Letters

The letters of one of the greatest observers of the human species, revealing his passion for life and work, friendship and art, medicine and society, and the richness of his relationships with friends, family, and fellow intellectuals over the decades, collected here for the first time

“Here is the unedited Oliver Sacks—struggling, passionate, a furiously intelligent misfit. And also endless interesting. He was a man like no other.” —Atul Gawande, author of Being Mortal

Dr. Oliver Sacks—who describes himself in these pages as a “philosophical physician” and a “neuropathological Talmudist”—wrote letters throughout his life: to his parents and his beloved Auntie Len, to friends and colleagues from London, Oxford, California, and around the world. The letters begin with his arrival in America as a young man, eager to establish himself away from the confines of postwar England, and carry us through his bumpy early career in medicine and the discovery of his writer’s voice; his weight-lifting, motorcycle-riding years and his explosive seasons of discovery with the patients who populate his book Awakenings; his growing interest in matters of sight and the musical brain; his many friendships and exchanges with writers, artists, and scientists (to say nothing of astronauts, botanists, and mathematicians), and his deep gratitude for all these relationships at the end of his life.

Sensitively introduced and edited by Kate Edgar, Sacks’s longtime editor, the letters deliver a portrait of Sacks as he wrestles with the workings of the brain and mind. We see, through his eyes, the beginnings of modern neuroscience, following the thought processes of one of the great intellectuals of our time, whose words, as evidenced in these pages, were unfailingly shaped with generosity and wonder toward other people.“Here is the unedited Oliver Sacks—struggling, passionate, a furiously intelligent misfit. And also endless interesting. He was a man like no other.” —Atul Gawande, author of Being Mortal

“Edgar—the longtime assistant, editor, and researcher for Sacks (1933–2015)—provides an intimate window into the neurologist’s personal and professional lives in this expansive collection of his correspondence. Sacks’s trademark lyricism is evident throughout. . . . What emerges is a pointillistic portrait of an incredible intellect with all-too-human frailties and an insatiable curiosity about the human condition. This is an essential resource for understanding Sacks.” —Publishers Weekly

“Very enjoyable. . . . A lifetime of correspondence adds new dimensions to a brilliant mind’s oeuvre.” —Kirkus Reviews

"Oliver Sacks’s letters are superb—fluent, brilliant, candid, intimate—and some of them are deliriously passionate. Oliver could write a multi-page love letter as well as a lengthy analysis of a drug state or a neurological condition. Taken together, over more than fifty years, they constitute an autobiography in epistolary form." —Paul Theroux, author of The Mosquito Coast and Burma Sahib

"Here is Oliver Sacks annealed. All his largehearted curiosity, all his childlike wonder at how everything coheres, all the self-doubt trembling beneath his brilliance, come alive on these pages. One is left magnified just by bearing witness to this vast and solitary mind, searching for connection and discovering himself." —Maria Popova, author of Figuring

“Be prepared to discover a world of human treasures in the letters of Oliver Sacks. Sacks wrote copiously to family and friends, as expected, but he also wrote abundantly to several colleagues in the universe of biology, neuroscience and psychology, during a seminal period (which includes the last two decades of the twentieth century and the first two decades of the twenty-first). One marvel here is that Sacks’ literary genius manages to reveal both sides of a conversation, although we are only made privy to his perspective on the issues.” —Antonio Damasio, author of Feeling and KnowingOLIVER SACKS spent more than fifty years working as a neurologist and writing essays about the neurological predicaments of his patients. His articles appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, and The New York Times, which referred to him as “the poet laureate of medicine.” His many bestselling books, including The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Musicophilia, and Awakenings, have been translated into dozens of languages and enchanted millions of readers. Dr. Sacks was profiled by the filmmaker Ric Burns in the PBS American Masters film Oliver Sacks: His Own Life, and his book Awakenings inspired the Hollywood film starring Robert De Niro and Robin Williams.