On the Move

On the Move is Oliver Sacks's account of his own life, written by the neurologist and author who spent his career explaining how the brain shapes what it means to be human. The book follows him from a boyhood in which one schoolmaster predicted he would go far, provided he did not go too far, to a life that proved the warning half right. He never stopped moving, and he tells the story with candor and humor.

Sacks writes about the passions that drove him, an unlikely mix that runs from motorcycles and weight lifting to neurology and poetry. He is open about his romantic attachments and his intellectual ones, and about the guilt he carried after leaving his family behind to make a new life in America. He also writes about his bond with his brother, who lived with schizophrenia.

Along the way he introduces the writers and scientists who shaped his thinking, among them W. H. Auden, Gerald M. Edelman and Francis Crick. For readers who know his case studies, this is the story of the person behind them. For readers who do not, it is a frank and lively portrait of an unconventional doctor and writer.