ALPHABETICAL BRAIN™ VOCABULARY HUMANIST GALAXY OF SECULAR SCIENCE STARS OLIVER SACKS May 3, 2021 GRATITUDE: by Oliver Sacks Alfred A.Knopf/Doubleday, 2015 (i-xi, 45 pages) [Life span = 1933-2015] www.oliversacks.com BOOK OUTLINE note = Numbers in parentheses refer to pages Quote = "My predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved. I have been given much and I have given something in return. Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure." (By author, Oliver Sacks) FORWORD (ix-xi) 1) MERCURY (3-11) 2) MY OWN LIFE (15-20) 3) MY PERIODIC TABLE (23-30) 4) SABBATH (33-45) ABOUT THE AUTHOR (unpaged at end) ABOUT THE AUTHOR, SUMMARY, AND BOOK DESCRIPTION ABOUT THE AUTHOR = Oliver Sacks was a neurologist, writer, and professor of medicine. Born in London in 1933, he moved to New York City in 1965, where he launched his medical career and began writing case studies of his patients. Called the “poet laureate of medicine” by The New York Times, Sacks is the author of thirteen books, including The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Musicophilia, and Awakenings, which inspired an Oscar-nominated film and a play by Harold Pinter. He was the recipient of many awards and honorary degrees, and was made a Commander of the British Empire in 2008 for services to medicine. He died in 2015. SUMMARY = In July 2013, Oliver Sacks turned eighty and wrote a... piece in The New York Times about the prospect of old age and the freedom he envisioned for himself in binding together the thoughts and feelings of a lifetime. BOOK DESCRIPTION = Eighteen months later, he was given a diagnosis of terminal cancer. At that time, he announced his terminal diagnosis publically in another piece in The New York Times. Gratitude is Sacks's meditation on why life continued to enthrall him even as he faced the all-too-close presence of his own death. Also he explained how he intended to live out the months that remained in the richest and deepest way possible. "My predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved. I have been given much and I have given something in return. Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure." -- Oliver Sacks No writer has succeeded in capturing the medical and human drama of illness as honestly and as eloquently as Oliver Sacks. During the last few months of his life, he wrote a set of essays in which he movingly explored his feelings about completing a life and coming to terms with his own death. "It is the fate of every human being," Sacks writes, "to be a unique individual, to find his own path, to live his own life, to die his own death." Together, these four essays form an ode to the uniqueness of each human being and to gratitude for the gift of life. EDITORIAL BOOK REVIEW LIBRARY JOURNAL REVIEW = Oliver Sacks's (Awakenings; The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat) powerful look back at his remarkable life was published posthumously. The book chronicles the famous author's thoughts, wishes, regrets, and, above all, feelings of love, happiness, and gratitude even as he faced the cancer that ended his life last year at 82. In essays that originally appeared in print in the New York Times, Sacks relates what makes him happy — simply to be alive on a beautiful day, for example — as well as what causes him sadness as he ages. He considers people he has known and loved and how they approached death and candidly discusses his feelings upon learning that his cancer had metastasized and was terminal. Surprisingly, the writings feature themes related to physics rather than biology, with Sacks explaining that "Times of stress, have led me to turn, or to return, to the physical sciences, a world where there is no life, but also no death." While the book shows no dimming of intellect-indeed, the material offers incisive, poignant observations — the author's usual scientific narrative has in places been supplanted by wistful musings on life and love. The essays also tie up the strands of a career spent investigating and writing, mentioning various projects, mentors, and books along the way. VERDICT A perfect gift for thoughtful readers, and a title that belongs in science and biography collections.-Henrietta Verma, formerly with Library Journal. PROFESSIONAL BOOK REVIEW Oliver Sacks was like no other clinician, or writer. He was drawn to the homes of the sick, the institutions of the most frail and disabled, the company of the unusual and the 'abnormal.' He wanted to see humanity in its many variants and to do so in his own, almost anachronistic way — face to face, over time, away from our burgeoning apparatus of computers and algorithms. And, through his writing, he showed us what he saw. – Atul Gawande, author of the books, Being Mortal, Gene, etc REMEMBER ALWAYS: You Are Your Adaptable Memory! Click or Tap to Return to Humanist Hub RETURN TO THE HUMANIST HUB OF SECULAR SCIENCE STARS ALPHABETICAL BRAIN VOCABULARY produced by Infinite Interactive Ideas™