fine prompt to return to his earlier work
*New Statesman*
A lively read and a fascinating insight into a man who changed the
way the world sees things. . .revealing
and heartbreaking
*Courier Mail*
What emerges from On the Move is a celebration not just of a life,
but of life itself, in all its glorious variousness and
possibility. . . [a] joyous whirlwind of a book
*Capital City Daily*
A wonderful legacy to leave behind . . .It's an unmitigated
pleasure to be in the company of this physician, teacher and
storyteller
*Big Issue Australia*
An affecting read. . .Much will be lost when we can no longer
eagerly await the next gift from this dearly loved,
stray Santa
*The Conversation*
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