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Picador Uncle Tungsten
Oliver Sacks's luminous memoir <I>Uncle Tungsten</I> charts the growth of a mind. Born in 1933 into a family of formidably intelligent London Jews, he discovered the wonders of the physical sciences early from his parents and their flock of brilliant siblings, most notably Uncle Tungsten (real name, Dave), who manufactured lightbulbs with filaments of fine tungsten wire. Metals were the substances that first attracted young Oliver, and his descriptions of their colours, textures and properties are as sensuous and romantic as an art lover's rhapsodies over an Old Master. Seamlessly interwoven with his personal recollections is a masterful survey of scientific history, with emphasis on the great chemists like Robert Boyle, Antoine Lavoisier and Humphry Davy (Sacks's personal hero). Yet this is not a dry intellectual autobiography; his parents in particular, both doctors, are vividly sketched. His sociable father loved house calls and was drawn to medicine because its practice was central in human society, while his shy mother had an intense feeling for structure... for her [medicine] was part of natural history and biology. For young Oliver, unhappy at the brutal boarding school he was sent to during the war, and afraid that he would become mentally ill like his older brother, chemistry was a refuge in an uncertain world. He would outgrow his passion for metals and become a neurologist, but as readers of <I>Awakenings</I> and <I>The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat</I> know, he would never leave behind his conviction that science is a profoundly human endeavour. --<I>Wendy Smith</I>
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£17.09
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Picador Migraine
Pages: 368, Paperback, Picador
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£7.19
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Picador The Island of the Colourblind
Pages: 336, Paperback, Picador
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£6.39
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Gerald Duckworth & Co Ltd Awakenings
Pages: 448, Hardcover, Gerald Duckworth & Co Ltd
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£21.99
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Picador Uncle Tungsten
Oliver Sacks's luminous memoir <I>Uncle Tungsten</I> charts the growth of a mind. Born in 1933 into a family of formidably intelligent London Jews, he discovered the wonders of the physical sciences early from his parents and their flock of brilliant siblings, most notably Uncle Tungsten (real name, Dave), who manufactured lightbulbs with filaments of fine tungsten wire. Metals were the substances that first attracted young Oliver, and his descriptions of their colours, textures and properties are as sensuous and romantic as an art lover's rhapsodies over an Old Master. Seamlessly interwoven with his personal recollections is a masterful survey of scientific history, with emphasis on the great chemists like Robert Boyle, Antoine Lavoisier and Humphry Davy (Sacks's personal hero). Yet this is not a dry intellectual autobiography; his parents in particular, both doctors, are vividly sketched. His sociable father loved house calls and was drawn to medicine because its practice was central in human society, while his shy mother had an intense feeling for structure... for her [medicine] was part of natural history and biology. For young Oliver, unhappy at the brutal boarding school he was sent to during the war, and afraid that he would become mentally ill like his older brother, chemistry was a refuge in an uncertain world. He would outgrow his passion for metals and become a neurologist, but as readers of <I>Awakenings</I> and <I>The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat</I> know, he would never leave behind his conviction that science is a profoundly human endeavour. --<I>Wendy Smith</I>
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£7.19
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Picador Seeing Voices
Pages: 208, Paperback, Picador
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£5.59
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Picador A Leg to Stand on
Pages: 208, Paperback, Picador
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£6.39
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Picador Awakenings
It hardly seems fair that so many great doctors are also great writers. Perhaps it's qualities like sensitivity, craft and dedication that keep physicians like Oliver Sacks in hospitals all day and at writing desks all night; if nothing else, these qualities shine in books like <I>Awakenings</I>. This powerful set of case histories rises above its pathological foundation to find new literary territory, a medical-spiritual synthesis equally stimulating for the mind and the soul. It's no wonder Hollywood chose to turn it into a feature film--anyone can see the universal human struggle against bondage and despair in these pages.<p>The sleeping-sickness epidemic of 1918 caused hundreds of survivors to slip into a bizarre rigid paralysis with similarities to advanced Parkinson's disease. These patients, only occasionally able to communicate or move, were nearly all institutionalised for life, their ranks increasing every now and then with similarly afflicted men and women. Sacks came to work at a long-term care facility shortly before the first exciting results with L-DOPA and Parkinson's in the late 1960s and his patients soon embarked on dramatic, difficult recoveries from up to 50 years of torpor. He documents their spiritual and medical obstacles with great care to portray their individual personalities, long suppressed but finally released. Though many great doctors are also great writers, few can compare with Oliver Sacks for expressing the relation of medicine to the human spirit. --<I>Rob Lightner</I>
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£8.99
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Picador The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
Pages: 256, Paperback, Picador
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£7.19
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Picador An Anthropologist on Mars
Pages: 329, Paperback, Picador
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£7.19
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National Geographic Books Oaxaca Journal
Pages: 160, Paperback, National Geographic Books
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£5.59
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National Geographic Books Oaxaca Journal (Directions S.)
Pages: 192, Hardcover, National Geographic Books
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£8.57
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