
A Leg to Stand On
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Narrated by:
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Jonathan Davis
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Oliver Sacks - introduction
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By:
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Oliver Sacks
About this listen
Dr. Oliver Sacks' books Awakenings, An Anthropologist on Mars, and the best-selling The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat have been acclaimed for their extraordinary compassion in the treatment of patients affected with profound disorders. In A Leg to Stand On, it is Sacks himself who is the patient: an encounter with a bull on a desolate mountain in Norway has left him with a severely damaged leg. But what should be a routine recuperation is actually the beginning of a strange medical journey when he finds that his leg uncannily no longer feels like part of his body.
Sacks's brilliant description of his crisis and eventual recovery is not only an illuminating examination of the experience of patienthood and the inner nature of illness and health but also a fascinating exploration of the physical basis of identity.
PLEASE NOTE: Some changes have been made to the original manuscript with the permission of Oliver Sacks.©1984, 1993 Oliver Sacks (P)2011 Audible, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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In Seeing Voices, Oliver Sacks turns his attention to the subject of deafness, and the result is a deeply felt portrait of a minority struggling for recognition and respect - a minority with its own rich, sometimes astonishing, culture and unique visual language, an extraordinary mode of communication that tells us much about the basis of language in hearing people as well.
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The River of Consciousness
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- Narrated by: Dan Woren, Kate Edgar
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A collection of essays that displays Oliver Sacks' passionate engagement with the most compelling and seminal ideas of human endeavor: evolution, creativity, memory, time, consciousness, and experience. The River of Consciousness is one of two books Sacks was working on up to his death, and it reveals his ability to make unexpected connections, his sheer joy in knowledge, and his unceasing, timeless project to understand what makes us human.
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Important but Less Interesting
- By Michael on 11-16-17
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An Anthropologist on Mars
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- By: Oliver Sacks
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- Length: 11 hrs and 42 mins
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-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
To these seven narratives of neurological disorder Dr. Sacks brings the same humanity, poetic observation, and infectious sense of wonder that are apparent in his bestsellers Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. These men, women, and one extraordinary child emerge as brilliantly adaptive personalities, whose conditions have not so much debilitated them as ushered them into another reality.
-
-
SACKS IS AN ABSOLUTE JOY !!
- By Jeff on 09-22-13
By: Oliver Sacks
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Uncle Tungsten
- Memories of a Chemical Boyhood
- By: Oliver Sacks
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- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Long before Oliver Sacks became a distinguished neurologist and best-selling writer, he was a small English boy fascinated by metals - also by chemical reactions (the louder and smellier the better), photography, squids and cuttlefish, H.G. Wells, and the periodic table. In this endlessly charming and eloquent memoir, the he chronicles his love affair with science and the magnificently odd and sometimes harrowing childhood in which that love affair unfolded.
-
-
FOR COMMITED LOVERS OF OLIVER SACKS WORK
- By Jeff on 05-02-12
By: Oliver Sacks
-
Gratitude
- Essays
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Dan Woren
- Length: 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A deeply moving testimony and celebration of how to embrace life. No writer has succeeded in capturing the medical and human drama of illness as honestly and as eloquently as Oliver Sacks. During the last few months of his life, he wrote a set of essays in which he movingly explored his feelings about completing a life and coming to terms with his own death.
-
-
To the Point, Yet Told From the Heart
- By LJT on 01-18-16
By: Oliver Sacks
-
Migraine
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 12 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dr. Oliver Sacks argues the migraine cannot be understood simply as an illness, but must be viewed as a complex condition with a unique role to play in each individual's life.
-
-
Why is this an audio book?
- By BW724 on 06-25-19
By: Oliver Sacks
-
Seeing Voices
- A Journey Into the World of the Deaf
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis, Oliver Sacks - introduction
- Length: 5 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
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-
Story
In Seeing Voices, Oliver Sacks turns his attention to the subject of deafness, and the result is a deeply felt portrait of a minority struggling for recognition and respect - a minority with its own rich, sometimes astonishing, culture and unique visual language, an extraordinary mode of communication that tells us much about the basis of language in hearing people as well.
