On the Move: A Life

Oliver Sacks has given us a wonderful book. Since there are already close to 50 high praising reviews, there is little which I can add to these. However, while keeping this a "5 Star" book in my estimation, I shall point out some areas that it could have been better.

Sacks describes a seminal incident in his life in which he informed his farther that he is gay, and asks for this not to be disclosed to Oliver's mother.Nonetheless, the father does inform "Ma" about this, and the next morning she wakes up the 19 year old Oliver to inform him that he is an "abomination", quoting Leviticus and her orthodox Jewish teaching. Sacks is initially sexually undeterred by this, and lustily pursues gay sexual relations(hips) in his native England, Amsterdam, and then in the United States to which he emigrated, seemingly as a sexual refugee where he felt more freedom away from his wealthy, professional, successful, straight family. Sacks describes a life that seems to support several stereotypes embodied in the Village People: the motorcyclist, power-weight-lifter, resident of the San Francisco YMCA, etc. There is no question that he was strikingly handsome, and somewhat of an exhibitionist, as the cover of the book and photos inside (excellent and interesting) testify.
He becomes a serious drug addict, and does not explain exactly how he went clean, except to indicate that he began intensive psychotherapy, which he continued for 50 years ! He never expresses gratitude for his extremely privileged background, and the family that had to have provided him with a great deal of financial support, judging by two-three times weekly psychotherapy, frequent trips to Amsterdam for sexual adventures, and numerous other international travels, well into middle age, when he finally had a financial break with a book publication.
Better editing would have improved the book. Several facts are repeated two and three times. Sacks or the editor must believe that the reader does not remember. He tells us three times that he never became a US citizen, and that he "was celibate for 35 years starting in his 40's". What he never discloses is whether he firmly decided to become celibate for any single or combination of reasons: as a "mama's boy", was it too much to bear that his mother thought gay sex an abomination?, having had at least three romantic relationships before age 33 that did not last, was he burned out on love?, did he consider it to much of a liability for him to be out or even in the closet, for his career?, did the sexual allegations in his early 40's concerning some patients scare him off sex?, did the AIDS crisis seal the deal and make him anti-sex? We just do not know, but he does want us to know that he was celibate for 35 years. Concerning his never becoming a US citizen, no problem with he never becoming a duel citizen, and remaining British. However, he never expresses gratitude for America or the American system that allowed him to live in a great many ways that were unavailable to him in England. In fact, he cites it as advantageous to being a permanent resident, so that he never had to perform US civic duties such as voting or serving on a jury. ( he earlier told us how he outsmarted the system and never served in the then-compulsory military in Britain or Canada where he lived). I guess in his mind, he was just above all this.
I found some of the scientific discussions in the last 60 pages a little too long. Yet after interesting us in a population on an island 1200 miles away from Guam because a large portion of the people are color-blind, he does not tell us what there lives are liken, and instead launches into one of his tributes to a fellow genius. Better editing could have condensed these without loosing the points of his about the processes of developing scientific thought and theory. In these last pages, one would have hoped for a summation of lessons learned in life, something more emotion revealing and less rational. He seems to have suppressed lots of emotion in his many years of celibacy. Judging by the many sexual adventures that he had prior to the decades of celibacy, the lack of sex with another person had to have had an impact, but he does not tell us how . He discloses that he is living his last months with a fatal diagnosis. After receiving this diagnosis, he allowed himself to again be open to love, and he found it, with a much younger writer, whom one expects will become his literary executor.
I heard Sacks disclose in an interview once that he had lots of randy tales of which he has written that will come out following his death. In the same interview, he described himself as having "always been an aggressive atheist.". His book discloses that he loves Jewish ritual and that he attended a Christian Church in Minnesota on an island for a month or two while living there, and loved the sense of community. He does not state why he "always" has been an aggressive atheist. One may suspect why, but we do not have it from him in the book.
A little too much of the last pages give a catalog of every ache and pain for the last many years. Again, bad editing. He state that he is afraid of death. One may speculate that his current state of being in love helps a bit with that.
It is true that in many instances, he does seem to be in love with his own genius, a bit narcissistically throughout his life. He was a "late bloomer" without labeling himself as such. He did not hold real university positions until the time of life when many in such positions are taking early retirements. He was a loner researcher, which he says suited his personality. I wonder if much of the loner aspects of his life are defenses to stay in the closet concerning his sexuality. Considering that he is now 82 and grew up in times among people far harsher on gays than often is the case today, this is understandable. But again, we don't know answers to lots of questions that this "biography" fails to answer, by his own choosing. He views everything imaginable as related to his field of neurology/neuro science, but never speculates about how his own brain or thought processes may have been affected by his many years of drug use and addiction. Another editing issue, many of the tales about people cease moving the book along, and continue for additional pages more or less as tributes to the individuals who died "too young", etc.
Finally, one wonders if he ever had sexual relationships or romantic longings for Auden or Thom Gunn? He writes as if he arrived in America with a crush on Gunn before ever having met him, with the attraction probably being that Gunn was gay and a drug abuser who died of an overdose. I doubt that he ever was in love with Auden, but he certainly seemed to be in love with the idea of a British gay celebrity in America, and may have let things proceed to put a notch on his bed at of time of life when Sacks was doing this. Notwithstanding all of the above, it is a great book that you should read.

After I read a gook by Oliver Sacks on migraines that I liked, I decided to read about the man himself and I'm glad I did. He was a very interesting, unconventional doctor, who thought outside-the-box and lives an alternate lifestyle. He was a brilliant, engaging doctor and man.

One of the best books I have read in along time. I cannot stop thinking about Oliver Sacks.
Their were so many facets to this book. It opened my eyes to how difficult it is to be a hero in the world of science.
If only there were more Oliver Sacks caring for us it would be a better world for the patients..
A MOST READ

So far I have enjoyed all the books that Oliver Sacks has written. Now I can add "On The Move" to that list. Dr. Sacks is a wordsmith of the highest caliber. I always come away from his writing having learned useful information.....and smiling.

The late Oliver Sacks was one of the true geniuses of his generation: an outstanding individual,a brilliant physician, writer and teacher. This autobiography is destined to be a classic and a perfect introduction to his many fascinating books. Not to be missed!

This is the most personal book of Oliver Sacks and I truly loved it. It is a mixture of Oliver's personal experiences - mistakes, learnings, joys... - and an insight into his professional life and development path. I deliberately read this book slowly in order to savour it as long as possible - which is the highest ranking compliment I can make :-)

Bright, moving, this work has a pace of its own that the reader should get used to. Beyond the collection of anecdotes, personal, professional and bibliographical, it is the brave testament of a vividly warm character in the non-fiction English language literature of our times. I highly recommend it.

It would be good if you aren't into Oliver Sacks books. As it is, I AM into Oliver Sacks books, and it was very, very good. Engrossing. And not redundant with his previous works. Dr Sacks was inspiring and I loved reading about his life.

Really inspiring book by a great scholar of humanity.

This book shows the personal and human side to a public person we've seen in limited ways before now.

Loved reading and will read it again in the future.

A touching life story. Gets into detail some about his research, and about his book-writing process. But also touches in several places on his personal life journey. As a gay man, a man interested in scientific topics, and a writer, this book struck home for me on several levels.

Such joy to experience Sack's way of being in the world--curious, wondering, energetic, and filled with compassion. I'd recommend this book to anyone who enjoys the life of the mind and wants to understand one of the great thinkers of our time.

I am always interested in case histories and have been a fan of Oliver Sacks for years. I was quite surprised to learn about his unusual and carefree life style. I wish I could have known him. He has done a great job of communicating difficult concepts to non-medical people. His spirit will go on.

Excellent final work from Oliver Sacks. After reading, I feel I know and even appreciate more the truly wonderful human being this great man was. A must for anyone who has enjoyed his previous books, short stories, and essays.

So interesting to follow Oliver's life. He is humble and loving all humans in whatever condition they present themselves to him. Always obvserving everything. A man of science and a man of humanities. A good read.

Interesting in spots, but it spends a lot time on the writing of previous books. But distilling that out, the intense interest he took in each and every patient, and medical dramas he encountered are fascinating.

Amazing insight into life and leaving a mark from a prolific writer and preeminent mind in his field. His style tends to ramble at times, and there are a lot of tangents, but they all come together to weave an interesting view of this man's life. It makes you wish you had the opportunity to meet him!

I have read every book that Oliver Sacks has written and loved them all until this one. It is a rather boring list of places he worked and what motorcycles he's owned. None of the charm of his other works. It seems like he was writing about something he didn't care about. I kept waiting for the good part and about half way through, I realized there wasn't one. I didn't even finish it.

Such an interesting, intelligent man and author! With a voracious curiosity for knowledge, especially of the human brain and it's function. A wonderful, engaging writer. I learned some fascinating facts about him I didn't know.

A great story of a great man who gave us much to consider about medical issues. Although sometimes rambling and jumping back and forth through different time periods, we get an intimate look at a man making his way through life as the rest of us, and making major contributions along the way.

From m the author of deft character studies, This book is surprisingly self-congratulatory in a defensive way. I usually love the work of Oliver Sacks, including his earlier autobiography, Uncle Tungsten. I am disappointed.

On the Move: A Life is the final testament of the amazing human, Oliver Sacks. His honesty, wit, and love of life are an inspiration. This writing touches on the key moments and elements that shaped the man.

Fascinating life. Couldn't follow all the neuro references but you don't really have to. Very candid descriptions of the gay experiences in his life, particularly considering the times in which he lived. I recommend the book.

This book is not for lay people like myself. It's for doctors and minds better than my own
who understand medicine and science. It is also a disjointed memoir that eliminates
a true understanding of the man. He mentions he has not had sex in thirty plus year but
never tells the reader why. If you're not going to tell us, then why mention it? Still,
other facets his life are fascinating and so is the man, himself

Whatever one has to say about the life Oliver Sacks led, he lived it fully. He clearly demonstrated that in spite of setbacks if one pressed on these impediments could be overcome. Bravo to a courageous soul.

Fascinating account of a fascinating man. I learned a lot about neurology, medicine in general, and humanity. Very poignant since I believe it was written shortly before his terminal illness was diagnosed.

On The Move by Oliver Sacks. Oliver is a brilliant neurologist and has written multiple books of the subject the how the brain works. His parents were both physicians so maybe he was destined to be one. He did take a few wrong turns along the way including dealing with his drug addiction and nomadic trips and his motorcycle. Each chapter is a different memory in his life. They are not always chronological and sometime it is difficult to keep track of which time period he is in and he repeats himself. But that seems to be his writing style. He talks about that and how when he is writing his books he always wants to change something. He always has paper and pen in his hands and will write anywhere, any place any time. He did seem to spend a great amount of time traveling back and forth between the US and London where his parents live. I think his best trait would be that he seems to really care for his patients as people and not just the disease process.

Thank you Oliver for your great works, which always make me feel fascinated and excited of the mechanisms of brain.

This book.made me clear that not only his patients, but his life itself is really turbulent and interesting.

Whatever one has to say about the life Oliver Sacks led, he lived it fully. He clearly demonstrated that in spite of setbacks if one pressed on these impediments could be overcome. Bravo to a courageous soul.

Fascinating account of a fascinating man. I learned a lot about neurology, medicine in general, and humanity. Very poignant since I believe it was written shortly before his terminal illness was diagnosed.

Only sorry we won't have Dr. Sacks' future insights into every aspect of the human condition. An incredible man, with much to teach us, who has been kind enough to share his considerable knowledge and passion with professional and layman alike.

On The Move by Oliver Sacks. Oliver is a brilliant neurologist and has written multiple books of the subject the how the brain works. His parents were both physicians so maybe he was destined to be one. He did take a few wrong turns along the way including dealing with his drug addiction and nomadic trips and his motorcycle. Each chapter is a different memory in his life. They are not always chronological and sometime it is difficult to keep track of which time period he is in and he repeats himself. But that seems to be his writing style. He talks about that and how when he is writing his books he always wants to change something. He always has paper and pen in his hands and will write anywhere, any place any time. He did seem to spend a great amount of time traveling back and forth between the US and London where his parents live. I think his best trait would be that he seems to really care for his patients as people and not just the disease process.

Thank you Oliver for your great works, which always make me feel fascinated and excited of the mechanisms of brain.

This book.made me clear that not only his patients, but his life itself is really turbulent and interesting.

Readers whose mental image of neurologist and prolific author Oliver Sacks is defined by his avuncular, white-bearded visage may be puzzled, at first, by the photograph of the buff, leather-jacketed young man astride a motorcycle that graces the cover of his memoir, ON THE MOVE. If they are, it should only take a few pages of this engrossing autobiography to understand why that image captures perfectly the spirit of his peripatetic and relentlessly curious life.

Considering that both of his parents and two older brothers were physicians, it's hardly surprising that Sacks gave little thought to any career other than medicine. Almost from the beginning, that career, most of which he pursued in the United States after leaving his native England for Canada in 1960, was driven as much by the storytelling impulse as it was by an affinity for science. Admitting his frustration at the tunnel vision of his residency training at UCLA in the 1960s, because "I think in narrative and historical terms," Sacks soon abandoned the laboratory for clinical practice.

Sacks ties his account of the highs and lows of that practice to many of his 12 previous books, including AWAKENINGS, the story of the transformation of postencephalitic patients treated with L-dopa that was made into the movie starring Robin Williams and Robert De Niro, and THE MAN WHO MISTOOK HIS WIFE FOR A HAT (the 1985 book that brought him to prominence). Though he's never bitter in describing it, Sacks understands that his professional recognition has not matched the regard in which he's held as a popularizer of knowledge about disorders as diverse as Tourette's syndrome and color blindness.

Sacks also frankly describes how his sexual orientation has shaped his life, despite enduring more than 35 years of celibacy after the end of a relationship in 1973. When he revealed to his parents that he was gay, shortly before he left for Oxford in 1951 (at a time when homosexual acts were punishable as crimes in England), his mother reacted with horror to what she called this "abomination."

As the cover photograph suggests, Sacks has had a lifelong passion for motorcycles, despite abandoning them in the early 1970s when he grew tired of contending with New York City traffic. When he lived in Southern California, it was not uncommon for him to embark on long weekend rides to the Grand Canyon or the Mojave Desert. He celebrated passing his medical boards and getting his green card (he's never secured United States citizenship) with a two-month, 8,000-mile jaunt around the United States, some of whose highlights are captured here in the form of contemporaneous journal entries.

But as much as Sacks delights in sharing the parts of his fully engaged life that have brought him pleasure, he doesn't shrink from describing some of the less attractive aspects of his past. In the 1960s he struggled with an amphetamine addiction. He also admits he overindulged in weightlifting, securing for him the California record for squat lifting 600 pounds when he was part of the scene at Venice's Muscle Beach during that decade, but leaving him with the painful residue of his extreme workout regimen. One of his most profound regrets is his inability to do more for his brother, Michael, afflicted with schizophrenia from age 15.

Throughout his life, Sacks has been sustained as much as anything by his writing. He even confesses to recording his observations about a color blind patient, an artist, while attending a performance of Mozart's Mass in C Minor. "The act of writing is an integral part of my mental life; ideas emerge, are shaped, in the act of writing," he says. He displays that gift generously in this book, effortlessly blending accounts of his medical cases with revealing and entertaining stories of the people --- among them poets W.H. Auden and Thom Gunn and Israeli diplomat and historian Abba (known to him as Aubrey) Eban, a first cousin --- whose lives intersected his.

What gives this memoir a unique poignancy is the knowledge that Sacks was diagnosed earlier this year with terminal liver cancer. In a February New York Times essay, he described his desire to live out whatever time remains to him in the "richest, deepest, most productive way I can." Reflecting, in that piece, on the life he chronicles in ON THE MOVE, he wrote, "I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and traveled and thought and written. I have had an intercourse with the world, the special intercourse of writers and readers." That's an apt and moving summary of the fascinating and productive life story he shares in this book.

Reviewed by Harvey Freedenberg.

Readers whose mental image of neurologist and prolific author Oliver Sacks is defined by his avuncular, white-bearded visage may be puzzled, at first, by the photograph of the buff, leather-jacketed young man astride a motorcycle that graces the cover of his memoir, ON THE MOVE. If they are, it should only take a few pages of this engrossing autobiography to understand why that image captures perfectly the spirit of his peripatetic and relentlessly curious life.

Considering that both of his parents and two older brothers were physicians, it's hardly surprising that Sacks gave little thought to any career other than medicine. Almost from the beginning, that career, most of which he pursued in the United States after leaving his native England for Canada in 1960, was driven as much by the storytelling impulse as it was by an affinity for science. Admitting his frustration at the tunnel vision of his residency training at UCLA in the 1960s, because "I think in narrative and historical terms," Sacks soon abandoned the laboratory for clinical practice.

Sacks ties his account of the highs and lows of that practice to many of his 12 previous books, including AWAKENINGS, the story of the transformation of postencephalitic patients treated with L-dopa that was made into the movie starring Robin Williams and Robert De Niro, and THE MAN WHO MISTOOK HIS WIFE FOR A HAT (the 1985 book that brought him to prominence). Though he's never bitter in describing it, Sacks understands that his professional recognition has not matched the regard in which he's held as a popularizer of knowledge about disorders as diverse as Tourette's syndrome and color blindness.

Sacks also frankly describes how his sexual orientation has shaped his life, despite enduring more than 35 years of celibacy after the end of a relationship in 1973. When he revealed to his parents that he was gay, shortly before he left for Oxford in 1951 (at a time when homosexual acts were punishable as crimes in England), his mother reacted with horror to what she called this "abomination."

As the cover photograph suggests, Sacks has had a lifelong passion for motorcycles, despite abandoning them in the early 1970s when he grew tired of contending with New York City traffic. When he lived in Southern California, it was not uncommon for him to embark on long weekend rides to the Grand Canyon or the Mojave Desert. He celebrated passing his medical boards and getting his green card (he's never secured United States citizenship) with a two-month, 8,000-mile jaunt around the United States, some of whose highlights are captured here in the form of contemporaneous journal entries.

But as much as Sacks delights in sharing the parts of his fully engaged life that have brought him pleasure, he doesn't shrink from describing some of the less attractive aspects of his past. In the 1960s he struggled with an amphetamine addiction. He also admits he overindulged in weightlifting, securing for him the California record for squat lifting 600 pounds when he was part of the scene at Venice's Muscle Beach during that decade, but leaving him with the painful residue of his extreme workout regimen. One of his most profound regrets is his inability to do more for his brother, Michael, afflicted with schizophrenia from age 15.

Throughout his life, Sacks has been sustained as much as anything by his writing. He even confesses to recording his observations about a color blind patient, an artist, while attending a performance of Mozart's Mass in C Minor. "The act of writing is an integral part of my mental life; ideas emerge, are shaped, in the act of writing," he says. He displays that gift generously in this book, effortlessly blending accounts of his medical cases with revealing and entertaining stories of the people --- among them poets W.H. Auden and Thom Gunn and Israeli diplomat and historian Abba (known to him as Aubrey) Eban, a first cousin --- whose lives intersected his.

