Looking for the perfect gift, or just some enlightenment? As 2016 draws to a close, we’d like to share with you some of our favorite books of the year.

Mentored by a Madman: The William Burroughs Experiment by Andrew Lees. The memoir of a world-renowned neurologist who has done groundbreaking work with Parkinson’s patients as well as discovered for himself the hallucinogenic powers of ayahuasca and other drugs. No, we’re talking not about Oliver Sacks but about his good friend and colleague Andrew Lees. You will be caught up in this tale of medical detective work, written with verve and erudition, and gorgeously published by Notting Hill Editions.

Waking the Spirit by Andrew Schulman. A world-class musician discovers the hard way the profound power of music in life and death situations. Schulman’s story is compelling and inspiring, a gripping journey that reveals fundamental truths about music and the brain.

The Invention of Nature by Andrea Wulf. Alexander von Humboldt was one of Dr. Sacks’s greatest heroes. He would have adored Wulf’s acclaimed biography of Humboldt, an intrepid adventurer and visionary polymath whose understanding of the natural world inspired Darwin and others, and is equally relevant today.

For more great ideas, check out Brainpickings‘ top 2016 science books.

Have you explored all fourteen of Dr. Sacks’s own books?

Did we forget any of your favorite reads? Send us your suggestions!

Warm wishes from
The Oliver Sacks Foundation

PS: Find out how you can support the work of the Oliver Sacks Foundation with a year-end tax-deductible contribution.

A few days ago we had an opportunity to see “Life, Animated,” which opens around the country this weekend. Exquisitely crafted, this film introduces us to Owen Suskind: handsome (not unlike the young Oliver Sacks), kind, thoughtful and articulate, accomplished. Owen is also autistic–after years of silence in early childhood, he learned to speak again by embracing his passion for Disney animated characters. (You may remember the book and article by Owen’s father, eminent journalist Ron Suskind, which inspired the film.)

Watch the trailer, and please share it with your friends.

Here’s what the Washington Post had to say:

Viewers . . . will be grateful for the chance to spend time with Owen, a born leader who’s not only a delightful and memorable leading man, but who radically reframes conventional understanding of the autism spectrum. “Life, Animated” makes fascinating points, about the power of cinema, about meeting our loved ones where they are and, as Ron says, about who gets to decide what constitutes a meaningful life. That is a probing question — and “Life, Animated” provides a bracingly optimistic answer.

Twenty years ago, Oliver Sacks introduced Temple Grandin to a global audience in his book An Anthropologist on Mars, and since then we have seen so many exciting advances in the scientific understanding of the autism spectrum of conditions. More importantly, our culture is just beginning to embrace the many ways in which people with autism bring very special strengths to us all.

Life, Animated will enrich your life–please go to theaters this weekend to support this life-changing film. If you suffer from political convention overload, we guarantee it, this will make you proud to be a human again.

We are thrilled to announce an upcoming tribute to the remarkable life and work of Dr. Oliver Sacks produced by the World Science Festival. Dr. Sacks, a longtime contributor to the Festival, will be the subject of this year’s opening night event, June 1, 2016 in New York City.

With stories from Dr. Sacks himself, as well as his friends, colleagues, and patients, this multi-media evening of music, image, and language reveals much about this extraordinary man who had an incalculable impact on the worlds of medicine and storytelling.

AWAKENING THE MIND: A Celebration of the Life and Work of Oliver Sacks

Wednesday, June 1, 2016 8:00PM

NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts
566 LaGuardia Place, New York, NY 10012
Tickets (general admission) are now on sale.

Do you live outside New York City?  Why not organize an event in your own community to meet other Sacks readers and livestream the program? The WSF will provide your group with free access to the program content, and you can add your own guest speakers or discussion groups. Can you think of a local organization that would like to sponsor an Oliver Sacks night–perhaps a university, school, museum, library, science club or arts organization? Let us know how we can help!

For more information regarding WSF Live streaming partnerships, click here.

Best wishes,
The Sacks Team
On the Move is now in paperback!

Our good friend Steve Silberman (“Neurotribes”) recently listed his five favorite books on autism for FiveBooks.com. He adds this observation about Dr. Sacks’s work:

“Oliver was interested not just in studying what deficits and impairments his patients had, but also in what gave them joy, resilience and a sense of purpose. He would then ally himself with these sources of strength so they could learn to use their potentially devastating conditions as opportunities for adaptation, renewal, reinvention and growth.”

“We already understand the value of biodiversity in a rainforest,” says Silberman. “The same is true of any community of human minds.”

Dr. Sacks’s book Gratitude is still on the New York Times bestseller list, and we thank you all for your support!  It is now available in the US, Canada, UK, Germany, the Netherlands, and Brazil, with more translations coming soon.

On the Move is now available in a beautiful new paperback edition from Vintage Books in the US and Canada, and from Picador in the UK.

The Science Friday Book Club selected On the Move this month, and you can listen to what Maria Popova, Danielle Ofri and others have to say about the book here. Also check out Science Friday’s great website extras about the book.

We at the Oliver Sacks Foundation are on the move, as well. Please write to us at our new office:

The Oliver Sacks Foundation
535 West 23rd Street
Suite SPH2B
New York, New York 10011

We are proud to announce the upcoming publication of a new book by Dr. Sacks: titled Gratitude, it brings together in one volume four gemlike essays written over the last two years of his life and first read by millions worldwide in The New York Times.

It begins with Dr. Sacks’s essay on turning 80, originally titled “The Joy of Old Age.” In it, he writes that embracing old age has brought “not a shrinking but an enlargement of mental life and perspective.”  Rarely has an essay struck a nerve as this piece did; it was the #1 most e-mailed article in the Times for an entire month.

In January of 2015, only a few weeks after he completed the manuscript of his new memoir, On the Move, Dr. Sacks received the news that a rare, uveal form of melanoma had metastasized to his liver. Within days of the diagnosis, he began writing “My Own Life,” in which he expressed an overwhelming feeling of gratitude. “Above all,” he wrote, “I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.” This essay, too, went viral.

In July, he published “My Periodic Table,” in which he spoke of the sense of awe and eternity inspired by an expansive night sky filled with stars, and about his deep love for science and nature, for metals and elements (“little emblems of eternity”), and for lemurs.

Finally, Gratitude contains Sacks’s last essay, published only two weeks before his death. In “Sabbath,” he writes, “I find my thoughts, increasingly, not on the supernatural or spiritual, but on what is meant by living a good and worthwhile life — achieving a sense of peace within oneself.”

Together, these four extraordinary essays form an ode to the uniqueness of each human being and to gratitude for the gift of life.

Gratitude will be published worldwide, in hardcover, e-book, and audiobook formats, beginning November 24. It is available for preorder now from your local bookseller or online bookstore.

Oliver Sacks, London, May 2015 by Bill Hayes

Oliver Sacks died early this morning at his home in Greenwich Village, surrounded by his close friends and family. He was 82. He spent his final days doing what he loved—playing the piano, writing to friends, swimming, enjoying smoked salmon, and completing several articles. His final thoughts were of gratitude for a life well lived and the privilege of working with his patients at various hospitals and residences including the Little Sisters of the Poor in the Bronx and in Queens, New York.

Dr. Sacks was writing to the last. On August 14, he published an essay, “Sabbath,” in the New York Times. Two more articles are to be published this week, one in the New York Review of Books and one in the New Yorker.

Oliver Sacks at work, February 2015
Photo by Bill Hayes

Sacks also left several nearly completed books and a vast archive of correspondence, manuscripts, and journals. Before his death Sacks established the Oliver Sacks Foundation, a nonprofit organization devoted to increasing understanding of the human brain and mind through the power of narrative nonfiction and case histories.

The foundation’s goals include making Dr. Sacks’s published and yet-unpublished writings available to the broadest possible audience, preserving and digitizing materials related to his life and work and making them available for scholarly use, working to reduce the stigma of mental and neurological illness, and supporting a humane approach to neurology and psychiatry.

We at the Sacks office extend our love and sympathies to Dr. Sacks’s partner, Billy Hayes, and we are enormously grateful for the outpouring of love and support from Dr. Sacks’s readers and friends around the world.

With love from

Kate Edgar, Hallie Parker, Yolanda Rueda, Hailey Wojcik, and Kai Furbeck

Don’t miss this: Steve Silberman previews his book on the hidden history of autism, NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity, in this riveting TED talk, just released.

Since June is independent bookseller month (we’re just kidding–every month is indie month!), we tip our hats to indies around the world (including our much-loved landmark neighborhood store, Three Lives in New York City).

But we have to hand it to Unity Books in Wellington, New Zealand. They asked their shop plumber to find a BMW for their display of On the Move, and came up with this vintage R75. Thank you, Tilly Lloyd and wonderful staff!
(Photo by Matt Bialostocki)

Do you ever mistake “fire crackers” for “choir practice”? Dr. Sacks wrote about mishearings in the New York Times last week.