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A Leg to Stand On
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis, Oliver Sacks
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Categories: Literature & Fiction, Essays
People who bought this also bought...
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Hallucinations
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Dan Woren
- Length: 9 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Have you ever seen something that wasn't really there? Heard someone call your name in an empty house? Sensed someone following you and turned around to find nothing? Dr Oliver Sacks weaves together stories of his patients and of his own mind-altering experiences to illuminate what hallucinations tell us about the organisation and structure of our brains, how they have influenced every culture's folklore and art and why the potential for hallucination is present in us all, a vital part of the human condition.
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A poor choice of reader
- By C. Mckinnell on 19-10-20
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An Anthropologist on Mars
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis, Oliver Sacks
- Length: 11 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
As with his previous best seller, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, in An Anthropologist on Mars Oliver Sacks uses case studies to illustrate the myriad ways in which neurological conditions can affect our sense of self, our experience of the world and how we relate to those around us. Writing with his trademark blend of scientific rigour and human compassion, he describes patients such as the colour-blind painter or the surgeon with compulsive tics that disappear in the operating theatre - patients for whom disorientation and alienation but also adaptation are inescapable facts of life.
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The genius of Oliver Sacks
- By Chris on 02-06-19
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The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis, Oliver Sacks
- Length: 9 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
With an introduction by Will Self. A classic work of psychology, this international best seller provides a groundbreaking insight into the human mind. If a man has lost a leg or an eye, he knows he has lost a leg or an eye; but if he has lost a self - himself - he cannot know it, because he is no longer there to know it. In this extraordinary book, Dr. Oliver Sacks recounts the stories of patients struggling to adapt to often bizarre worlds of neurological disorder.
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Good book, slightly let down by the narration
- By D. John on 16-09-19
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Musicophilia
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Oliver Sacks’ compassionate tales of people struggling to adapt to different neurological conditions have fundamentally changed the way we think of our own minds. In Musicophilia, he examines the powers of music through the individual experiences of patients, musicians and everyday people - those struck by affliction, by unusual talent and even, in one case, by lightning - to show not only that music occupies more areas of our brain than language does but also that it can torment, calm, organise and heal.
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Hallucinations & Epilepsy
- By ⚙️🦁🌿UrbanSmash 🇬🇧🇬🇩🇩🇲 on 04-01-19
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Awakenings
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis, Oliver Sacks
- Length: 13 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Hailed as a medical classic, and the subject of a major feature film as well as radio and stage plays and various TV documentaries, Awakenings by Oliver Sacks is the extraordinary account of a group of 20 patients. Rendered catatonic by the sleeping-sickness epidemic that swept the world just after the First World War, all 20 had spent 40 years in hospital - motionless and speechless; aware of the world around them but exhibiting no interest in it - until Dr Sacks administered the then-new drug L-DOPA, which caused them, temporarily, to awake from their decades-long slumber.
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Enjoyably extended from the original, well read
- By Client d'Amazon on 01-10-20
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The River of Consciousness
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Dan Woren, Kate Edgar
- Length: 5 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In The River of Consciousness, Dr. Sacks takes on evolution, botany, chemistry, medicine, neuroscience and the arts and calls upon his great scientific and creative heroes - above all, Darwin, Freud and William James. For Sacks these thinkers were constant companions from an early age; the questions they explored - the meaning of evolution, the roots of creativity and the nature of consciousness - lie at the heart of science and of this audiobook.
-
Hallucinations
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Dan Woren
- Length: 9 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Have you ever seen something that wasn't really there? Heard someone call your name in an empty house? Sensed someone following you and turned around to find nothing? Dr Oliver Sacks weaves together stories of his patients and of his own mind-altering experiences to illuminate what hallucinations tell us about the organisation and structure of our brains, how they have influenced every culture's folklore and art and why the potential for hallucination is present in us all, a vital part of the human condition.
-
-
A poor choice of reader
- By C. Mckinnell on 19-10-20
-
An Anthropologist on Mars
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis, Oliver Sacks
- Length: 11 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As with his previous best seller, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, in An Anthropologist on Mars Oliver Sacks uses case studies to illustrate the myriad ways in which neurological conditions can affect our sense of self, our experience of the world and how we relate to those around us. Writing with his trademark blend of scientific rigour and human compassion, he describes patients such as the colour-blind painter or the surgeon with compulsive tics that disappear in the operating theatre - patients for whom disorientation and alienation but also adaptation are inescapable facts of life.