What gives this memoir a unique poignancy is the knowledge that Sacks was diagnosed earlier this year with terminal liver cancer. In a February New York Times essay, he described his desire to live out whatever time remains to him in the "richest, deepest, most productive way I can." Reflecting, in that piece, on the life he chronicles in ON THE MOVE, he wrote, "I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and traveled and thought and written. I have had an intercourse with the world, the special intercourse of writers and readers." That's an apt and moving summary of the fascinating and productive life story he shares in this book.

Reviewed by Harvey Freedenberg.

I wanted to like this book. I know I am supposed to like this book. Oliver Sacks ticks off all the boxes as a man one is to like and admire very much. And I do find his life intriguing and his medical accomplishments highly admirable (of course). Yet I found the book extraordinarily tedious. It reminded me in some ways of Christopher Hitchen's autobiography, which, like this, became a who's who of all the important people I have shared my great intellect with, associated with, and who have critiqued my work with the highest praise. I enjoyed Hitchen's essays, social commentary, and clever language very much, and, like him, Oliver Sacks has a much different feel in his other writings.

First of all, Sack's autobiography is achingly self-congratulatory in the way where even one's flaws are described in such a way that they really are admirable strengths - something that can be excused if somebody else is observing and writing, but not so easy to bear when it is in first person. ( He writes, for instance, that he was no longer allowed to grade his students because to him they were all A-students in their own unique ways. Yes, we see what you did there). Second, his language in general is surprisingly flat and conventional with an abundant use of superlatives such as the rather annoying "brilliant" that after a while many descriptions of places and events just loose their potency and significance.

Third, I was disappointed that he did not spend any time in his book exploring the possible biological or neurological implications of him being homosexual, especially in terms of evolution. He spends many pages describing all sorts of reflections he has when he injures himself, how cancer affects his vision, how he is seemingly born without the ability to recognize faces, but nothing biological about his homosexuality. It seems odd, because surely he must have thought about how his orientation fits into human evolution, and whether it is determined by the brain or by genes or by the environment or a combination of it all?

Finally, the book does not take away from his other writings, and I sense there was quite some urgency in this text to get as much down on paper as possible before his death. This seems especially to be the case in regards to all the tangental stories that are so random and out of place and most likely copied down from his extensive collections of old journal entries (though I did enjoy, but left baffled about, the tiny incident about the stray cat that "adopted him", and with which he had a few interactions and observations, but then fairly soon gave away). I am also wondering how much or how little his long-time trusted editor modified the text before it was published.

It is almost sacrilegous to say, but I think his biography and remarkable life story would have been a better book with better prose if organized, edited, and written in third person....

Some memoirs make fascinating reading whether or not you've encountered their author before. Others are best read in relation to prior knowledge of their author. This memoir, in my view, falls in the latter category. Not that it doesn't say lots of interesting things. But the most interesting scientific bits are ones Sacks treated at length in his many outstanding publications. And those to do with his life and times are only so compelling and revealing. Because I had previously formed a view of the author as an eclectic thinker, an ethical practitioner, and a true humanist, over many years' reading his various books and seeing him occasionally interviewed, and found him completely engaging and endearing, I was disposed to enjoy this telling of his life from the outset. But viewing the work from as unbiased a position as I'm able, I wouldn't say it's a masterful exemplar of the memoirist's craft. It's an eminently readable and enjoyable one if you're already a great fan of Sacks. If you're not familiar with the author or his work, however, I'm not sure I'd recommend making this book your first foray into his oeuvre. There's nothing to put a reader off of further exploration, here, but not so much to scintillate or prompt further exploration either. On the Move is a solid memoir, but not a great one, unlike its author who was very great indeed.

In his book ON THE MOVE, Dr. Oliver Sacks, at the age of eighty, is trying to reconstruct his autobiography. Most people have complex personalities; Dr Sachs (he died of cancer on August 30, 2015) had an extraordinarily complex personality. He was born in England, to Jewish parents, Samuel and Muriel Elsie Landau, both physicians. They had four sons; Oliver was the youngest. His mother was disappointed in his gay lifestyle, but supported him through his years. Eventually Oliver has proven to her, and everybody else, that sexual orientation does not hinder literary or scientific accomplishments. Oliver was blessed with a fascinating brain, brilliant, but not necessarily wise. Seeking satisfaction with drug trips on cannabis is not wise. There are better ways how to get mentally, physically or sexually stimulated without using Amphetamines. Oliver was aware of its side effects; that drug addiction is self-destructive, but he could not help himself. On the other hand, his curiosity in many areas of human endeavor was phenomenal while his conflicts and excesses prevailed. He was a great man, but flawed nevertheless, like we all are, including celebrities. Despite his peripatetic life style, he was leading a solitary life. He never married.

Oliver mentions very little about his Jewish background; about the values instilled in him during his formative years. In his old age only, Oliver acknowledged:" I sometimes failed to realize, how much my parents cared for me (p.234.)" Not a word about his prominent relatives like his first cousin Israeli statesman Abba Eban, the writer Jonathan Lynn and Nobel Laureate Robert Aumann. He asserted (p.27) to be "devoid of any religious or Zionists feeling." His brief stay at Ein Hashofet kibbutz in Israel did not change his feelings. Oliver says little about his polymath family, albeit he, and two of his brothers, followed their parents into medicine. Oliver mentions his "sadistic" boarding school during the war (p 129) but does not say much about the war that adversely affected his life as a teenager as it did mine, during the Holocaust. Being "On the Move" did not require a complete cut off from Oliver's past; the roots are an integral part of an individual's personality.

It is very disturbing to read, (p 223) what Oliver found at some medical facilities: "I saw the complete subjugation of the human to medical arrogance at Beth Abraham. In some cases, the negligence was willful and criminal - patients left unattended for hours or even abused physically or mentally. I found a patient with a broken hip, in intense pain, ignored by the staff and lying in pool of urine. Although he praises the care provided at other medical facility, like the Little Sisters. At the age of 89 I ask myself: "What can I expect? Oliver, a doctor avers and laments (p.327) "how barbaric our own medicine and our own customs are in the `civilized' world, where we put ill or demented people away and try to forget them."

Oliver is open, very candid, lucid and honest about his personal life. He is using a rich vocabulary, whether it's about anthropology, biology, chemistry, neuroscience psychiatry, physics or any other topic. ON THE MOVE contains much medical history; it is written exquisitely and it is informative even for a formally uneducated person as I am.

I first heard about Oliver Sacks a few years ago on the Radiolab podcast. He seemed fascinating, so I bought his autobiography on Audible, On the Move: A Life. I finally got around to listening to it.

While this book is filled with fascinating stories of his life, travels, hilarious anecdotes about his patients, it jumps around a lot through time without much indication until afterward. You’ll be in the middle of the 60s, then Sacks jumps to something that happened in 1983 (which he tells you after the story), and goes back to the 60s. It was very confusing at times. Pretty disjointed.

What I love about this book is how Oliver Sacks breaks typical stereotypes. He was a terrible student, vagrant motorcyclist, professional body builder, and drug addict who did groundbreaking medical research, held down a practice, and published books regularly. He quit drugs cold turkey.

His one soft spot is that he was a gay man when it was very dangerous to be so, so he couldn’t be with the man he loved and ended up being emotionally detached for the rest of his life.

Is this Dr. Oliver Sacks on the cover? Our favorite writer of narrative medicine in leather on a motorcycle? You mean the weight lifting guy who used LSD and was addicted to pills for years in the 1960s is the same guy who wrote The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat; Mr. Tungsten; A Leg To Stand On; and Hallucinations? The public intellectual and researcher who has taught us about brains and perception fills us in on his life experiences and adds to our perceptions. It has been my favorite read of the year. It mixes memoir, humor, and science and is a pleasure.

The book opens with his youthful obsession with motorcycles and speed. How he survived... I have no idea. I came away learning that sometimes happy accidents lead people to discoveries and their life purposes. Broken bike? Maybe it will lead to an adventure. Career threatened? Maybe it will lead to a better career. Lift too many weights? Maybe it will lead to a friendship with the lifesaver.. The early part of the memoir recounts his experiences as a child during WWII, the sadism of prep school, being a homosexual teen in Britain in the days when gays like Alan Turing were imprisoned and castrated, trying out life as an Israeli kibbutznik in the 1950s, traveling through Canada, being a young neurologist in the early 1960s, and his internship at Zion in San Francisco. He also shares information on motorcycles, and more motorcycles, a drug addiction, traveling across the USA, spending time with truck drivers, muscle beach weight lifting, as well as his physician parents and siblings, the psychosis and schizoid outbursts of one of his beloved brothers, LSD, and his arrival in New York City, where he discovered a long-forgotten illness in the back hospital wards. We learn about his entry into journaling and narrative medicine, the threats from his superiors against his desire to publish, and his successes even in light of having to overcome their roadblocks and firings. Sacks also briefly explores his love affairs, his lack of love affairs, his arrival in San Francisco and stay at its YMCA at a time of societal change. Throw into this mix his research into Tourette's, phantom feelings, hallucinations, color perception, fractal images during migraines, the learnings from his unique patients, the ethics of his research projects, his amazing use of the English language, and his infectous humor. He also shares stories of his interactions and friendships with actors, poets, writers and scientists, including Thom Gunn, A. R. Luria, W. H. Auden, Gerald M. Edelman, and Francis (double helix) Crick. He spends a lot of time on the latest neurological ideas of Dr. Edelman, and how long it is taking for new ideas to be accepted by the field.. Oh, did I mention that his cousin is the late (Aubrey) Abba Eban, and how they hilariously shared so many tendencies or behaviors - more so than if they were siblings or twins - or that Sacks shares a story of his Passover seder with his relatives, the Caplins (Cartoonists Al Capp (Lil ABner), Elliot Caplin(Juliet Jones).

