Author(s): Oliver Sacks

Biography & Memoir

From Oliver Sacks - the distinguished neurologist and master storyteller - a personal account of a childhood, told with the charm and unexpected power of his celebrated case histories. In this wonderful memoir Sacks evokes, with warmth and wit, his childhood in wartime England. He tells of the large scientifically minded family who fostered his early fascination with metals. Then there were his four years at boarding school where, though unhappy, he developed the intellectual curiosity that would shape his life. We hear of his return to London, an emotionally bereft ten-year-old who found solace in the secret garden of his passion for learning - about the nature of metals, gases, and chemicals; about the hidden order of things outside himself. Uncle Tungsten radiates the magic, the delight, and the wonder as a young boy discovers the unquenchable desire for knowledge. It is an unforgettable portrait of an extraordinary mind. Oliver Sacks was born in London in 1933 and educated at Queen's College, Oxford, and the Middlesex Hospital, prior to further work and training in the US. Following a period of research in neurochemistry and neuropathology he returned to clinical work, interesting himself particularly in migraine and the care of post-encephalitic patients (as described in Awakenings). He is the author of A Leg to Stand On, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Seeing Voices, Migraine, An Anthropologist on Mars, Neurology of the Soul and The Island of the Colourblind. Paperback