-
-
A Rich Experience
- By Douglas on 11-27-12
By: Oliver Sacks
-
The River of Consciousness
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Dan Woren, Kate Edgar
- Length: 5 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A collection of essays that displays Oliver Sacks' passionate engagement with the most compelling and seminal ideas of human endeavor: evolution, creativity, memory, time, consciousness, and experience. The River of Consciousness is one of two books Sacks was working on up to his death, and it reveals his ability to make unexpected connections, his sheer joy in knowledge, and his unceasing, timeless project to understand what makes us human.
-
-
Important but Less Interesting
- By Michael on 11-16-17
By: Oliver Sacks
-
An Anthropologist on Mars
- Seven Paradoxical Tales
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis, Oliver Sacks
- Length: 11 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
To these seven narratives of neurological disorder Dr. Sacks brings the same humanity, poetic observation, and infectious sense of wonder that are apparent in his bestsellers Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. These men, women, and one extraordinary child emerge as brilliantly adaptive personalities, whose conditions have not so much debilitated them as ushered them into another reality.
-
-
SACKS IS AN ABSOLUTE JOY !!
- By Jeff on 09-22-13
By: Oliver Sacks
-
Uncle Tungsten
- Memories of a Chemical Boyhood
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 10 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Long before Oliver Sacks became a distinguished neurologist and best-selling writer, he was a small English boy fascinated by metals - also by chemical reactions (the louder and smellier the better), photography, squids and cuttlefish, H.G. Wells, and the periodic table. In this endlessly charming and eloquent memoir, the he chronicles his love affair with science and the magnificently odd and sometimes harrowing childhood in which that love affair unfolded.
-
-
FOR COMMITED LOVERS OF OLIVER SACKS WORK
- By Jeff on 05-02-12
By: Oliver Sacks
-
Gratitude
- Essays
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Dan Woren
- Length: 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A deeply moving testimony and celebration of how to embrace life. No writer has succeeded in capturing the medical and human drama of illness as honestly and as eloquently as Oliver Sacks. During the last few months of his life, he wrote a set of essays in which he movingly explored his feelings about completing a life and coming to terms with his own death.
-
-
To the Point, Yet Told From the Heart
- By LJT on 01-18-16
By: Oliver Sacks
-
Migraine
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 12 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dr. Oliver Sacks argues the migraine cannot be understood simply as an illness, but must be viewed as a complex condition with a unique role to play in each individual's life.
-
-
Why is this an audio book?
- By BW724 on 06-25-19
By: Oliver Sacks
-
Oaxaca Journal
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis, Oliver Sacks - introduction
- Length: 4 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Oliver Sacks is well known as an explorer of the human mind - a neurologist with a gift for complex, insightful portrayals of people and their conditions. However, he is also a card-carrying member of the American Fern Society, and since childhood has been fascinated by these primitive plants and their ability to survive and adapt in many climates. Oaxaca Journal is Sacks' spellbinding account of his trip with a group of fellow fern enthusiasts to the beautiful, history-steeped province of Oaxaca, Mexico.
-
-
A gem
- By Daniela on 06-04-15
By: Oliver Sacks
-
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: and Other Clinical Tales
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis, Oliver Sacks - introduction
- Length: 9 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Oliver Sacks' The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat tells the stories of individuals afflicted with fantastic perceptual and intellectual aberrations: patients who have lost their memories and with them the greater part of their pasts; who are no longer able to recognize people and common objects; who are stricken with violent tics and grimaces or who shout involuntary obscenities; whose limbs have become alien; who have been dismissed as retarded yet are gifted with uncanny artistic or mathematical talents.
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I rarely stop reading a book halfway through...
- By Rusty on 09-04-15
By: Oliver Sacks
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Awakenings
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis, Oliver Sacks
- Length: 13 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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 their extraordinary transformations.
-
-
Absolute classic!
- By Douglas on 09-01-12
By: Oliver Sacks
-
Hallucinations
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Dan Woren, Oliver Sacks
- Length: 9 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Hallucinations don’t belong wholly to the insane. Much more commonly, they are linked to sensory deprivation, intoxication, illness, or injury. Here Dr. Sacks weaves together stories of his patients and of his own mind-altering experiences to illuminate what hallucinations tell us about the organization and structure of our brains, how they have influenced every culture’s folklore and art, and why the potential for hallucination is present in us all.
