Uncle Tungsten by Oliver Sacks

Uncle Tungsten by Oliver Sacks

From the distinguished neurologist who is also one of the most remarkable storytellers of our time--a riveting memoir of his youth and his love affair with science, as unexpected and fascinating as his celebrated case histories.

"A rare gem.... Fresh, joyous, wistful, generous, and tough-minded." --The New York Times Book Review

Long before Oliver Sacks became the bestselling author of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Awakenings, 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, Sacks chronicles his love affair with science and the magnificently odd and sometimes harrowing childhood in which that love affair unfolded.

In Uncle Tungsten we meet Sacks' extraordinary family, from his surgeon mother (who introduces the fourteen-year-old Oliver to the art of human dissection) and his father, a family doctor who imbues in his son an early enthusiasm for housecalls, to his "Uncle Tungsten," whose factory produces tungsten-filament lightbulbs. We follow the young Oliver as he is exiled at the age of six to a grim, sadistic boarding school to escape the London Blitz, and later watch as he sets about passionately reliving the exploits of his chemical heroes--in his own home laboratory. Uncle Tungsten is a crystalline view of a brilliant young mind springing to life, a story of growing up which is by turns elegiac, comic, and wistful, full of the electrifying joy of discovery.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780375704048
ISBN 10	0375704043
Title	Uncle Tungsten
Author	Oliver Sacks
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Random House USA Inc
Year published	2002-09-17
Number of pages	352
Prizes	Winner of New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age.
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.