"On The Move" has been a critically acclaimed book since its very release. You may wonder why this is so, thinking how an autobiography on a doctor could be so interesting to bother reading. First, Oliver Sacks is a skilled writer as seen in the numerous other fascinating books he has written in his field of neurology. The writing in this book matches what we have come to him. Even more, however, what makes the book so great is that there is such a wild, exhilarating, and at times humorous life behind it. I never would have imagined the sorts of adventures Sacks found himself on throughout his life. He is candid in his storytelling and helps us to learn much about him. Sacks covers his life in England with his schizophrenic brother and family of doctors. He goes into detail the pain he felt at his mother voicing her disgust at his being homosexual and the guilt it continued to cause him later in life. We learn of his experience as a powerlifter which made him at one time the state-record holder in barbell squat in California and the nickname of "Dr. Squat" later on. He details his adventures on his motorcycles and the interesting people he met travelling on it. All in all, this is easily one of the best autobiographies I have ever read and is a must read even for those who do not even know who Oliver Sacks is.

I don't consider myself an Anglophile, but this book again confirms that native Brits still have a superior artistry of the mother tongue. That's not to say that there are no great writers of English here in the republic, but there is always something of an owner's-manual quality to American writing. British English at its best has music in the lines. In comparison, Philip Roth is a far better story teller, but Martin Amis writes better sentences and more natural dialogue.

I mention this because Oliver Sacks is a genuine musician with words. If I were to post one of those reviews (too common here) which is merely a synopsis of the book, you would likely think, *Ugh! That sounds terrible! I don't wanna read that!* and then click off to a different page. In fact, having just finished the book, I can't think of anything especially remarkable in it. I wasn't fascinated by the sex life (or lack thereof) of Dr. Sacks, and his stories of his drug use and getting high were told in fine detail in Hallucinations. Instead, the appeal of this book is witnessing a master stylist at work, and for that reason it's a pleasure to read. I would concede that the one-star reviews may be right. There's more style than substance to this book, but I would counter that it ain't what you do it's the way what you do it. Them who disliked this book must lack an ear for the music of his prose. They just want the facts.

Much of the appeal of his writing is that he keeps thing simple. Even the chapter that seems thrown in, "A New Vision of the Mind," is not difficult reading. On the other hand, it may be that Dr. Sacks oversimplifies this esoteric topic, which discusses a novel theory of consciousness, because I didn't have a *This changes everything!* reaction while reading it, so apparently its significance was lost on my puny intellect.

This plain-and-simple style includes a minimum of jargon and medical terms. Specific conditions are always explained, and I only had to look-up *saccadic* and *eidetic.* Saccade is a medical term, as is eidetic, but eidetic, coined in German in the 1920s, is a pretty word, and I mean to use it at the first opportunity.

In contrast to his other books, which have a uniformly cheerful tone, On the Move reveals the dark side of Dr. Sacks. He is very blunt in dismissing criticism which has been leveled at him over the years, and he never admits to any culpability. Dr. Sacks names the head of a migraine clinic who did his best to thwart Sacks from publishing his first book, a study of migraine headaches, while plagiarizing much of the work. At least, that's his side of the story, and since this plagiarist died in 1990, Sacks cannot be sued for libel. There's much venting of grudges Dr. Sacks has held over the years.

I was struck by the fact that, for a renowned neurologist (he's neither a brain surgeon nor a rocket scientist) Dr. Sacks did lab work for only a brief period, and after his celebrated late-1960s success in treating a group of zombie-like patients suffering from atypical encephalitis, he does not seem to have cured many people. Instead, his fame rests on being an observer of conditions, many of which are bizarre, for which there is no treatment. This has led to the accusation that he has made his living mainly by describing the odd behavior of patients, a sort of psycho-porn, as well as the related accusation that he has violated his patients privacy. I regard such attitudes as thinly-disguised envy, and I don't feel that I'm peeking into a specific person's life when I read his case histories. (Such calumny was parroted in the review of this book by Andrew Solomon, a terrible writer whose only success was itself a collection of case histories.)

On practically every page I was struck by the fact that almost everyone named is of the Ashkenazi persuasion (Robert De Niro an obvious exception), which led me to ruminate about the greatness of this ethnic group. How can there be any anti-Semitism when we owe them so much? My reflections led me to recall the early chapter about his evil boss, also an accomplished physician, who tried to derail the publication of the first book by Dr. Sacks, and I concluded that the Ashkenazim, while remarkably accomplished, can also be remarkably selfish. (I will here refrain from any mention of AIPAC or naming music-industry moguls.) In comparison, the Goyim are uniformly mediocre.

Included in my reflections was the fact that Dr. Sacks (a resolute Darwinian who yet sat shiva for seven days at the death of his mother) devotes five pages of praise to the late Stephen Jay Gould, who (although he did a voice for The Simpsons in an episode written by David X. Cohen) is held in low repute among Darwinians, while no Goy theorist (e.g., W. D. Hamilton or E. O. Wilson) receives so much as a mention.

So you see, I'm now conflicted about Dr. Sacks because of this book. The previous books I've read by him are focused on specific phenomena, but this is a book about his life and relationships, so it reveals him to be humanly flawed. Not to the degree that it prevented me from ordering a copy of a book by his lover, but I would advise that if you have never read any books by Dr. Sacks, this is not the best place to start.

I would certainly not recommend the audio book version, because it is read by a California voice actor, and you thus miss the quaint British accent of Dr. Sacks. You also miss the pleasure of reading his eidetic prose.

Oliver Sacks unfortunately died in 2015 of cancer. This, therefore, is his last book. It is his autobiography. I have read several of Dr. Sack’s books and enjoyed all of them; I particularly liked Uncle Tungsten in which he describes his childhood. Hence, I was surprised to find that I did not enjoy the first third or so of On the Move, which picks up where Uncle Tungsten left off, in Dr. Sacks’ late teens. In the early part of his adult life, Dr. Sacks chose to live a wild and almost self-destructive life from which he was lucky to emerge alive. He rode motor bikes at excessive speed, weight-lifted enormous weights, took reckless chances in the ocean, indulged in orgiastic sexual behavior, and, for two years was addicted to amphetamines. Subsequently, he entered therapy and continued to see a psychoanalyst twice a week for the next fifty years. What I found strange and off-putting is the manner in which the author, then 81 years old, writes about this period of his life. He reports it without diffidence, almost proudly, and unquestioningly. It is surprising that he, as a distinguished neurologist, does not exhibit a professional curiosity about why he behaved so recklessly and does not talk about this period of his life from that point of view. Because of this, the first four Chapters stand unexplained and in contrast to his later life.

The remainder of the book is very interesting. He does not talk a great deal about his clinical work, although when he does it is very lucid and compelling, instead, Dr. Sacks places great emphasis on his writings, which are prodigious. Besides his books and essays, he kept extraordinarily detailed journals in which, as he puts it, he “talked to himself”, working out ideas and problems. He describes the genesis, background, and context of his books including the neglect and sometimes the opposition that they received in the medical community. Indeed, for long periods, he had no permanent medical positions and subsisted on what could be described as “odd jobs”. The reason for this was his belief in the importance of case histories that include a holistic approach to the patient and the patient’s background, family history, and personality. In contrast, for several decades, the neuroscience paradigm was influenced by behaviorism, which focused on symptoms rather than the patient as a person. This divergence of opinion caused Dr. Sacks to be dismissed from more than one professional post. Over the last thirty years or so, due in no small part to Dr. Sacks, the medical view has expanded to include the importance of a more integrated approach.

In some ways, the book resembles a case history of Oliver Sacks himself (with the omissions that I mentioned above) and, while it is not perfect, it does add considerably to what we already knew about him.

What a moving memoir! Having read Oliver Sacks' accounts of his neurology patients, I was so engaged to see that he has learned the same compassion for himself. I suppose it would not be possible today to recreate the conditions under which Sacks became a doctor, but I couldn't help wishing more medical students had the luxury of finding their way to a speciality and life's purpose the way he did. Even though his parents and two of his three brothers were doctors, he considered becoming bench scientist rather than a physician. By studying with various experts, he found a way to the work for which he was best suited, even though some of the teachers were not at all benign. In fact, he was fired more than once for his lack of subservience. And then, of course, he began to write about what he was seeing, just as he had read historical medical accounts dating back for centuries. He's quite candid about his struggles as a writer, in both doing the work and in defending against those who thought his approach was insufficiently academic. (A rave from W.H. Auden seems to have assuaged his self-doubts.)

He's also candid about his homosexuality and his love life, Although just being gay was criminal in England where he was a boy, he never recanted even when his own mother called it "an abomination." And he's open about his use of drugs for a substantial time during his training. By weaving back and forth across time and continents, he lays bare the forces that shaped him and his interactions with his patients, very often people for whom others saw no hope. I loved the thumbnail portraits of science greats like Francis Crick and Stephen Jay Gould and the Soviet neuropsychologist A.R. Luria, as he interacted with them, not to mention his respect for the work of Robin Williams and Robert DeNiro as they played, respectively, Sacks and one of his patients in the movie Awakenings. Now in his eighties and struggling with cancer, Sacks surveys his life with appreciation, generosity and a light touch. We could use more doctors like him.

We were very fortunate to have with us for our book club discussion a returning member who knew Dr. Sacks well. He was able to share his own perspective and to answer questions, including how Dr. Sacks was perceived both personally (since he describes himself in the book as shy and suffering from face-blindness which made initial connections difficult, yet he enjoyed a large circle of admiring friends) and professionally (he brought public attention to the work done in neurology, but in the book some colleagues seemed resentful).

We'll keep specifics of those perspectives and answers to those at the book club meeting. But the most evocative description of Dr. Sacks (or by then we were referring to him as Oliver) was walking down the street like a tractor plowing up a continuous stream of observations and insights. Somewhat similarly in the book, members enjoyed Oliver's connections between neurology and the wider world through a collection of vignettes and vivid thematic moments.