-
-
Not Just Hallucinations
- By Pamela Harvey on 01-05-13
By: Oliver Sacks
-
The Mind's Eye
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Oliver Sacks, Richard Davidson
- Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An exploration of vision through the case histories of six individuals - including a renowned pianist who continues to give concerts despite losing the ability to read the score, and a neurobiologist born with crossed eyes who, late in life, suddenly acquires binocular vision, and how her brain adapts to that new skill.
-
-
Same ole Sacks--great yarns as usual.
- By Rlelli07 on 10-26-10
By: Oliver Sacks
-
Musicophilia
- Tales of Music and the Brain
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Music can move us to the heights or depths of emotion. It can persuade us to buy something, or remind us of our first date. It can lift us out of depression when nothing else can. It can get us dancing to its beat. But the power of music goes much, much further. Indeed, music occupies more areas of our brain than language does - humans are a musical species.
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The Best Of Sacks...
- By Douglas on 11-23-12
By: Oliver Sacks
-
Everything in Its Place
- First Loves and Last Tales
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Dan Woren
- Length: 8 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the best-selling author of Gratitude and On the Move, a final volume of essays that showcase Sacks's broad range of interests - from his passion for ferns, swimming, and horsetails, to his final case histories exploring schizophrenia, dementia, and Alzheimer's.
-
-
Missing Sacks
- By Brandy on 12-02-19
By: Oliver Sacks
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Second Nature
- A Gardener's Education
- By: Michael Pollan
- Narrated by: Michael Pollan
- Length: 9 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In his articles and in best-selling books such as The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan has established himself as one of our most important and beloved writers on modern man's place in the natural world. A new literary classic, Second Nature has become a manifesto not just for gardeners but for environmentalists everywhere.
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Love Pollan, don't love this (but you might)
- By Mary on 02-05-12
By: Michael Pollan
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The Pleasure of Finding Things Out
- The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman
- By: Richard P. Feynman
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 8 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
-
Story
The Pleasure of Finding Things Out is a magnificent treasury of the best short works of Richard P. Feynman, from interviews and speeches to lectures and printed articles. A sweeping, wide-ranging collection, it presents an intimate and fascinating view of a life in science - a life like no other. From his ruminations on science in our culture to his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, this book will delight anyone interested in the world of ideas.
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Interesting, but material is covered in better book.
- By Erlend on 04-06-16
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The Joy of x
- A Guided Tour of Math, from One to Infinity
- By: Steven Strogatz
- Narrated by: Jonathan Yen
- Length: 6 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Many people take math in high school and promptly forget much of it. But math plays a part in all of our lives all of the time, whether we know it or not. In The Joy of x, Steven Strogatz expands on his hit New York Times series to explain the big ideas of math gently and clearly, with wit, and insight.
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Great listen
- By cameron on 08-16-19
By: Steven Strogatz
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Your Brain on Art
- How the Arts Transform Us
- By: Susan Magsamen, Ivy Ross
- Narrated by: Ellyn Jameson
- Length: 9 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
What is art? Many of us think of the arts as entertainment—a luxury of some kind. In Your Brain on Art, authors Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross show how activities from painting and dancing to expressive writing, architecture, and more are essential to our lives.
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Practical, even utilitarian ways of leveraging art
- By Lucy A. Pithecus on 04-07-23
By: Susan Magsamen, and others
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Love's Executioner
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- Narrated by: C.M. Carlson
- Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The collection of 10 absorbing tales by master psychotherapist Irvin D. Yalom uncovers the mysteries, frustrations, pathos, and humor at the heart of the therapeutic encounter. In recounting his patients' dilemmas, Yalom not only gives us a rare and enthralling glimpse into their personal desires and motivations but also tells us his own story as he struggles to reconcile his all-too-human responses with his sensibility as a psychiatrist.