-
-
The genius of Oliver Sacks
- By Chris on 02-06-19
-
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis, Oliver Sacks
- Length: 9 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With an introduction by Will Self. A classic work of psychology, this international best seller provides a groundbreaking insight into the human mind. If a man has lost a leg or an eye, he knows he has lost a leg or an eye; but if he has lost a self - himself - he cannot know it, because he is no longer there to know it. In this extraordinary book, Dr. Oliver Sacks recounts the stories of patients struggling to adapt to often bizarre worlds of neurological disorder.
-
-
Good book, slightly let down by the narration
- By D. John on 16-09-19
-
Musicophilia
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Oliver Sacks’ compassionate tales of people struggling to adapt to different neurological conditions have fundamentally changed the way we think of our own minds. In Musicophilia, he examines the powers of music through the individual experiences of patients, musicians and everyday people - those struck by affliction, by unusual talent and even, in one case, by lightning - to show not only that music occupies more areas of our brain than language does but also that it can torment, calm, organise and heal.
-
-
Hallucinations & Epilepsy
- By ⚙️🦁🌿UrbanSmash 🇬🇧🇬🇩🇩🇲 on 04-01-19
-
Awakenings
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis, Oliver Sacks
- Length: 13 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Hailed as a medical classic, and the subject of a major feature film as well as radio and stage plays and various TV documentaries, Awakenings by Oliver Sacks is the extraordinary account of a group of 20 patients. Rendered catatonic by the sleeping-sickness epidemic that swept the world just after the First World War, all 20 had spent 40 years in hospital - motionless and speechless; aware of the world around them but exhibiting no interest in it - until Dr Sacks administered the then-new drug L-DOPA, which caused them, temporarily, to awake from their decades-long slumber.
-
-
Enjoyably extended from the original, well read
- By Client d'Amazon on 01-10-20
-
The River of Consciousness
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Dan Woren, Kate Edgar
- Length: 5 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The River of Consciousness, Dr. Sacks takes on evolution, botany, chemistry, medicine, neuroscience and the arts and calls upon his great scientific and creative heroes - above all, Darwin, Freud and William James. For Sacks these thinkers were constant companions from an early age; the questions they explored - the meaning of evolution, the roots of creativity and the nature of consciousness - lie at the heart of science and of this audiobook.
-
The Mind's Eye
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Oliver Sacks
- Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In The Mind’s Eye, Oliver Sacks tells the stories of people who are able to navigate the world and communicate with others despite losing what many of us consider indispensable senses and abilities: the capacity to recognise faces, the sense of three-dimensional space, the ability to read, the sense of sight. For all of these people, the challenge is to adapt to a radically new way of being in the world - and The Mind’s Eye is testament to the myriad ways that we, as humans, are capable of rising to this challenge.
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Oaxaca Journal
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis, Oliver Sacks
- Length: 4 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Oliver Sacks, the best-selling author of Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, is most famous for his studies of the human mind: insightful and beautifully characterised portraits of those experiencing complex neurological conditions. However, he has another scientific passion: the fern.
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Seeing Voices
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis, Oliver Sacks
- Length: 5 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Imaginative and insightful, Seeing Voices offers a way into a world that is, for many people, alien and unfamiliar - for to be profoundly deaf is not just to live in a world of silence but also to live in a world where the visual is paramount. In this remarkable book, Oliver Sacks explores the consequences of this, including the different ways in which the deaf and the hearing impaired learn to categorise their respective worlds - and how they convey and communicate those experiences to others.
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Gratitude
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Dan Woren
- Length: 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Oliver Sacks died in August 2015 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, swimming, enjoying smoked salmon - and writing. As Dr Sacks looked back over his long, adventurous life his final thoughts were of gratitude. In a series of remarkable, beautifully written and uplifting meditations, in Gratitude Dr Sacks reflects on and gives thanks for a life well lived and expresses his thoughts on growing old, facing terminal cancer and reaching the end.
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Migraine
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 12 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In Migraine, Oliver Sacks offers at once a medical account of its occurrence and management; an exploration of its physical, physiological, and psychological underpinnings and consequences; and a meditation on the nature and experience of health and illness.
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Savant
- By Ulysses Ryan on 17-01-19
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Livewired
- The Inside Story of the Ever-Changing Brain
- By: David Eagleman
- Narrated by: David Eagleman
- Length: 9 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
How can a blind person learn to see with her tongue or a deaf person learn to hear with his skin? What does a baby born without a nose tell us about our sensory machinery? Might we someday control a robot with our thoughts? And what does any of this have to do with why we dream? The answers to these questions are not right in front of our eyes; they're right behind our eyes. This book is not simply about what the brain is but what it does. Covering decades of research to the present day, Livewired also presents new findings from Eagleman's own research.