Much of what we enjoyed about the book was the professional context for his other books, which some members had appreciated over the years, and the very open and personal nature of the narrative of his life. Related to the subtitle, A Life, he explored a wide variety of passions deeply -- arguably obsessively -- including some destructive ones along with the enormously productive ones. That said, some of his life was left quite unexamined -- at least in this book -- particularly his sexuality, and most strikingly his 35-year fallow period, seemingly almost a boycott of that part of his life.

It's been wonderful to take this turn to memoirs, and to tie strings from explorations of self in Just Kids, Between the World and Me, and now On the Move. Some members pointed out the challenges of memoirs in not having poetic license to craft a clean narrative and sometimes drifting into cataloging people and places. However most others loved the rich writing and found it delightful to get to know this prominent scientist on such an intimate level, with idiosyncrasies, funnily ambiguous relationships, and all.

All in, On the Move was much enjoyed and appreciated by the group, with an A average in a range of B+ to A+.

Oliver Sacks had a restless spirit from an early age, prompting him in his adult life to hop on his motorcycle and ride. On the Move chronicles his young life with his family, his early medical training, and his travels that led him around the world. The stories about his early life were interesting, but the book itself lacked cohesion.

As the novel transitioned from personal to professional life, I was not sure if I could appreciate all that Dr. Sacks had done for his patients. This is because he spent so much time in the book complaining about the slights against him that I lost interest. I would have rather just watched the movie Awakenings again, as it provided a snapshot of the doctor and his life's work in a more meaningful way. I may have gained more insight into Oliver Sacks had I read some of his previous works, so those who are familiar with the author may find this book considerably more interesting.

Lovely memoir, but bittersweet, I had no idea this wonderful & intellectual man past away last yr, so sad. I read some of his books back in college in the 90's & loved his approach to his scientific & medical observations, which were very funny & easy to imagine. This memoir is really just glimpses of this guy's life, given how much he wrote daily until his death, so the fact this book read so well under 400pgs is quite a feat. It could of been easily a 1,000. The amazing ppl he has encountered in his lifetime - Stephen J. Gould, Auden, DNA Crick!, gosh, I would love to have been to one their lectures, or just sitting at a table eavesdropping, w/ all these highly intellectual ppl. I would say the only real, technical chapter in the book was the 2nd to last, A New Vision of the Mind, but the rest, entertaining. I was hoping he spoke about his belief in God, given his parents were religious Jews, just more philosophical notions. Also, why he never got a laptop, since he loves to write. I wanted his thoughts on current events, like what he thought about the Internet, it doesn't seem he had a cell phone. I was surprised that the he didn't relish the modern computer era, given how the computer is like a big brain. I thought he would talk about some other issues, besides all scientific ones, like Stephen Hawk does. But oh well, overall I love this memoir, even the sexy pic for the front cover.

This is one of the most compelling autobiographies I have read, and I read a lot of them. I admire Oliver Sacks who was a brilliant neurologist and researcher who helped many patients. This is a glimpse in to the life of a man who was a gifted physician. The movie Awakenings was based on his work with patients. He lived alone and had long friendships with respected poets including W.H. Auden, and medical researchers including Francis Crick (who won a Nobel Prize for revealing the secrets of DNA). Sacks was unconventional, broke rules to help patients, and had a passion for his motorcycles and weight lifting in his younger years. I was pleased that when he was 77 he finally fell deeply in love and found a partner. All of this is told in a way that is entertaining and thought provoking, as Sacks himself surely was and the extensive photos in this hardcover edition are a big plus.

NOTE: I received a free copy of this book to review for the web site Metapsychology Online Reviews; please see a more complete version of my review on that site.

I was saddened to hear reports that renowned neurologist Dr. Oliver Sacks had terminal cancer, and when he passed away in August of last year (2015), I knew that his autobiography, ON THE MOVE: A LIFE, would be next on my reading list. Completed during the final year of his life, this memoir opens on Sacks' childhood in London. Much emphasis is placed on his love for motorcycles, as his various bikes play a major role throughout his early years in the United States. Sacks also reveals how his parents learned of his homosexuality (his father asked if he preferred boys) as well as his first experiments in this area, mainly in Amsterdam.

After completing medical school in England, Sacks move to America for his residency. I found the chapters which stem from this ("Leaving the Nest," "San Francisco," and "Muscle Beach") to be somewhat haphazard and difficult to follow—the timeline is constantly "on the move," as it were. Furthermore, Sacks frequently includes excerpts from letters and even longer passages from journals he kept at the time, which I found disruptive. Ironically, it is with the chapter "Out of Reach" that Sacks seems to hit his stride in this book. At this point, he has moved to New York to complete his fellowship. He has also begun to address his drug use, something that became a serious issue while he was a medical resident. But most importantly, he begins to write in earnest about his work with patients. This is Sacks' bread and butter; this is what he does so well.

Subsequent sections include "Awakenings," a behind-the-scenes look at the stories which inspired both the book and the movie; "The Bull on the Mountain," the real-life tale which led to his book A LEG TO STAND ON; and "A Matter of Identity," the road to the publication of the famous THE MAN WHO MISTOOK HIS WIFE FOR A HAT. The final few chapters are a bit more personal in nature. ON THE MOVE occasionally meanders, but it seems likely that this is a simple reflection of the man himself. The book also charms and fascinates, amuses and engrosses—all qualities brought to us by the wonderful and irreplaceable Dr. Sacks.

The first six chapters of this autobiography of Dr. Oliver Sacks are interesting and engaging. Unfortunately the remaining six chapters read as though they were dictated to an assistant and are more concerned with name dropping, talking about other people and projects and completely fail to continue a coherent description of a life story.

I just read Barney Frank's memoir Frank and just as Frank's life is primarily consumed with politics, Sack's life is full of intellectual passion for unusual medical disorders as related in his books of case studies of patients with such afflictions. There are parts of the first half of the book that are quite worthwhile such as the description of his struggle with amphetamine addiction and his love of motorcycles.

If you have read more than one book by Dr.Sacks perhaps this uneven biography will be of interest. I can only recommend the first half of the book as worth reading.

The difference between what I thought I knew about Oliver Sacks and what I learned about him from this book could fill, well, a book. I'd heard him interviewed but had never read anything he'd written. I could hear his voice in "On the Move" and it's a gentle, comforting voice even when he's telling rather shocking tales of his youth. He has something in common with a hero of mine, Richard Feynman, in that both had immense talents and intellects that were driven by an unbridled curiosity, taking them to all sorts of fields of study and science. They both soared easily into the unknown and both were generous in allowing us mere mortals a chance to share their wonder and to pretend, for a moment, that we too could fly. It's reassuring to know that at least a few times in human history such beings lived among us.

Yes, I'd recommend this book.

Structurally speaking, ON THE MOVE starts with an avowed sense of purpose to tell us about the author's life from its beginnings in Hampstead, north London, to his current status as a great neurologist based in New York. We learn a lot about his early days as a physician; his apprenticeship in London hospitals, his decision to move to the United States by way of Vancouver, and his work in California before moving to New York. We learn a lot about his passion for motor-cycles, giving him the freedom to roam the country as well as meet friends from different walks of life. Sacks is also not backward about when coming forward while talking about his sexuality; prior to 1968, it was a crime to be a practicing homosexual in England, which is one of the reasons why he chose to emigrate.

As the book develops, however, so its linear structure becomes diluted somewhat, as the author talks about his neurological discoveries through work with patients, as well as encountering members of the academic community from different scientific branches. Some of the prose appears a little specialized, to be honest; but the author's sincerity of purpose shines through. Here is a genuine visionary; someone with a professed need to discover ways about how people think differently and publish his findings to mass audiences. His recollection of how the book AWAKENINGS came about is especially affecting.

What also distinguished Sacks's career is its longevity. Even today, in the author's eighth decade of life, he shows as much enthusiasm for pioneering understanding as he did half a century ago. His chief aim is to promote communication among people, as well as insisting that every human being has the power to construct their own worlds through the complex organism known as the brain. It is his bounden duty to tell their stories and draw conclusions as a result.

Even if readers are non-specialists, they should be attracted to this book: Sacks writes in an engaging style, with a genuine sympathy for his patients over the years, as well as a sympathy for his readers.

I've read many of Sacks' books and I have seen various TV interviews by him, as well as having enjoyed the "Awakenings" movie several times. What was so captivating about his autobiography, "On the Move," was that I felt like he was my friend telling me about his life, including intimate details about his ups and downs. When I finished the book, I felt a close bond with the author, as though he were my friend. The sections about his drug addictions and his personal life go to show that even the most successful struggle in life. To see how many doubts he had about himself, his ability to be a good researcher, and to be a doctor is surprising given how many lives he has changed with his writing about medicine. The book is inspiring because it shows how incredibly powerful one can be despite so many personal setbacks. My life has been dramatically changed and improved at least twice by his writing. I hope readers will see that even if they don't always believe in themselves, they can still surpass their own limitations and expectations.

I really lost myself at times while traveling with Sacks to faraway times and places in this book. While he routinely went too far (as a teacher of his would say) and nearly lost his life several times in the process, this trait of his also pushed forward entire fields of psychology and neurology, so that we now look at people more holistically and accept individual differences more. The stories are just plain amazing in themselves. I wish Sacks had authorized his psychoanalyst to write a book about him--it would probably be almost as interesting as this one. As a memoir, the book doesn't seem to embody a point or lesson, although he talks passionately about many of his beliefs.