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You Can’t Make This Stuff Up
- By Espanolish on 11-02-16
By: Irvin D. Yalom
Critic reviews
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
An Anthropologist on Mars
- Seven Paradoxical Tales
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis, Oliver Sacks
- Length: 11 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
To these seven narratives of neurological disorder Dr. Sacks brings the same humanity, poetic observation, and infectious sense of wonder that are apparent in his bestsellers Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. These men, women, and one extraordinary child emerge as brilliantly adaptive personalities, whose conditions have not so much debilitated them as ushered them into another reality.
-
-
SACKS IS AN ABSOLUTE JOY !!
- By Jeff on 09-22-13
By: Oliver Sacks
-
Migraine
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 12 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dr. Oliver Sacks argues the migraine cannot be understood simply as an illness, but must be viewed as a complex condition with a unique role to play in each individual's life.
-
-
Why is this an audio book?
- By BW724 on 06-25-19
By: Oliver Sacks
-
Hallucinations
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Dan Woren, Oliver Sacks
- Length: 9 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Hallucinations don’t belong wholly to the insane. Much more commonly, they are linked to sensory deprivation, intoxication, illness, or injury. Here Dr. Sacks weaves together stories of his patients and of his own mind-altering experiences to illuminate what hallucinations tell us about the organization and structure of our brains, how they have influenced every culture’s folklore and art, and why the potential for hallucination is present in us all.
-
-
Not Just Hallucinations
- By Pamela Harvey on 01-05-13
By: Oliver Sacks
-
The Mind's Eye
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Oliver Sacks, Richard Davidson
- Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An exploration of vision through the case histories of six individuals - including a renowned pianist who continues to give concerts despite losing the ability to read the score, and a neurobiologist born with crossed eyes who, late in life, suddenly acquires binocular vision, and how her brain adapts to that new skill.
-
-
Same ole Sacks--great yarns as usual.
- By Rlelli07 on 10-26-10
By: Oliver Sacks
-
Awakenings
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis, Oliver Sacks
- Length: 13 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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 their extraordinary transformations.
-
-
Absolute classic!
- By Douglas on 09-01-12
By: Oliver Sacks
-
The River of Consciousness
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Dan Woren, Kate Edgar
- Length: 5 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A collection of essays that displays Oliver Sacks' passionate engagement with the most compelling and seminal ideas of human endeavor: evolution, creativity, memory, time, consciousness, and experience. The River of Consciousness is one of two books Sacks was working on up to his death, and it reveals his ability to make unexpected connections, his sheer joy in knowledge, and his unceasing, timeless project to understand what makes us human.
-
-
Important but Less Interesting
- By Michael on 11-16-17
By: Oliver Sacks
-
An Anthropologist on Mars
- Seven Paradoxical Tales
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis, Oliver Sacks
- Length: 11 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
To these seven narratives of neurological disorder Dr. Sacks brings the same humanity, poetic observation, and infectious sense of wonder that are apparent in his bestsellers Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. These men, women, and one extraordinary child emerge as brilliantly adaptive personalities, whose conditions have not so much debilitated them as ushered them into another reality.
-
-
SACKS IS AN ABSOLUTE JOY !!
- By Jeff on 09-22-13
By: Oliver Sacks
-
Migraine
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 12 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dr. Oliver Sacks argues the migraine cannot be understood simply as an illness, but must be viewed as a complex condition with a unique role to play in each individual's life.
-
-
Why is this an audio book?
- By BW724 on 06-25-19
By: Oliver Sacks
-
Hallucinations
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Dan Woren, Oliver Sacks
- Length: 9 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Hallucinations don’t belong wholly to the insane. Much more commonly, they are linked to sensory deprivation, intoxication, illness, or injury. Here Dr. Sacks weaves together stories of his patients and of his own mind-altering experiences to illuminate what hallucinations tell us about the organization and structure of our brains, how they have influenced every culture’s folklore and art, and why the potential for hallucination is present in us all.
-
-
Not Just Hallucinations
- By Pamela Harvey on 01-05-13
By: Oliver Sacks
-
The Mind's Eye
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Oliver Sacks, Richard Davidson
- Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An exploration of vision through the case histories of six individuals - including a renowned pianist who continues to give concerts despite losing the ability to read the score, and a neurobiologist born with crossed eyes who, late in life, suddenly acquires binocular vision, and how her brain adapts to that new skill.
