Letters

Oliver Sacks' Letters is a book for a lifetime, featuring letters to family and friends, scientists, artists, and writers, as well as ordinary people with odd symptoms and questions. It reveals an often surprising portrait of Sacks as he wrestles with the workings of his own brain and mind.

Format: Hardback
Length: 752 pages
Publication date: 07 November 2024
Publisher: Pan Macmillan

Oliver Sacks's Letters is a timeless masterpiece that deserves a place in everyone's life. Erica Wagner, the esteemed Books of the Year 2024 judge for New Statesman, has praised it as a "book for a lifetime." Sacks, a renowned humanist and astrophysicist, wrote to a diverse group of family and friends, including scientists, artists, writers, and even statesmen. Among his correspondents were Francis Crick, Antonio Damasio, Jane Goodall, W. H. Auden, Susan Sontag, Stephen Jay Gould, Björk, and his first cousin, Abba Eban. However, it is the letters addressed to ordinary people with their unique symptoms and questions that truly stand out. Sacks shares his struggles as a physician and a gay man, offering intimate accounts of his passions for competitive weightlifting, motorcycles, botany, and music. He also chronicles his penchant for pushing the boundaries of authority, discovering his writer's voice, and experiencing explosive seasons of discovery with his patients in his book Awakenings. Sacks' descriptions of his travels as a young man and the extraordinary people he encounters are lyrical, ferocious, penetrating, and hilarious. Many of his musings include the first detailed sketches of essays forming in his mind or miniature case histories that rival those in his beloved essay collections. Sensitively selected and introduced by Kate Edgar, Sacks's longtime editor, the letters trace the arc of a remarkable life and reveal an often surprising portrait of a man who was both a brilliant scientist and a compassionate human being. Oliver Sacks's Letters is a timeless masterpiece that deserves a place in everyone's life. Erica Wagner, the esteemed Books of the Year 2024 judge for New Statesman, has praised it as a "book for a lifetime." Sacks, a renowned humanist and astrophysicist, wrote to a diverse group of family and friends, including scientists, artists, writers, and even statesmen. Among his correspondents were Francis Crick, Antonio Damasio, Jane Goodall, W. H. Auden, Susan Sontag, Stephen Jay Gould, Björk, and his first cousin, Abba Eban. However, it is the letters addressed to ordinary people with their unique symptoms and questions that truly stand out. Sacks shares his struggles as a physician and a gay man, offering intimate accounts of his passions for competitive weightlifting, motorcycles, botany, and music. He also chronicles his penchant for pushing the boundaries of authority, discovering his writer's voice, and experiencing explosive seasons of discovery with his patients in his book Awakenings. Sacks' descriptions of his travels as a young man and the extraordinary people he encounters are lyrical, ferocious, penetrating, and hilarious. Many of his musings include the first detailed sketches of essays forming in his mind or miniature case histories that rival those in his beloved essay collections. Sensitively selected and introduced by Kate Edgar, Sacks's longtime editor, the letters trace the arc of a remarkable life and reveal an often surprising portrait of a man who was both a brilliant scientist and a compassionate human being.

Weight: 1002g
Dimension: 163 x 244 x 50 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781509821839