Sacks looks back on his life from 80+ years. Famous as he is for his accounts of others, this book is about himself. Again, he relates the quirks and wrinkles that make the person interesting but with his characteristic respect for the subject's humanity and dignity. Like most biographies it is like a staircase with steps that are passed over quickly and landings where the author spends more time. Sacks' autobiography includes his major interests other than his professional life as a neurologist, for which he will be best known by most of his readers. He is of course a writer, and his immersion in literature is revealed by his prolific diary-writing and also by the poets, novelists and scientific writers he has known. The cover of the book references a passionate motorcyclist, but he is a swimmer and held a Californian weight-lifting record. He did include tales of some of his some of his interesting neurological patients, including this time a little about himself, but it is quite interesting what he has left out; and I think I detect both the modesty of maturity and the guiding hand of an excellent editor. The situations he found himself in are related with the focus of the gifted observer and the efficiency of a professional communicator, but with little space allocated to subjective social or political explanations and certainly- a gracious strength- virtually none to blaming anyone else! There is little in the book that is sordid, nothing much specific about his religious background and I think that he was perhaps too modest about his medical career and about his career as a teacher. It is a reflective, perhaps gentle book and I am rather fond of it. I would recommend it to anyone who has read one or more of Sacks' books, even those who read few biographies.

Is this Dr. Oliver Sacks on the cover? Our favorite writer of narrative medicine in leather on a motorcycle? You mean the weight lifting guy who used LSD and was addicted to pills for years in the 1960s is the same guy who wrote The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat; Mr. Tungsten; A Leg To Stand On; and Hallucinations? The public intellectual and researcher who has taught us about brains and perception fills us in on his life experiences and adds to our perceptions. It has been my favorite read of the year. It mixes memoir, humor, and science and is a pleasure.

The book opens with his youthful obsession with motorcycles and speed. How he survived... I have no idea. I came away learning that sometimes happy accidents lead people to discoveries and their life purposes. Broken bike? Maybe it will lead to an adventure. Career threatened? Maybe it will lead to a better career. Lift too many weights? Maybe it will lead to a friendship with the lifesaver.. The early part of the memoir recounts his experiences as a child during WWII, the sadism of prep school, being a homosexual teen in Britain in the days when gays like Alan Turing were imprisoned and castrated, trying out life as an Israeli kibbutznik in the 1950s, traveling through Canada, being a young neurologist in the early 1960s, and his internship at Zion in San Francisco. He also shares information on motorcycles, and more motorcycles, a drug addiction, traveling across the USA, spending time with truck drivers, muscle beach weight lifting, as well as his physician parents and siblings, the psychosis and schizoid outbursts of one of his beloved brothers, LSD, and his arrival in New York City, where he discovered a long-forgotten illness in the back hospital wards. We learn about his entry into journaling and narrative medicine, the threats from his superiors against his desire to publish, and his successes even in light of having to overcome their roadblocks and firings. Sacks also briefly explores his love affairs, his lack of love affairs, his arrival in San Francisco and stay at its YMCA at a time of societal change. Throw into this mix his research into Tourette's, phantom feelings, hallucinations, color perception, fractal images during migraines, the learnings from his unique patients, the ethics of his research projects, his amazing use of the English language, and his infectous humor. He also shares stories of his interactions and friendships with actors, poets, writers and scientists, including Thom Gunn, A. R. Luria, W. H. Auden, Gerald M. Edelman, and Francis (double helix) Crick. He spends a lot of time on the latest neurological ideas of Dr. Edelman, and how long it is taking for new ideas to be accepted by the field.. Oh, did I mention that his cousin is the late (Aubrey) Abba Eban, and how they hilariously shared so many tendencies or behaviors - more so than if they were siblings or twins - or that Sacks shares a story of his Passover seder with his relatives, the Caplins (Cartoonists Al Capp (Lil ABner), Elliot Caplin(Juliet Jones).

"On The Move" has been a critically acclaimed book since its very release. You may wonder why this is so, thinking how an autobiography on a doctor could be so interesting to bother reading. First, Oliver Sacks is a skilled writer as seen in the numerous other fascinating books he has written in his field of neurology. The writing in this book matches what we have come to him. Even more, however, what makes the book so great is that there is such a wild, exhilarating, and at times humorous life behind it. I never would have imagined the sorts of adventures Sacks found himself on throughout his life. He is candid in his storytelling and helps us to learn much about him. Sacks covers his life in England with his schizophrenic brother and family of doctors. He goes into detail the pain he felt at his mother voicing her disgust at his being homosexual and the guilt it continued to cause him later in life. We learn of his experience as a powerlifter which made him at one time the state-record holder in barbell squat in California and the nickname of "Dr. Squat" later on. He details his adventures on his motorcycles and the interesting people he met travelling on it. All in all, this is easily one of the best autobiographies I have ever read and is a must read even for those who do not even know who Oliver Sacks is.

I don't consider myself an Anglophile, but this book again confirms that native Brits still have a superior artistry of the mother tongue. That's not to say that there are no great writers of English here in the republic, but there is always something of an owner's-manual quality to American writing. British English at its best has music in the lines. In comparison, Philip Roth is a far better story teller, but Martin Amis writes better sentences and more natural dialogue.

I mention this because Oliver Sacks is a genuine musician with words. If I were to post one of those reviews (too common here) which is merely a synopsis of the book, you would likely think, *Ugh! That sounds terrible! I don't wanna read that!* and then click off to a different page. In fact, having just finished the book, I can't think of anything especially remarkable in it. I wasn't fascinated by the sex life (or lack thereof) of Dr. Sacks, and his stories of his drug use and getting high were told in fine detail in Hallucinations. Instead, the appeal of this book is witnessing a master stylist at work, and for that reason it's a pleasure to read. I would concede that the one-star reviews may be right. There's more style than substance to this book, but I would counter that it ain't what you do it's the way what you do it. Them who disliked this book must lack an ear for the music of his prose. They just want the facts.

Much of the appeal of his writing is that he keeps thing simple. Even the chapter that seems thrown in, "A New Vision of the Mind," is not difficult reading. On the other hand, it may be that Dr. Sacks oversimplifies this esoteric topic, which discusses a novel theory of consciousness, because I didn't have a *This changes everything!* reaction while reading it, so apparently its significance was lost on my puny intellect.

This plain-and-simple style includes a minimum of jargon and medical terms. Specific conditions are always explained, and I only had to look-up *saccadic* and *eidetic.* Saccade is a medical term, as is eidetic, but eidetic, coined in German in the 1920s, is a pretty word, and I mean to use it at the first opportunity.

In contrast to his other books, which have a uniformly cheerful tone, On the Move reveals the dark side of Dr. Sacks. He is very blunt in dismissing criticism which has been leveled at him over the years, and he never admits to any culpability. Dr. Sacks names the head of a migraine clinic who did his best to thwart Sacks from publishing his first book, a study of migraine headaches, while plagiarizing much of the work. At least, that's his side of the story, and since this plagiarist died in 1990, Sacks cannot be sued for libel. There's much venting of grudges Dr. Sacks has held over the years.

I was struck by the fact that, for a renowned neurologist (he's neither a brain surgeon nor a rocket scientist) Dr. Sacks did lab work for only a brief period, and after his celebrated late-1960s success in treating a group of zombie-like patients suffering from atypical encephalitis, he does not seem to have cured many people. Instead, his fame rests on being an observer of conditions, many of which are bizarre, for which there is no treatment. This has led to the accusation that he has made his living mainly by describing the odd behavior of patients, a sort of psycho-porn, as well as the related accusation that he has violated his patients privacy. I regard such attitudes as thinly-disguised envy, and I don't feel that I'm peeking into a specific person's life when I read his case histories. (Such calumny was parroted in the review of this book by Andrew Solomon, a terrible writer whose only success was itself a collection of case histories.)

On practically every page I was struck by the fact that almost everyone named is of the Ashkenazi persuasion (Robert De Niro an obvious exception), which led me to ruminate about the greatness of this ethnic group. How can there be any anti-Semitism when we owe them so much? My reflections led me to recall the early chapter about his evil boss, also an accomplished physician, who tried to derail the publication of the first book by Dr. Sacks, and I concluded that the Ashkenazim, while remarkably accomplished, can also be remarkably selfish. (I will here refrain from any mention of AIPAC or naming music-industry moguls.) In comparison, the Goyim are uniformly mediocre.

Included in my reflections was the fact that Dr. Sacks (a resolute Darwinian who yet sat shiva for seven days at the death of his mother) devotes five pages of praise to the late Stephen Jay Gould, who (although he did a voice for The Simpsons in an episode written by David X. Cohen) is held in low repute among Darwinians, while no Goy theorist (e.g., W. D. Hamilton or E. O. Wilson) receives so much as a mention.

So you see, I'm now conflicted about Dr. Sacks because of this book. The previous books I've read by him are focused on specific phenomena, but this is a book about his life and relationships, so it reveals him to be humanly flawed. Not to the degree that it prevented me from ordering a copy of a book by his lover, but I would advise that if you have never read any books by Dr. Sacks, this is not the best place to start.

I would certainly not recommend the audio book version, because it is read by a California voice actor, and you thus miss the quaint British accent of Dr. Sacks. You also miss the pleasure of reading his eidetic prose.

Oliver Sacks unfortunately died in 2015 of cancer. This, therefore, is his last book. It is his autobiography. I have read several of Dr. Sack’s books and enjoyed all of them; I particularly liked Uncle Tungsten in which he describes his childhood. Hence, I was surprised to find that I did not enjoy the first third or so of On the Move, which picks up where Uncle Tungsten left off, in Dr. Sacks’ late teens. In the early part of his adult life, Dr. Sacks chose to live a wild and almost self-destructive life from which he was lucky to emerge alive. He rode motor bikes at excessive speed, weight-lifted enormous weights, took reckless chances in the ocean, indulged in orgiastic sexual behavior, and, for two years was addicted to amphetamines. Subsequently, he entered therapy and continued to see a psychoanalyst twice a week for the next fifty years. What I found strange and off-putting is the manner in which the author, then 81 years old, writes about this period of his life. He reports it without diffidence, almost proudly, and unquestioningly. It is surprising that he, as a distinguished neurologist, does not exhibit a professional curiosity about why he behaved so recklessly and does not talk about this period of his life from that point of view. Because of this, the first four Chapters stand unexplained and in contrast to his later life.