-
-
Same ole Sacks--great yarns as usual.
- By Rlelli07 on 10-26-10
By: Oliver Sacks
-
Awakenings
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis, Oliver Sacks
- Length: 13 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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 their extraordinary transformations.
-
-
Absolute classic!
- By Douglas on 09-01-12
By: Oliver Sacks
-
The River of Consciousness
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Dan Woren, Kate Edgar
- Length: 5 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A collection of essays that displays Oliver Sacks' passionate engagement with the most compelling and seminal ideas of human endeavor: evolution, creativity, memory, time, consciousness, and experience. The River of Consciousness is one of two books Sacks was working on up to his death, and it reveals his ability to make unexpected connections, his sheer joy in knowledge, and his unceasing, timeless project to understand what makes us human.
-
-
Important but Less Interesting
- By Michael on 11-16-17
By: Oliver Sacks
-
Gratitude
- Essays
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Dan Woren
- Length: 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A deeply moving testimony and celebration of how to embrace life. No writer has succeeded in capturing the medical and human drama of illness as honestly and as eloquently as Oliver Sacks. During the last few months of his life, he wrote a set of essays in which he movingly explored his feelings about completing a life and coming to terms with his own death.
-
-
To the Point, Yet Told From the Heart
- By LJT on 01-18-16
By: Oliver Sacks
-
Everything in Its Place
- First Loves and Last Tales
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Dan Woren
- Length: 8 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the best-selling author of Gratitude and On the Move, a final volume of essays that showcase Sacks's broad range of interests - from his passion for ferns, swimming, and horsetails, to his final case histories exploring schizophrenia, dementia, and Alzheimer's.
-
-
Missing Sacks
- By Brandy on 12-02-19
By: Oliver Sacks
-
Uncle Tungsten
- Memories of a Chemical Boyhood
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 10 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Long before Oliver Sacks became a distinguished neurologist and best-selling writer, he was a small English boy fascinated by metals - also by chemical reactions (the louder and smellier the better), photography, squids and cuttlefish, H.G. Wells, and the periodic table. In this endlessly charming and eloquent memoir, the he chronicles his love affair with science and the magnificently odd and sometimes harrowing childhood in which that love affair unfolded.
-
-
FOR COMMITED LOVERS OF OLIVER SACKS WORK
- By Jeff on 05-02-12
By: Oliver Sacks
-
Oaxaca Journal
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis, Oliver Sacks - introduction
- Length: 4 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Oliver Sacks is well known as an explorer of the human mind - a neurologist with a gift for complex, insightful portrayals of people and their conditions. However, he is also a card-carrying member of the American Fern Society, and since childhood has been fascinated by these primitive plants and their ability to survive and adapt in many climates. Oaxaca Journal is Sacks' spellbinding account of his trip with a group of fellow fern enthusiasts to the beautiful, history-steeped province of Oaxaca, Mexico.
-
-
A gem
- By Daniela on 06-04-15
By: Oliver Sacks
-
Seeing Voices
- A Journey Into the World of the Deaf
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis, Oliver Sacks - introduction
- Length: 5 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Seeing Voices, Oliver Sacks turns his attention to the subject of deafness, and the result is a deeply felt portrait of a minority struggling for recognition and respect - a minority with its own rich, sometimes astonishing, culture and unique visual language, an extraordinary mode of communication that tells us much about the basis of language in hearing people as well.
-
-
A Rich Experience
- By Douglas on 11-27-12
By: Oliver Sacks
-
And How Are You, Dr. Sacks?
- A Biographical Memoir of Oliver Sacks
- By: Lawrence Weschler
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 14 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lawrence Weschler sets Oliver Sacks' brilliant table talk and extravagant personality in vivid relief, casting himself as a beanpole Sancho to Sacks' capacious Quixote. We see Sacks rowing and ranting and caring deeply; composing the essays that would form The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat; recalling his turbulent drug-fueled younger days; helping his patients and exhausting his friends; and waging intellectual war against a medical and scientific establishment that failed to address his greatest concern: the spontaneous specificity of the individual human soul.