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There are some good bits but overall very labored
- By Roger D. on 08-11-20
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Uncle Tungsten
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 10 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In Uncle Tungsten, Oliver Sacks evokes, with warmth and wit, his upbringing in wartime England. He tells of the large science-steeped family who fostered his early fascination with chemistry. There follow his years at boarding school where, though unhappy, he developed the intellectual curiosity that would shape his later life. And we hear of his return to London, an emotionally bereft 10-year-old who found solace in his passion for learning. Uncle Tungsten radiates all the delight and wonder of a boy’s adventures and is an unforgettable portrait of an extraordinary young mind.
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It's Chemical
- By Alistair Davies on 10-05-19
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It's All in Your Head
- Stories from the Frontline of Psychosomatic Illness
- By: Suzanne O'Sullivan
- Narrated by: Maggie Ollerenshaw
- Length: 10 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Pauline first became ill when she was 15. What seemed to be a urinary infection became joint pain, then life-threatening appendicitis. After a routine operation, Pauline lost all the strength in her legs. Shortly afterwards, convulsions started. But Pauline's tests are normal: her symptoms seem to have no physical cause whatsoever. This may be an extreme case, but Pauline is not alone. As many as a third of people visiting their GPs have symptoms that are medically unexplained.
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OK content, but message and impact lost by very poor structure.
- By Kindle Customer on 17-10-19
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On the Move: A Life
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Dan Woren
- Length: 11 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
An impassioned, tender and joyous memoir by the author of Musicophilia and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. When Oliver Sacks was twelve years old, a perceptive schoolmaster wrote in his report: 'Sacks will go far, if he does not go too far'. It is now abundantly clear that Sacks has never stopped going. From its opening pages on his youthful obsession with motorcycles and speed, On the Move is infused with his restless energy.
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Great book, shame about the voice choice
- By study never stops on 16-12-15
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Animal
- The Autobiography of a Female Body
- By: Sara Pascoe
- Narrated by: Sara Pascoe
- Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Take a funny and illuminating tour of the female body with award-winning comedian Sara Pascoe. Women have so much going on, what with boobs and jealousy and menstruating and broodiness and sex and infidelity and pubes and wombs and jobs and memories and emotions and the past and the future and themselves and each other. Here's a book that deals with all of it. Sara Pascoe has joked about femininity and sexuality on stage and screen, but now she has a book to talk about it all for a bit longer.
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A fascinating dopamine-release
- By Sarah on 24-04-16
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The Brain
- The Story of You
- By: David Eagleman
- Narrated by: David Eagleman
- Length: 5 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
This is the story of how your life shapes your brain and how your brain shapes your life. Locked in the silence and darkness of your skull, the brain fashions the rich narratives of your reality and your identity. Join renowned neuroscientist David Eagleman for a journey into the questions at the heart of our existence. What is reality? Who are 'you'? How do you make decisions? Why does your brain need other people? How is technology poised to change what it means to be human?
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Couldn't stop listening
- By Dom on 14-01-16
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The Examined Life
- By: Stephen Grosz
- Narrated by: Peter Marinker
- Length: 5 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
We are all storytellers - through stories, we make sense of our lives. But it is not enough to tell tales. There must be someone to listen. In his work as a psychoanalyst, Stephen Grosz has spent the last 25 years uncovering the hidden feelings behind our most baffling behaviour. The Examined Life distils over 50,000 hours of conversation into pure psychological insight, without the jargon. This extraordinary book is about one ordinary process: talking, listening, and understanding.
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Excellent
- By Saffy on 13-02-13
Summary
When Oliver Sacks, a physician by profession, injured his leg while climbing a mountain, he found himself in an unusual position - that of patient. The injury itself was severe but straightforward to fix; the psychological effects, however, were far less easy to predict, explain, or resolve: Sacks experienced paralysis and an inability to perceive his leg as his own, instead seeing it as some kind of alien and inanimate object over which he had no control.
A Leg to Stand On is both an account of Sacks’ ordeal and subsequent recovery and an exploration of the ways in which mind and body are inextricably linked.
Critic reviews
"Oliver Sacks is a perfect antidote to the anaesthetic of familiarity. His writing turns brains and minds transparent." (Observer)