The remainder of the book is very interesting. He does not talk a great deal about his clinical work, although when he does it is very lucid and compelling, instead, Dr. Sacks places great emphasis on his writings, which are prodigious. Besides his books and essays, he kept extraordinarily detailed journals in which, as he puts it, he “talked to himself”, working out ideas and problems. He describes the genesis, background, and context of his books including the neglect and sometimes the opposition that they received in the medical community. Indeed, for long periods, he had no permanent medical positions and subsisted on what could be described as “odd jobs”. The reason for this was his belief in the importance of case histories that include a holistic approach to the patient and the patient’s background, family history, and personality. In contrast, for several decades, the neuroscience paradigm was influenced by behaviorism, which focused on symptoms rather than the patient as a person. This divergence of opinion caused Dr. Sacks to be dismissed from more than one professional post. Over the last thirty years or so, due in no small part to Dr. Sacks, the medical view has expanded to include the importance of a more integrated approach.

In some ways, the book resembles a case history of Oliver Sacks himself (with the omissions that I mentioned above) and, while it is not perfect, it does add considerably to what we already knew about him.

What a moving memoir! Having read Oliver Sacks' accounts of his neurology patients, I was so engaged to see that he has learned the same compassion for himself. I suppose it would not be possible today to recreate the conditions under which Sacks became a doctor, but I couldn't help wishing more medical students had the luxury of finding their way to a speciality and life's purpose the way he did. Even though his parents and two of his three brothers were doctors, he considered becoming bench scientist rather than a physician. By studying with various experts, he found a way to the work for which he was best suited, even though some of the teachers were not at all benign. In fact, he was fired more than once for his lack of subservience. And then, of course, he began to write about what he was seeing, just as he had read historical medical accounts dating back for centuries. He's quite candid about his struggles as a writer, in both doing the work and in defending against those who thought his approach was insufficiently academic. (A rave from W.H. Auden seems to have assuaged his self-doubts.)

He's also candid about his homosexuality and his love life, Although just being gay was criminal in England where he was a boy, he never recanted even when his own mother called it "an abomination." And he's open about his use of drugs for a substantial time during his training. By weaving back and forth across time and continents, he lays bare the forces that shaped him and his interactions with his patients, very often people for whom others saw no hope. I loved the thumbnail portraits of science greats like Francis Crick and Stephen Jay Gould and the Soviet neuropsychologist A.R. Luria, as he interacted with them, not to mention his respect for the work of Robin Williams and Robert DeNiro as they played, respectively, Sacks and one of his patients in the movie Awakenings. Now in his eighties and struggling with cancer, Sacks surveys his life with appreciation, generosity and a light touch. We could use more doctors like him.

We were very fortunate to have with us for our book club discussion a returning member who knew Dr. Sacks well. He was able to share his own perspective and to answer questions, including how Dr. Sacks was perceived both personally (since he describes himself in the book as shy and suffering from face-blindness which made initial connections difficult, yet he enjoyed a large circle of admiring friends) and professionally (he brought public attention to the work done in neurology, but in the book some colleagues seemed resentful).

We'll keep specifics of those perspectives and answers to those at the book club meeting. But the most evocative description of Dr. Sacks (or by then we were referring to him as Oliver) was walking down the street like a tractor plowing up a continuous stream of observations and insights. Somewhat similarly in the book, members enjoyed Oliver's connections between neurology and the wider world through a collection of vignettes and vivid thematic moments.

Much of what we enjoyed about the book was the professional context for his other books, which some members had appreciated over the years, and the very open and personal nature of the narrative of his life. Related to the subtitle, A Life, he explored a wide variety of passions deeply -- arguably obsessively -- including some destructive ones along with the enormously productive ones. That said, some of his life was left quite unexamined -- at least in this book -- particularly his sexuality, and most strikingly his 35-year fallow period, seemingly almost a boycott of that part of his life.

It's been wonderful to take this turn to memoirs, and to tie strings from explorations of self in Just Kids, Between the World and Me, and now On the Move. Some members pointed out the challenges of memoirs in not having poetic license to craft a clean narrative and sometimes drifting into cataloging people and places. However most others loved the rich writing and found it delightful to get to know this prominent scientist on such an intimate level, with idiosyncrasies, funnily ambiguous relationships, and all.

All in, On the Move was much enjoyed and appreciated by the group, with an A average in a range of B+ to A+.

Oliver Sacks had a restless spirit from an early age, prompting him in his adult life to hop on his motorcycle and ride. On the Move chronicles his young life with his family, his early medical training, and his travels that led him around the world. The stories about his early life were interesting, but the book itself lacked cohesion.

As the novel transitioned from personal to professional life, I was not sure if I could appreciate all that Dr. Sacks had done for his patients. This is because he spent so much time in the book complaining about the slights against him that I lost interest. I would have rather just watched the movie Awakenings again, as it provided a snapshot of the doctor and his life's work in a more meaningful way. I may have gained more insight into Oliver Sacks had I read some of his previous works, so those who are familiar with the author may find this book considerably more interesting.

Lovely memoir, but bittersweet, I had no idea this wonderful & intellectual man past away last yr, so sad. I read some of his books back in college in the 90's & loved his approach to his scientific & medical observations, which were very funny & easy to imagine. This memoir is really just glimpses of this guy's life, given how much he wrote daily until his death, so the fact this book read so well under 400pgs is quite a feat. It could of been easily a 1,000. The amazing ppl he has encountered in his lifetime - Stephen J. Gould, Auden, DNA Crick!, gosh, I would love to have been to one their lectures, or just sitting at a table eavesdropping, w/ all these highly intellectual ppl. I would say the only real, technical chapter in the book was the 2nd to last, A New Vision of the Mind, but the rest, entertaining. I was hoping he spoke about his belief in God, given his parents were religious Jews, just more philosophical notions. Also, why he never got a laptop, since he loves to write. I wanted his thoughts on current events, like what he thought about the Internet, it doesn't seem he had a cell phone. I was surprised that the he didn't relish the modern computer era, given how the computer is like a big brain. I thought he would talk about some other issues, besides all scientific ones, like Stephen Hawk does. But oh well, overall I love this memoir, even the sexy pic for the front cover.

The great Dr. Oliver Sacks has passed but not without leaving us a wonderful and unique autobiography entitled On the Move. Facing his own mortality from advanced cancer, Sacks has written a book that, like his life, is vivid, rare, far ranging, and deeply humanistic. It will be cherished by anyone familiar with his previous books and more generally anyone who revels in the English language.
Sacks was a true polymath – a man of formidable intellect, diverse intellectual interests, random passions bordering on obsessions, and an extremely keen skill of observation. He was a prolific writer – pouring out thousands of words in taut, elegant sentences, often in long, self-absorbed writing sessions.
This is not a true autobiography in the classical sense. On the Move does not follow a neat chronological trajectory describing the eight decades of his life. Instead, like Sack’s life, it grabs enthusiastically at discrete events, precious keepsakes (mostly in the form of erudite letters sent and received), major milestones, and past memories – mines them for deep meaning and then describes their significance with a gifted precision that will delight anyone who enjoys the perfect word choice or a delicate turning of a phrase. Sacks covers the major turning points of his life in a wry, self- deprecating manner – almost at times simultaneously amused and pleased at how well it all turned out. Anchoring all of it like glue is his writing – his desire to write and publish, his great appetite for doing so, and his successes and failures in taking complex scientific subject matter, understanding it through detailed observation and reflection, and conveying it to a non-technical audience.
Sacks is also a study in contrast – deeply intellectual but strangely down-to-earth, profoundly interested in the long arc of science and cumulative knowledge but given to diving relentlessly into spur-of-the-moment passions; deeply embedded in a city life but strangely distance from it at the same time. As Sack notes toward the end of the book, he “always lived life at a distance.” This quality – seemingly an innate part of his personality – had a powerful and beneficial effect. It made him an excellent observer, someone able to perceive behavior and associations that most missed. Sacks coupled this rare talent with an equally brilliant ability to write great prose – to expound on difficult scientific matters in clear, intelligible sentences and paragraphs, to synthesize diverse related materials and most importantly to capture and hold central the essential human condition represented by the neurological conditions he studied and described in his different books. His portraits of patients facing profound, often life altering neurological conditions is deeply human – sympathetic and empathetic.
In reading On the Move, one is left with three overarching conclusions: (1) that Sacks was a brilliant scientist and writer; (2) that he lived a life of zest and vitality; and (3) that his writing talent inspire envy among those of us less talented. In the end, we are much richer for his presence and writing and this book is the cherry on top of an already blissful sundae.

This is one of the most compelling autobiographies I have read, and I read a lot of them. I admire Oliver Sacks who was a brilliant neurologist and researcher who helped many patients. This is a glimpse in to the life of a man who was a gifted physician. The movie Awakenings was based on his work with patients. He lived alone and had long friendships with respected poets including W.H. Auden, and medical researchers including Francis Crick (who won a Nobel Prize for revealing the secrets of DNA). Sacks was unconventional, broke rules to help patients, and had a passion for his motorcycles and weight lifting in his younger years. I was pleased that when he was 77 he finally fell deeply in love and found a partner. All of this is told in a way that is entertaining and thought provoking, as Sacks himself surely was and the extensive photos in this hardcover edition are a big plus.

