A Leg to Stand On

Oliver Sacks

Mar 2013 · Odyssey Editions

About this ebook

The author of twelve books, including the bestselling Awakenings, The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat, Musicophilia, and Hallucinations, Oliver Sacks is internationally renowned for his compassionate approach to patients affected by profound neurological disorders. Yet when an accident on an uninhabited mountain in Norway leaves Dr. Sacks with a severe leg injury, he becomes the patient. During what should have been a routine recovery period, he experiences an overwhelming sensation that his injured leg is now absent from his body, and indeed from his physical awareness. In A Leg To Stand On, one of Dr. Sacks’ most personal works, this disturbing experience is the starting point of a fascinating journey through the mysteries of perception, the physical substance of our identities, and the experience of being a patient.

About the author

Oliver Sacks, M.D., was born in London and educated in London, Oxford, and California. He practices neurology in New York City, where he is a professor of neurology at NYU. The feature film Awakenings and Harold Pinter’s A Kind of Alaska were both based on Dr. Sacks’s work, and he is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books, as well as to many medical journals. He holds honorary doctorates from numerous universities, including Queen’s College, Oxford; the Karolinksa Institute; the Universidad Catolica del Peru; Gallaudet University; and Georgetown University. His work has been translated into more than two dozen languages worldwide.