“Masterly.” —Jerome Groopman, the New Yorker, author of How Doctors Think

Balanced, authoritative . . . brilliant.” —The London Times

“Written by one of the great clinical writers of the twentieth century, Migraine . . . should be read as much for its brilliant insights into the nature of our mental functioning as for its discussion of the migraine.” —The New York Times Book Review

“I am sure . . . that any layman who is interested in the relation between the body and mind . . . will find the book as fascinating as I have.” –W. H. Auden,  —New York Review of Books

“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.” —The Observer

“[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

“Experiences so strange that they are difficult to conceive are not limited to travels up the Amazon or to the Moon, but can occur within the confines of the human head…This long sleep and sudden awakening to a strange new world…though so alien, have an immediate power to grip the imagination. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that through this book we live with the dead, brought back from the past…The book is an extraordinary compound of clinical observation and, one feels, deep understanding of the plight of these people…One senses in the author a passion to communicate his discoveries with all the power of his intellect, knowledge and deep compassion–so that we may “awake.’” —Richard Gregory, The Listener

“This book is a neurologist’s account of his experience with a so-called miracle drug from the epidemic of sleeping sickness which swept the world in the 1920s. Dr. Sacks writes beautifully and with exceptional subtlety and penetration into both the state of mind of his patients and the nature of illness in general….Compulsively readable…a brilliant and humane book.” —A. Alvarez, Observer

“It makes you aware of the knife-edge we live on.” —Doris Lessing

“This doctor’s report is written in a prose of such beauty that you might well look in vain for its equal among living practitioners of belles lettres.” —Frank Kermode, Daily Telegraph

Feature film starring Robin Williams and Robert De Niro, Julie Kavner and John Heard. Produced by Walter Parkes and Larry Lasker, directed by Penny Marshall, screenplay by Steven Zaillian. Released December 1990 by Columbia Pictures. Awakenings was nominated for three Academy Awards. Received the 1991 Scriptor Award. More info here. Stream now.

An opera composed by Tobias Picker, libretto by Aryeh Lev Stollman, based on the book Awakenings by Oliver Sacks. Commissioned for the Opera Theatre of St. Louis. World premiere: June 5, 2021. More info.

“In calling for a neurology of the soul and a deeper more humane medicine, Sacks’ remarkable book raises issues of profound importance for everyone interested in humane health care and the human application of science.” — Vic Sussman, The Washington Post Book World

“Losing the use of a limb is a catastrophe, and it needed a thoughtful essay written about it. This is it. It is more than that. Oliver Sacks is a neurologist of wide lay reading, a man of humane eloquence, a genuine communicator aware of the damnable rift that subsists between doctor and patient. Its value lies in its willingness to combine the technical and the demotic, to admit poetry and philosophy and the religious impulse. It is also intensely personal, but it affirms the community of human experience.” — Anthony Burgess, The Observer

“In this extraordinary book, Sacks chronicles his own journey from traumatic injury to health. By so doing, he built a bridge of understanding between himself and his patients that became the foundation of what he called ‘a new and deeper medicine.’” — Steve Silberman

“A neurologist in [the] great tradition…. Sacks has written a book about a leg, his leg; but it is a story about the nature of selfhood–a narrative comparable to Conrad’s The Secret Sharer.” — Jerome Bruner, The New York Review of Books

“Dr. Sacks, although he is a professional neurologist, sees his injury as a violation not so much of the nervous system as of the Self. The word alienation itself, so loosely slung around in recent decades, takes on a new precision as Dr. Sacks reviews his predicament in exact clinical, emotional and philosophical terms. No one has described that famous condition so well before. A remarkable, generous, vivid and thoroughly intelligent piece of writing.” — Jonathan Raban, The Sunday Times 

“It is in every way a marvellously rich and thoughtful tale. Dr. Sacks has once again emphatically shown how much there is still to be learned from painstakingly observed and chronicled case history. Long after much of what doctors currently regard as essential and relevant to their practice has been forgotten or consigned to the bin, this book will continue to be a rich source of understanding of what it is like to be ill, perplexed and in the dispassionate if caring hands of the nursing and medical professionals.” — Sunday Telegraph