NOTE: I received a free copy of this book to review for the web site Metapsychology Online Reviews; please see a more complete version of my review on that site.

I was saddened to hear reports that renowned neurologist Dr. Oliver Sacks had terminal cancer, and when he passed away in August of last year (2015), I knew that his autobiography, ON THE MOVE: A LIFE, would be next on my reading list. Completed during the final year of his life, this memoir opens on Sacks' childhood in London. Much emphasis is placed on his love for motorcycles, as his various bikes play a major role throughout his early years in the United States. Sacks also reveals how his parents learned of his homosexuality (his father asked if he preferred boys) as well as his first experiments in this area, mainly in Amsterdam.

After completing medical school in England, Sacks move to America for his residency. I found the chapters which stem from this ("Leaving the Nest," "San Francisco," and "Muscle Beach") to be somewhat haphazard and difficult to follow—the timeline is constantly "on the move," as it were. Furthermore, Sacks frequently includes excerpts from letters and even longer passages from journals he kept at the time, which I found disruptive. Ironically, it is with the chapter "Out of Reach" that Sacks seems to hit his stride in this book. At this point, he has moved to New York to complete his fellowship. He has also begun to address his drug use, something that became a serious issue while he was a medical resident. But most importantly, he begins to write in earnest about his work with patients. This is Sacks' bread and butter; this is what he does so well.

Subsequent sections include "Awakenings," a behind-the-scenes look at the stories which inspired both the book and the movie; "The Bull on the Mountain," the real-life tale which led to his book A LEG TO STAND ON; and "A Matter of Identity," the road to the publication of the famous THE MAN WHO MISTOOK HIS WIFE FOR A HAT. The final few chapters are a bit more personal in nature. ON THE MOVE occasionally meanders, but it seems likely that this is a simple reflection of the man himself. The book also charms and fascinates, amuses and engrosses—all qualities brought to us by the wonderful and irreplaceable Dr. Sacks.

The first six chapters of this autobiography of Dr. Oliver Sacks are interesting and engaging. Unfortunately the remaining six chapters read as though they were dictated to an assistant and are more concerned with name dropping, talking about other people and projects and completely fail to continue a coherent description of a life story.

I just read Barney Frank's memoir Frank and just as Frank's life is primarily consumed with politics, Sack's life is full of intellectual passion for unusual medical disorders as related in his books of case studies of patients with such afflictions. There are parts of the first half of the book that are quite worthwhile such as the description of his struggle with amphetamine addiction and his love of motorcycles.

If you have read more than one book by Dr.Sacks perhaps this uneven biography will be of interest. I can only recommend the first half of the book as worth reading.

The difference between what I thought I knew about Oliver Sacks and what I learned about him from this book could fill, well, a book. I'd heard him interviewed but had never read anything he'd written. I could hear his voice in "On the Move" and it's a gentle, comforting voice even when he's telling rather shocking tales of his youth. He has something in common with a hero of mine, Richard Feynman, in that both had immense talents and intellects that were driven by an unbridled curiosity, taking them to all sorts of fields of study and science. They both soared easily into the unknown and both were generous in allowing us mere mortals a chance to share their wonder and to pretend, for a moment, that we too could fly. It's reassuring to know that at least a few times in human history such beings lived among us.

Yes, I'd recommend this book.

Structurally speaking, ON THE MOVE starts with an avowed sense of purpose to tell us about the author's life from its beginnings in Hampstead, north London, to his current status as a great neurologist based in New York. We learn a lot about his early days as a physician; his apprenticeship in London hospitals, his decision to move to the United States by way of Vancouver, and his work in California before moving to New York. We learn a lot about his passion for motor-cycles, giving him the freedom to roam the country as well as meet friends from different walks of life. Sacks is also not backward about when coming forward while talking about his sexuality; prior to 1968, it was a crime to be a practicing homosexual in England, which is one of the reasons why he chose to emigrate.

As the book develops, however, so its linear structure becomes diluted somewhat, as the author talks about his neurological discoveries through work with patients, as well as encountering members of the academic community from different scientific branches. Some of the prose appears a little specialized, to be honest; but the author's sincerity of purpose shines through. Here is a genuine visionary; someone with a professed need to discover ways about how people think differently and publish his findings to mass audiences. His recollection of how the book AWAKENINGS came about is especially affecting.

What also distinguished Sacks's career is its longevity. Even today, in the author's eighth decade of life, he shows as much enthusiasm for pioneering understanding as he did half a century ago. His chief aim is to promote communication among people, as well as insisting that every human being has the power to construct their own worlds through the complex organism known as the brain. It is his bounden duty to tell their stories and draw conclusions as a result.

Even if readers are non-specialists, they should be attracted to this book: Sacks writes in an engaging style, with a genuine sympathy for his patients over the years, as well as a sympathy for his readers.

I've read many of Sacks' books and I have seen various TV interviews by him, as well as having enjoyed the "Awakenings" movie several times. What was so captivating about his autobiography, "On the Move," was that I felt like he was my friend telling me about his life, including intimate details about his ups and downs. When I finished the book, I felt a close bond with the author, as though he were my friend. The sections about his drug addictions and his personal life go to show that even the most successful struggle in life. To see how many doubts he had about himself, his ability to be a good researcher, and to be a doctor is surprising given how many lives he has changed with his writing about medicine. The book is inspiring because it shows how incredibly powerful one can be despite so many personal setbacks. My life has been dramatically changed and improved at least twice by his writing. I hope readers will see that even if they don't always believe in themselves, they can still surpass their own limitations and expectations.

I really lost myself at times while traveling with Sacks to faraway times and places in this book. While he routinely went too far (as a teacher of his would say) and nearly lost his life several times in the process, this trait of his also pushed forward entire fields of psychology and neurology, so that we now look at people more holistically and accept individual differences more. The stories are just plain amazing in themselves. I wish Sacks had authorized his psychoanalyst to write a book about him--it would probably be almost as interesting as this one. As a memoir, the book doesn't seem to embody a point or lesson, although he talks passionately about many of his beliefs.

Sacks looks back on his life from 80+ years. Famous as he is for his accounts of others, this book is about himself. Again, he relates the quirks and wrinkles that make the person interesting but with his characteristic respect for the subject's humanity and dignity. Like most biographies it is like a staircase with steps that are passed over quickly and landings where the author spends more time. Sacks' autobiography includes his major interests other than his professional life as a neurologist, for which he will be best known by most of his readers. He is of course a writer, and his immersion in literature is revealed by his prolific diary-writing and also by the poets, novelists and scientific writers he has known. The cover of the book references a passionate motorcyclist, but he is a swimmer and held a Californian weight-lifting record. He did include tales of some of his some of his interesting neurological patients, including this time a little about himself, but it is quite interesting what he has left out; and I think I detect both the modesty of maturity and the guiding hand of an excellent editor. The situations he found himself in are related with the focus of the gifted observer and the efficiency of a professional communicator, but with little space allocated to subjective social or political explanations and certainly- a gracious strength- virtually none to blaming anyone else! There is little in the book that is sordid, nothing much specific about his religious background and I think that he was perhaps too modest about his medical career and about his career as a teacher. It is a reflective, perhaps gentle book and I am rather fond of it. I would recommend it to anyone who has read one or more of Sacks' books, even those who read few biographies.

This book by the author was published just months before his passing. For a writer
maybe this is appropriate as he gets an opportunity to personally present a birds
eye view of his life almost to the end. I think the book would be very interesting to
those who know him closely, such as relatives, and friends and also parts of the
medical community. But many people may curiously not find this story satisfying.

The story meanders in an unremarkable way thru his days growing up in England,
coming to America as an immigrant medical doctor and then settling down (yet
not, because he kept his British citizenship). I don't get the sense that the author
wanted to express to his audience some key principles of life that he has learned
(that would have been interesting). Even to the last few pages of the book he is
just giving an account of going on's in the late stage of his life.

This text is in some sense a collection of personal events that the author has
cataloged and bound into a book while leaving the task of interpreting his life to
others. He is also somewhat frank and shameless about his sexuality. Maybe
somethings are better left unsaid. Overall, a book to be borrowed from the library.

I do not usually read autobiographies, but I was drawn to this by the strange combination of motorcycle and neurology. What a journey this man had: brilliant but plagued by his own genius, always moving and experimenting, from scuba-diving to long weekends on the motorcycle, from drugs to human anatomy and psychology. Always writing, always wandering, always asking himself and the world often embarrassing questions. I remember the movie with Robert de Niro and Robyn Williams based on the true story (and Sack's experience) of the L-dopa patients who woke suddenly after being in a nearly catatonic state caused by the so-called sleep epidemic. So much emotion, so much care, so much curiosity for what is going on inside the patients' brains and with their lives, whether suffering from Tourette, Alzheimer, Parkinson or other chronic diseases. Brilliant book.

Through books, talks, and interviews, I've come to feel like I know Dr. Oliver Sacks, but it wasn't until "On the Move: a life" that Dr. Sacks revealed many personal details of his life and shared his true self with the world, his failures and weaknesses, angers and frustrations, and personal convictions. I was deeply saddened to hear of his terminal cancer, but at age 82, he had lived a full life. This book captures that full life in absolutely delightful and sometimes hilarious prose. Out of the now five books of his I've read, this is tied for my favorite alongside "Hallucinations." Anyone at all familiar with Dr. Sacks or his work will love this book. I highly recommend it.

Note: I listened to the audiobook and felt the performance was great. However, I feel a certain quality is lost through listening to Sacks' words rather than reading them since he writing is meant to be read in my opinion, not listened to, and the physical book also contains photographs not found anywhere else. I drive a lot for work, which is why I picked up the audio book, but either option is likely great.