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Excellent and Exceptional
- By KK on 10-19-19
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Musicophilia
- Tales of Music and the Brain
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Music can move us to the heights or depths of emotion. It can persuade us to buy something, or remind us of our first date. It can lift us out of depression when nothing else can. It can get us dancing to its beat. But the power of music goes much, much further. Indeed, music occupies more areas of our brain than language does - humans are a musical species.
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The Best Of Sacks...
- By Douglas on 11-23-12
By: Oliver Sacks
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Letters
- By: Oliver Sacks, Kate Edgar - editor
- Narrated by: James Langton, Kate Edgar
- Length: 28 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Sensitively introduced and edited by Kate Edgar, Sacks’s longtime editor, the letters deliver a portrait of Sacks as he wrestles with the workings of the brain and mind. We see, through his eyes, the beginnings of modern neuroscience, following the thought processes of one of the great intellectuals of our time, whose words, as evidenced in this book, were unfailingly shaped with generosity and wonder toward other people.
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Beautiful letters by a beautiful mind
- By Adriana D. Briscoe on 01-13-25
By: Oliver Sacks, and others
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The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: and Other Clinical Tales
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis, Oliver Sacks - introduction
- Length: 9 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Oliver Sacks' The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat tells the stories of individuals afflicted with fantastic perceptual and intellectual aberrations: patients who have lost their memories and with them the greater part of their pasts; who are no longer able to recognize people and common objects; who are stricken with violent tics and grimaces or who shout involuntary obscenities; whose limbs have become alien; who have been dismissed as retarded yet are gifted with uncanny artistic or mathematical talents.
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I rarely stop reading a book halfway through...
- By Rusty on 09-04-15
By: Oliver Sacks
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Remember Me Tomorrow
- A Novel
- By: Farah Heron
- Narrated by: Soneela Nankani
- Length: 10 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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East House is the oldest and least desirable dorm on campus, but it has a draw for lonely university freshman Aleeza Kassam: Jay Hoque, the hot and broody student who vanished from East House five months ago without a trace. It’s irresistible to an aspiring investigative journalist like Aleeza. But when she starts receiving texts from Jay, the mystery takes an unexpected turn. To put it mildly.
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Great story, diminished by author's style
- By Denise Thibodeaux on 12-31-24
By: Farah Heron
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American Prometheus
- The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
- By: Kai Bird, Martin J. Sherwin
- Narrated by: Jeff Cummings
- Length: 26 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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J. Robert Oppenheimer was one of the iconic figures of the 20th century, a brilliant physicist who led the effort to build the atomic bomb but later confronted the moral consequences of scientific progress. When he proposed international controls over atomic materials, opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb, and criticized plans for a nuclear war, his ideas were anathema to powerful advocates of a massive nuclear buildup during the anti-Communist hysteria of the early 1950s.
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An American Tragedy
- By Edith on 12-13-07
By: Kai Bird, and others
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House of Frank
- By: Kay Synclaire
- Narrated by: Imani Jade Powers
- Length: 11 hrs
- Unabridged
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Powerless witch Saika is ready to enact her sister's final request: to plant her remains at the famed Ash Gardens. When Saika arrives at the always-stormy sanctuary, she is welcomed by its owner, an enormous, knit-cardiganed mythical beast named Frank, who offers her a role as one of the estate's caretakers. Overcome with grief, Saika accepts, desperate to put off her final farewell to her sister. But the work requires a witch with intrinsic power, and Saika's been disconnected from her magic since her sister's death two years prior.
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A little bittersweet
- By Nissa on 11-14-24
By: Kay Synclaire
What listeners say about A Leg to Stand On
Highly rated for:
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- lilchick
- 07-18-17
Was disappointed
I thought the performance was great and engaging. And for being in the medical field, a physical therapist, I think it does a great job of showing how this our medical. However for being a story about the doctor he seemed really aloof and everything seemed really dramatic. It was difficult to stay focused a lot, for me.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Claudia
- 01-08-21
One of Oliver Sacks best books
Having read several of Oliver Sacks books I wasn’t expecting this one to surprise me as much. The way he narrates his own experiences and the later analysis he does of them in relation to his own humanity are breathtaking.
He truly was a brilliant mind. This book is on my top 3 of this books.
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- CWG
- 02-04-12
A lesser book by an excellent author.
Is there anything you would change about this book?
Changing the book would mean changing Oliver Sacks, and that would be a very bad idea.
Would you be willing to try another book from Oliver Sacks? Why or why not?
Yes
What about Jonathan Davis and Oliver Sacks (Introduction) ’s performance did you like?
It was very well read.
Could you see A Leg to Stand On being made into a movie or a TV series? Who should the stars be?
No.
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2 people found this helpful
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- jeff
- 10-29-11
A very rewarding read but Not for everybody.
While this is a fine book with an amazing true story, I feel the need to put out a word of caution. The degree to which sachs goes off on his poetic existential meanderings in this book is excessive . It requires patience and a fair amount of concentration to get through these unfortunately verbose tirades. An editor really should have tightened it up. This book does have a great story and immense insight that should be heard by everyone. It will be of particular value to doctors, nurses and caregivers. I really love sacks work but his verbosity gets to be too much at times.
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5 people found this helpful
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- Vera
- 03-11-15
Oliver is a Genius
Makes you a genius if you listen or at least feels that way. All his books are my favorite ever!
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2 people found this helpful
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- John S.
- 08-17-11
Not sure what he was trying for here
Audible just brought this one out in audio, a year or so after Sacks' latest "The Mind's Eye"; my library didn't have a print copy of "Leg", so I spent a credit on it. Both books deal with the issue of doctor-as-patient, but this one's less approachable. Once he's rescued in Norway, and sent off to Britain for treatment, the story becomes progressively more inward and self-absorbed. I was interested when he veered towards the mind-body connection in healing, but otherwise his thoughts were just that ... thoughts. Not very focused ones either - not quite metaphysical, not really philosophical, and a little medical stuff thrown in. For Sacks fans only, those new to his stuff would probably never read another.
Narration helped me keep going when the going got kind of tough.
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8 people found this helpful
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- nick meginness
- 03-31-16
If you plan on being a health care professional
There is so much to gain from the Oliver's stories. For me, Sacks's articulations help me to potentiate and mature my ability to empathize. His description of events also help me comprehend the significance of other peoples personal experiences. This is great book for people walking the path of profound maturity.
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2 people found this helpful
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- k93
- 04-12-23
A philosophical masterpiece!
This book is a masterpiece fusing science, religion, and philosophy - easily one of my favorites from Sacks. For those who love to think deeply about the subjective experience of existence, and the spiritual ramifications of our perceptions and inward reactions. I felt a rejuvenated wonder about life just from listening to his words...
My only very tiny gripe is that, while the narration is good, it can be a little hard to tell when he's narrating Sacks quoting someone else, versus narrating Sacks himself. Other than that - perfect.
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- Anonymous User
- 08-18-11
A book only for Neurologists
The only interesting part was the beginning, up to the point of the doctor's recovery from surgery. From then on, it became boring, listening to the inner thoughts and uncertainties of interest only to students of neurology.
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- Richard
- 11-19-12
No Legs of Its Own
Is there anything you would change about this book?
Shorten it to two chapters and it will have said it all.
What was the most interesting aspect of this story? The least interesting?
Most: Snippets of the history of neurology. Least: the (unusual for Sacks) incessant, off-topic stray into his own tedious emotional outlook on the whole process of injury/shock/acceptance/healing/triumph. It was if he wrote this so his readership could give him free amateur psychotherapy. In the end, this was an unengaging emotion-rich/fact-sparse book about the process of healing up a broken leg. Not a Sack's Best.
What does Jonathan Davis and Oliver Sacks (Introduction) bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
Oliver Sacks normally writes a fine, engaging book. This one was such a sleeper though, that at least one didn't have to keep one's eyes open to get through it.
Did A Leg to Stand On inspire you to do anything?
Yes- frequent incursions into falling asleep.
Any additional comments?
I wouldn't judge the whole excellent spectrum of Oliver Sack's excellent books by this one flopper. I'll not give up on purchasing his other audio books, even though iIve also read most of them in print form.
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