With Ralph Siegel at the “Platypusary” near Melbourne
(Credit pai1.51)
(Credit pai1.52)
(Credit pai1.53)
(Credit pai1.54)
I am happier in or under the water than on land: Snorkeling and walking the beach in Curaçao, emerging from Lake Tahoe, in scuba gear.
Receiving the award of Commander of the Order of the British Empire from Queen Elizabeth
(Credit pai1.56)
In front of a favorite cycad at the Hortus Botanicus in Amsterdam, 2014
(Credit pai1.57)
With Billy Hayes, 2014
(Credit pai1.58)
Writing in my journal at Machu Picchu, 2006
Acknowledgments
Putting this autobiography together would not have been possible without Kate Edgar. Kate has played a unique role in my life—as personal assistant, editor, collaborator, and friend—for more than thirty years (I dedicated my last book, Hallucinations, to her). And here, with the help of our two devoted assistants, Hallie Parker and Hailey Wojcik, she has helped me sift through all my earlier writings, published and unpublished, as well as notebooks and letters going back to the 1950s.
I owe a special debt to my friend and fellow neurologist Orrin Devinsky, with whom I have enjoyed a doctor-to-doctor as well as a friend-to-friend dialogue for twenty-five years. Orrin has cast a critical eye on the scientific and clinical parts of this book, as of several earlier books (he was a dedicatee of Musicophilia).
Dan Frank, my editor at Knopf, has read through successive versions of this book, offering precious advice and insights at each stage.
My dear friend (and fellow writer) Billy Hayes has been intimately concerned with the genesis, the writing, and the shaping of this book, and it is to him that I dedicate it.
Hundreds of people have been dear and important to me in the course of a long and eventful life, but only a few of them could be brought into the compass of this book. The others should be assured that I have not forgotten them, and that they will reside in my memory and my affections until the day I die.
PHOTO CREDITS
All photos are from the collection of the author, except as noted:
Photo insert pai1.1: David Drazin
pai1.3: Charles Cohen
pai1.12: Robert Rodman
pai1.22: Douglas White
pai1.27, pai1.28: Lowell Handler
pai1.29: Lowell Handler; pai1.30: Bill Hayes
pai1.32: Lowell Handler
pai1.33: Lowell Handler
pai1.34: Chris Rawlence; pai1.35: Rosalie Winard
pai1.42: Lowell Handler
pai1.47: Kate Edgar; pai1.48: Lowell Handler
pai1.49: Joyce Ravid
pai1.51, pai1.52: Nicholas Naylor-Leland
pai1.53: Marsha Garces Williams; pai1.54: Lorraine Newman, Pan Aqua
pai1.56: Bill Hayes
pai1.57: Henri Cole
pai1.58: Kate Edgar
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Oliver Sacks is a physician and the author of many books, including The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Awakenings, The Island of the Colorblind, and an earlier memoir, Uncle Tungsten. He is a frequent contributor to the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books. He lives in New York City, where he is a professor of neurology at the NYU School of Medicine.