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On the Move
569 pages
A deeply human, restless exploration of a brilliant mind racing to understand itself and the world.
What it feels like
Reading this memoir feels like riding on the back of a motorcycle with a brilliant, endlessly curious friend who is pointing out the wonders of the universe at eighty miles an hour. It is a deeply kinetic reading experience, infused with a restless, joyful energy that mirrors the author's own voracious appetite for life, science, and human connection. The prose is both scientifically precise and achingly poetic, wrapping you in a warm, inquisitive atmosphere. You feel the weight of his early struggles with addiction and identity, which only makes his eventual grounding in compassionate neurology more profound. It will absolutely delight readers who crave memoirs that are as intellectually stimulating as they are emotionally tender, offering a beautiful testament to a life lived with unbridled passion.
- Mood
- energetic
- intellectually stimulating
- warm
- reflective
- Tone
- impassioned
- tender
- inquisitive
- wry
- earnest
- Pace
- brisk
- Themes
- restless curiosity · the intersection of science and humanity · finding one's calling · hidden identities · the beauty of the mind
- The writing
- Lyrical, deeply empathetic, and scientifically precise, blending clinical observation with poetic wonder.
- The arc
- Moves from a restless, searching youth marked by excess and uncertainty to a profound, compassionate grounding in his life's work and relationships.
- Who it's for
- Readers who love science writing with a deeply human core, and those fascinated by brilliant, eccentric minds living life to the absolute fullest.
Content notes
- drug addiction
- homophobia
- mental illness
- terminal illness
- grief
About the book
An impassioned, tender, and joyous memoir by the author of Musicophilia and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.
When Oliver Sacks was twelve years old, a perceptive schoolmaster wrote in his report: "Sacks will go far, if he does not go too far." It is now abundantly clear that Sacks has never stopped going. From its opening pages on his youthful obsession with motorcycles and speed, On the Move is infused with his restless energy. As he recounts his experiences as a young neurologist in the early 1960s, first in California, where he struggled with drug addiction and then in New York, where he discovered a long-forgotten illness in the back wards of a chronic hospital, we see how his engagement with patients comes to define his life.
With unbridled honesty and humor, Sacks shows us that the same energy that drives his physical passions--weight lifting and swimming--also drives his cerebral passions. 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--Thom Gunn, A. R. Luria, W. H. Auden, Gerald M. Edelman, Francis Crick--who influenced him. On the Move is the story of a brilliantly unconventional physician and writer--and of the man who has illuminated the many ways that the brain makes us human.
Description from Open Library.
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