On The Move

When Oliver Sacks was twelve years old, a perceptive schoolmasterwrote 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. Fromits opening pages on his youthful obsession with motorcycles andspeed, On the Move is infused with his restless energy. As he recounts his experiences as a young neurologist in the early 1960s, first inCalifornia and then in New York, where he discovered a long forgottenillness in the back wards of a chronic hospital, as well as with agroup of patients who would define his life, it becomes clear thatSacks' earnest desire for engagement has occasioned unexpectedencounters and travels - sending him through bars and alleys, overoceans, and across continents. With unbridled honesty and humour,Sacks shows us that the same energy that drives his physical passions- bodybuilding, weightlifting, and swimming - also drives his cerebral passions. He writes about his love affairs, both romantic andintellectual, his guilt over leaving his family to come to America,his bond with his schizophrenic brother, and the writers andscientists - A.R. Luria, W.H. Auden, Francis Crick - who influencedhim. On the Move is the story of a brilliantly unconventionalphysician and writer - and of the man who has illuminated the manyways that the brain makes us human