9INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER - A "wonderful memoir" (Los Angeles Times) about a brilliantly unconventional physician and writer, a man who has illuminated the many ways that the brain makes us human. - "Intimate.... Brim[s] with life and affection." --The New York Times

When Oliver Sacks was twelve years old, a perceptive schoolmaster wrote: "Sacks will go far, if he does not go too far." It is now abundantly clear that Sacks has never stopped going. With unbridled honesty and humor, Sacks writes about the passions that have driven his life--from motorcycles and weight lifting to neurology and poetry. He writes about his love affairs, both romantic and intellectual; his guilt over leaving his family to come to America; his bond with his schizophrenic brother; and the writers and scientists--W. H. Auden, Gerald M. Edelman, Francis Crick--who have influenced his work.