Awakenings (Paperback)

Awakenings By Oliver Sacks Cover Image
$18.00
On Our Shelves Now
1 on hand, as of Mar 27 7:33am
(Psychology)

Description


The classic account of survivors of the sleeping-sickness during the great epidemic just after World War Iand their return to the world after decades of “sleep.” •  From the distinguished neurologist and the bestselling author of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat

“One of the most beautifully composed and moving works of our time." —The Washington Post

Awakenings—which inspired the major motion picture starring Robert DeNiro and Robin Williams—is the remarkable story of a group of patients who contracted sleeping-sickness during the great epidemic just after World War I. Frozen for decades in a trance-like state, these men and women were given up as hopeless until 1969, when Dr. Oliver Sacks gave them the then-new drug L-DOPA, which had an astonishing, explosive, "awakening" effect. Dr. Sacks recounts the moving case histories of his patients, their lives, and the extraordinary transformations which went with their reintroduction to a changed world.

About the Author


OLIVER SACKS was a neurologist, writer, and professor of medicine. Born in London in 1933, he moved to New York City in 1965, where he launched his medical career and began writing case studies of his patients. Called the “poet laureate of medicine” by The New York Times, Sacks is the author of thirteen books, including The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Musicophilia, and Awakenings, which inspired an Oscar-nominated film and a play by Harold Pinter. He was the recipient of many awards and honorary degrees, and was made a Commander of the British Empire in 2008 for services to medicine. He died in 2015.

Praise For…


"One of the most beautifully composed and moving works of our time." —The Washington Post

"Compulsively readable. . . . Dr. Sacks writes beautifully and with exceptional subtlety and penetration into both the state of mind of his patients and the nature of illness generally. . . . A brilliant and humane book." —A. Alvarez, The Observer

"[Sacks] opens to the reader doors of perception generally passed through only by those at the far borders of human experience." —The Boston Globe

"A masterpiece." —W. H. Auden
Product Details
ISBN: 9780375704055
ISBN-10: 0375704051
Publisher: Vintage
Publication Date: October 5th, 1999
Pages: 464
Language: English
Series: Vintage