Musicophilia by Sacks Oliver
Oliver Sacks has been hailed by the New York Times as 'one of the great clinical writers of the twentieth century'. In this eagerly awaited new book, the subject of his uniquely literate scrutiny is music: our relationship with it, our facility for it, and what this most universal of passions says about us. In chapters examining savants and synaesthetics, depressives and musical dreamers, Sacks succeeds not only in articulating the musical experience but in locating it in the human brain. He shows that music is not simply about sound, but also movement, visualization, and silence. He follows the experiences of patients suddenly drawn to or suddenly divorced from music. And in so doing he shows, as only he can, both the extraordinary spectrum of human expression and the capacity of music to heal. Wise, compassionate and compellingly readable, Musicophilia promises, like all the best writing, to alter our conception of who we are and how we function, to lend a fascinating insight into the mysteries of the mind, and to show us what it is to be human.
Oliver Sacks was born in 1933 in London and was educated at Queen's College, Oxford. He completed his medical training at San Francisco's Mount Zion Hospital and at UCLA before moving to New York, where he soon encountered the patients whom he would write about in his book Awakenings. Dr Sacks spent almost fifty years working as a neurologist and wrote many books, including The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Musicophilia, and Hallucinations, about the strange neurological predicaments and conditions of his patients. The New York Times referred to him as 'the poet laureate of medicine', and over the years he received many awards, including honours from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Royal College of Physicians. In 2008, he was appointed Commander of the British Empire. His memoir, On the Move, was published shortly before his death in August 2015.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780330444361 |
| ISBN 10 | 0330444360 |
| Title | Musicophilia |
| Author | Sacks Oliver |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Pan Macmillan |
| Year published | 2007-10-05 |
| Number of pages | 400 |
| Prizes | Short-listed for Independent Booksellers' Week Book of the Year Award: Adults' Book of the Year 2009 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |