Sacks by Subject
This list is not comprehensive, and most of Dr. Sacks’ writings fall into many different categories, so be sure to consult the index of each of his books for additional information. (Help us improve this list; send your suggestions to mail@oliversacks.com.)
Agnosia
HAT: title chapter
A LEG TO STAND ON
MARS: “To See and Not See”
MIND’S EYE: “Sight Reading” and other chapters
Alexia / Reading
MIND’S EYE: “A Man of Letters” and “Sight Reading”
Alzheimer’s / Dementia
MIND’S EYE: “Sight Reading”
MUSICOPHILIA: “Irrepressible: Music and the Temporal Lobes,” “Music and Identity: Dementia and Music Therapy”
–Sacks, Oliver and Melanie Shulman. 2005. Steroid Dementia: An Overlooked Diagnosis? Neurology 64:707-709 February.
Amnesia / Memory
HAT: “The Lost Mariner,” “A Matter of Identity,” “Murder”
MARS: “The Last Hippie,” “The Landscape of His Dreams”
MUSICOPHILIA: “In the Moment”
–Sacks, Oliver. 1996. Gowers’s memory. Neurology 46, pp. 1467-69, May.
–Sacks, Oliver. 2004. On Memory, Threepenny Review, volume 100, Winter.
Aphasia / Language
HAT: “The President’s Speech”
MIND’S EYE: “Recalled to Life”
MUSICOPHILIA: “Speech and Song: Aphasia and Music Therapy”
Auden, W.H.
–Sacks, Oliver: Dear Mr. A….. In Stephen Spender, ed., W.H. Auden: A Tribute.
Autism / Savant Syndrome
HAT: “A Walking Grove,” “The Twins,” “The Autist Artist”
MARS: “Prodigies,” “An Anthropologist on Mars”
MUSICOPHILIA: “Two Thousand Operas: Musical Savants”
–Sacks, Oliver. 2001. Henry Cavendish: An Early Case of Asperger’s syndrome? Neurology vol. 57, October 9.
–Sacks, Oliver. Introduction to the paperback edition of Glenn Gould by Peter Ostwald.
–Sacks, Oliver. Foreword to Thinking in Pictures, by Temple Grandin
Films: “The Mind Traveller: Rage for Order” (BBC)
Blindness (see also Vision)
HAT: “Hands”
ISLAND OF THE COLORBLIND: cycads (Guam, Rota)
MARS: “To See and Not See”
MIND’S EYE: title chapter
MUSICOPHILIA: “An Auditory World: Music and Blindness”
Botany
OAXACA JOURNAL: all chapters (ferns, tobacco, morning glory, chilies, chocolate, rubber, corn)
–Cox, Paul Alan and Sacks, Oliver. 2002. Cycad neurotoxins, consumption of flying foxes, and ALS-PDC disease in Guam. Neurology 2202 (58): 956-59.
–Sacks, Oliver. 2008. Darwin and the Meaning of Flowers, New York Review of Books, November 20, pp. 64-67.
–Sacks, Oliver. 2007. Botanists on Park, “Talk of the Town,” New Yorker, August 13, p. 25.
Chemistry / Physical Science
UNCLE TUNGSTEN: all chapters
–Sacks, Oliver. 1999. Hard Times for Curious Minds, New York Times, op-ed page, May 13.
–Sacks, Oliver. 1999. Everything In Its Place. New York Times Magazine, April 18, pp. 126-130.
–Sacks, Oliver. Scotoma: Forgetting and Neglect in Science. In Robert Silvers, ed., Hidden Histories of Science, pp. 141-87.
–Sacks, Oliver. 1993. Remembering South Kensington. Discover, November, pp. 78-80.
–Sacks, Oliver. 1993. Humphry Davy: a poet-chemist. New York Review of Books, November 4, pp. 50-56.
Color Vision
THE ISLAND OF THE COLORBLIND: Pingelap chapter
MARS: “The Colorblind Painter”
–Sacks, O., Wasserman, R.L., Zeki, S., and Siegel, R.M. 1998. Sudden color-blindness of cerebral origin. Society for Neuroscience Abstracts
Films: “The Mind Traveller: Island of the Colorblind” (BBC)
Creutzfeld-Jacob disease (BSE, mad cow disease)
–Sacks, Oliver. 1997. Eat, Drink, and Be Wary, review of Deadly Feasts by Richard Rhodes. New Yorker, April 14, pp. 82-85
Francis Crick
Add New York Review of Books
Charles Darwin
Sacks, Oliver. 2008. Darwin and the Meaning of Flowers. New York Review of Books, November 20.
Deafness / Language
SEEING VOICES
–Sacks, Oliver: foreword to A Man Without Words, by Susan Schaller.
Films: “The Mind Traveller: The Ragin’ Cajun” (BBC)
Depression
MUSICOPHILIA: “Lamentations: Music and Depression”
Dreams
MIND’S EYE: title chapter
MUSICOPHILIA: “Awake and Asleep: Musical Dreams”
–Sacks, Oliver. Neurological Dreams. In Deirdre Barrett, ed., Trauma and Dreams, pp. 212-16.
Dystonia
MUSICOPHILIA: “Athletes of the Small Muscles”
Encephalitis: see Parkinsonism
Epilepsy
HAT: “Reminiscence,” “A Passage to India”
MARS: “The Landscape of His Dreams”
MUSICOPHILIA: “A Strangely Familiar Feeling” and “Fear of Music”
–Devinsky, Julie; Devinsky, Orrin; and Sacks, Oliver. 2010. Klüver Bucy Syndrome, Hypersexuality, and the Law, Neurocase, in press.
–Sacks, Oliver. 2009. Michael Powell’s Neurological Cinema, Lancet, vol. 373, March 21, p. 1. [reprinted in Film Comment, vol. 45, no. 3, May/June 2009]
Face-blindness / Prosopagnosia
MIND’S EYE: “Face-Blind”
Freud, Sigmund
Sacks, Oliver. The Other Road: Freud as Neurologist. in Michael S. Roth, ed. Freud: Conflict and Culture, pp. 221-34.
Frontal Lobe Syndrome
MARS: “The Last Hippie”
MUSICOPHILIA: many chapters, see book index
–Sacks, Oliver. Foreword to The Executive Brain, by Elkhonon Goldberg.
Hallucinations
HAT: “Reminiscence”
MIGRAINE: “Migraine Aura and Classical Migraine,” “Migraine Aura and Hallucinatory Constants”
MUSICOPHILIA: “Musical Hallucinations”
Luria, A. R. (see also footnotes in most books)
–Sacks, Oliver: Luria and “Romantic Science.” In E. Goldberg, ed., Festschrift for Alexandr Romanovich Luria.
–Sacks, Oliver: Foreword to The Man with a Shattered World, by A. R. Luria.
–Sacks, O. W. 1977. Obituary for A.R. Luria, The Times (London).
–Sacks, O. W. 1973. The mind of A.R. Luria. The Listener, June 28.
Madness / Manic Depressive Illness / Schizophrenia
MUSICOPHILIA: “Seduction and Indifference”
–Sacks, Oliver. 2009. The Lost Virtues of the Asylum, New York Review of Books, September 24, pp. 50-52.
–Sacks, Oliver. 2008. A Summer of Madness, New York Review of Books, September 25, pp.57-61.
Migraine
HAT: “The Visions of Hildegard”
MIGRAINE
–Sacks, Oliver. 2008. Patterns, New York Times blog on migraines, posted February 14, http://migraine.blogs.nytimes.com
Music
AWAKENINGS
HAT: “Reminiscence,” “A Walking Grove,” “Witty Ticcy Ray”
A LEG TO STAND ON
MARS: “The Last Hippie”
MIND’S EYE: “Sight Reading”
MUSICOPHILIA
–Sacks, Oliver. Introduction to the paperback edition of Glenn Gould by Peter Ostwald (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998).
–Sacks, Oliver. 2006. The Power of Music, Brain, vol. 129, no. 10, October, pp. 2528-32.
Film: “Musical Minds” (NOVA)
Neural Darwinism
–Sacks, Oliver. 1993. Making up the mind. Review of work by Gerald Edelman, New York Review of Books, April 8, pp. 42-49.
–Sacks, Oliver. 1990. Neurology and the Soul. New York Review of Books, November 22.
Parkinsonism / Post-encephalitis
AWAKENINGS
HAT: “Incontinent Nostalgia,” “On the Level”
ISLAND OF THE COLORBLIND: “Guam”
MUSICOPHILIA: “Kinetic Melody: Parkinson’s and Music Therapy”
–Sacks, Oliver: Foreword to Shadow Over my Brain: A Battle against Parkinson’s Disease, by Cecil Todes.
–Sacks, Oliver: Review of Ivan: Living with Parkinson’s Disease, by Ivan Vaughan. British Medical Journal 294: 503, February 121, 1987.
–Sacks, Oliver. 1983. The origins of Awakenings. British Medical Journal 287: 1968-1969, December 24.
–Sacks, Oliver: Awakenings revisited. M. Sarner, ed., Advanced Medicine 18.
–Sacks, Oliver. 1993. Guam disease and post-encephalitic parkinsonism. Letter to the editor, Science 262, November 5, p. 826.
–Cox, Paul Alan and Sacks, Oliver. 2002. Cycad neurotoxins, consumption of flying foxes, and ALS-PDC disease in Guam, Neurology 2202 (58): 956-59.
–Murch, S. J., Cox, P. A., Banack, S. A., Steele, J. C., and Sacks, O. W. 2004. Occurrence of B-methylamino-L-alanine (BMAA) in ALS/PDC patients from Guam. Acta Neurol Scand 110: 267-269.
Films: “The Mind Traveller: Poison In Paradise” (BBC); “Awakenings” (Yorkshire Television)
Phantoms / Alienation / Proprioception
HAT: “The Disembodied Lady,” “The Man Who Fell Out of Bed,” “Phantoms”
A LEG TO STAND ON
MUSICOPHILIA: “The Case of the One-Armed Pianist”
–Sacks, Oliver. Foreword to Phantoms in the Brain, by V.S. Ramachandran and Sandra Blakeslee.
–Sacks, Oliver: Foreword to Pride and a Daily Marathon, by Jonathan Cole.
–Sacks, Oliver. Phantom faces. British Medical Journal, vol. 304, February 8, 1992, p. 364.
Photography
MIND’S EYE (stereo photography): “Stereo Sue”
UNCLE TUNGSTEN: “Images”
–Sacks, Oliver: Color photography in the forties, Letter to the editor, Scientific American, March 1990.
Savant Syndrome — see Autism
Seizure Disorders — see Epilepsy
Smell
HAT: “The Dog Beneath the Skin.”
MIGRAINE: “Migraine Aura and Classical Migraine,” “Migraine Aura and Hallucinatory Constants”
Stereo Vision
MIND’S EYE: “Stereo Sue” and “Persistence of Vision”
–Sacks, Oliver. Foreword to Fixing My Gaze by Susan R. Barry
Swimming
–Sacks, Oliver. 1997. Doug Stern’s Curacao swim camp. Triathlete, September, p. 10.
–Sacks, Oliver. 1997. Water Babies. New Yorker, May 26, pp. 44-45.
Synesthesia
MUSICOPHILIA: “The Key of Clear Green”
(neuro) Syphilis
HAT: “Cupid’s Disease”
Tourette’s Syndrome
HAT: “Witty Ticcy Ray,” “The Possessed”
MARS: “A Surgeon’s Life”
MUSICOPHILIA: “Come Together: Music and Tourette’s Syndrome”
–Sacks, Oliver. Tourette’s syndrome: a human condition. In Roger Kurlan, ed., Handbook of Tourette’s Syndrome and Related Tic and Behavioral Disorders, pp. 509-514.
–Sacks, Oliver. 1992. Tourette’s and creativity. British Medical Journal 305:1515-1516, December 19.
–Sacks, Oliver. Foreword to Don’t Think about Monkeys, ed. by Adam Seligman and John Hilkevich.
–Sacks, Oliver. 1998. The Divine Curse: Tourette’s syndrome among a mennonite family. Life, September.
–Sacks, Oliver: 1987. Tics. New York Review of Books, January 29.
–Sacks, Oliver: Acquired Tourettism in adult life. In A.J. Friedhoff and T.N. Chase, eds., Gilles de la Tourette Syndrome, Advances in Neurology 35 (NY: Raven Press, 1982).
Film: “The Mind Traveller: Shane” (BBC)
Travel
ISLAND OF THE COLORBLIND (Guam, Micronesia, Pingelap, Pohnpei, Pacific Islands)
OAXACA JOURNAL (Oaxaca, Mexico)
–Sacks, Oliver. 1989. Canada: Pause (1960). Antaeus 62, Spring, 192-200.
–Sacks, Oliver: 1988. Travel happy (1961). Antaeus 61, Autumn, 391-406.
–Sacks, Oliver. 2010. Colorado Springs Revisited. Columbia journal.
Twins
Sacks, Oliver. 1986. Review of The Silent Twins by Marjorie Wallace. New York Times Book Review, October 19.
Vision / Blindness
HAT: “Hands,” “Eyes Right!”
MARS: “The Colorblind Painter,” “To See and Not See.”
MIND’S EYE: “Persistence of Vision,” “Stereo Sue,” “The Mind’s Eye”
MUSICOPHILIA: An Auditory World: Music and Blindness
Williams Syndrome
MUSICOPHILIA: “A Hypermusical Species”
Audio/Visual: “The Mind Traveller: Don’t Be Shy, Mr. Sacks” (BBC film)
2011-06-30
Sacks by Subject | Oliver Sacks, M.D., Physician, Author, Neurologist
via oliversacks.com
