Letters

By: Oliver Sacks, Kate Edgar - editor

Narrated by: James Langton, Kate Edgar

One of The New Statesman's Best Books of the Year
One of Kirkus Reviews' Best Nonfiction Books of 2024
One of The New Yorker's 'Best Books We've Read in 2024 So Far'

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE • 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.

Beautiful letters by a beautiful mind

Extremely grateful to have gotten more of a glimpse of this extraordinary man’s mind. Great to know he was thinking about the evolution of eyes and other Darwinian themes in the end.

Too Much

While Oliver Sacks was a remarkable man who accomplished much in his life, this collection of his letters was way too long. The compiler of this tome did little to cull the collection leaving the reader/listener to plow through way too much information. I would have enjoyed it far more if she had narrowed the collection to at least half of what is contained in the book and left those letters that help paint a portrait of the man.