Awakenings
by Oliver Sacks
List Price:
Our Price: $8.40
You Save: $7.55 (47%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $3.39 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Oliver SacksEdition: Paperback
Published: 1999-10-05
ISBN: 0375704051
Number of pages: 464
Publisher: Vintage
Book Reviews of Awakenings
Book Review: A deeper dive into the disease
Summary: 4 Stars
You saw the movie and now you're hankering to learn more about the backgrounds and the treatments of the patients brought to the silver screen in "Awakenings". If you're hoping for a pop-sci version of the film, you'll be disappointed. The screenplay took poetic license with the original text, dressing it up with more drama and humor than you'll find in the book. On the other hand, if you're looking for an in-depth chronicle of the disease, which reads at times like a medical journal, then this book will certainly satisfy you.
Sacks is both a tireless writer and a devoted practioner of medicine. The book reflects who he is. It's thoroughlly annotated with footnotes, and includes a lengthy glossary to help you sort out all of the medical jargon which is used judiciously throughout the text. It was definitely an eye-opener reading the book after seeing the movie. But they're very different projects. See the movie if you're interested in an entertaining and fascinating story about a handful of awakenings in the late 1960s. Read the book if you want the deep dive into the disease and Dr. Sacks' lifelong devotion to its treatment.
Summary of Awakenings
It hardly seems fair that so many great doctors are also great writers. Perhaps it's qualities like sensitivity, craft, and dedication that keep physicians like Oliver Sacks in hospitals all day and at writing desks all night; if nothing else, these qualities shine in books like Awakenings. This powerful set of case histories rises above its pathological foundation to find new literary territory, a medical-spiritual synthesis equally stimulating for the mind and the soul. It's no wonder Hollywood producers chose to turn it into a feature film--anyone can see the universal human struggle against bondage and despair in these pages.The sleeping-sickness epidemic of 1918 caused hundreds of survivors to slip into a bizarre rigid paralysis with similarities to advanced Parkinson's disease. These patients, only occasionally able to communicate or move, were nearly all institutionalized for life, their ranks increasing every now and then with similarly afflicted men and women. Sacks came to work at a long-term care facility shortly before the first exciting results with L-dopa and Parkinson's in the late 1960s; his patients soon embarked on dramatic, difficult recoveries from up to 50 years of torpor. He documents their spiritual and medical obstacles with great care to portray their individual personalities, long suppressed but finally released. Though many great doctors are also great writers, few can compare with Oliver Sacks for expressing the relation of medicine to the human spirit. --Rob Lightner
"One of the most beautifully composed and moving works of our time."??--The Washington Post
"Compulsively readable. . . . Dr. Sacks writes beautifully and with exceptional subtlety and penetration into both the state of mind of his patients and the nature of illness generally. . . . A brilliant and humane book."??--A. Alvarez, The Observer
Awakenings--which inspired the major motion picture--is the remarkable story of a group of patients who contracted sleeping-sickness during the great epidemic just after World War I. Frozen for decades in a trance-like state, these men and women were given up as hopeless until 1969, when Dr. Oliver Sacks gave them the then-new drug L-DOPA, which had an astonishing, explosive, "awakening" effect. Dr. Sacks recounts the moving case histories of his patients, their lives, and the extraordinary transformations which went with their reintroduction to a changed world.
"[Sacks] opens to the reader doors of perception generally passed through only by those at the far borders of human experience."????????--The Boston Globe
"A masterpiece."??--W. H. Auden
Neuropsychology Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Audiobooks on Cassette
- Audiobooks on CD
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- e-Books
- Engineering
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Medicine
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Dr. Sacks to the Max
Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brainby Oliver Sacks
Knopf; Published: 2007-10-16; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $14.62
Price in other shops:
Thinking in Pictures, Expanded Edition: My Life with Autismby Temple Grandin
Vintage; Published: 2006-01-10; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.42
Price in other shops:
An Anthropologist On Mars: Seven Paradoxical Talesby Oliver Sacks
Vintage; Published: 1996-02-13; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.99
Price in other shops:
Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhoodby Oliver Sacks
Vintage; Published: 2002-09-17; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.74
Price in other shops:
Seeing Voicesby Oliver Sacks
Vintage; Published: 2000-11-28; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.86
Price in other shops:
The Man with a Shattered World: The History of a Brain Woundby A.R.Luria
Harvard University Press; Published: 2004-06-19; Paperback; Book
Best price: $16.00
Price in other shops:
The Mind of a Mnemonist: A Little Book about a Vast Memoryby Aleksandr R. Luria, Jerome Bruner
Harvard University Press; Published: 2006-06-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $15.55
Price in other shops:
The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat: And Other Clinical Talesby Oliver Sacks
Touchstone; Published: 1998-04-02; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.25
Price in other shops:
A Leg to Stand Onby Oliver Sacks
Touchstone; Published: 1998-04-29; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.98
Price in other shops:
Awakeningsby Oliver Sacks
Vintage; Published: 1999-10-05; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.39
Price in other shops:
Similar Books and other products
Vintage Sacksby Oliver Sacks
Vintage; Published: 2004-01-06; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.99
Price in other shops:
Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mindby V. S. Ramachandran, Sandra Blakeslee
Harper Perennial; Published: 1999-09-07; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.02
Price in other shops:
AwakeningsRelease date: 1997-09-10; DVD
Best price: $7.50
Price in other shops:
The Island of the Colorblindby Oliver Sacks
Vintage; Published: 1998-01-12; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.00
Price in other shops:
Seeing Voicesby Oliver Sacks
Vintage; Published: 2000-11-28; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.86
Price in other shops:
Migraineby Oliver Sacks
Vintage; Published: 1999-10-05; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.01
Price in other shops:
A Leg to Stand Onby Oliver Sacks
Touchstone; Published: 1998-04-29; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.00
Price in other shops:
Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brainby Oliver Sacks
Knopf; Published: 2007-10-16; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $14.54
Price in other shops:
An Anthropologist On Mars: Seven Paradoxical Talesby Oliver Sacks
Vintage; Published: 1996-02-13; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.50
Price in other shops:
The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat: And Other Clinical Talesby Oliver Sacks
Touchstone; Published: 1998-04-02; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.70
Price in other shops: