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. As he recounts his experiences as a young neurologist in the early 1960s, first in California and then in New York, where he discovered a long forgotten illness in the back wards of a chronic hospital, as well as with a group of patients who would define his life, it becomes clear that Sacks' earnest desire for engagement has occasioned unexpected encounters and travels - sending him through bars and alleys, over oceans, and across continents. With unbridled honesty and humour, Sacks shows us that the same energy that drives his physical passions - bodybuilding, weightlifting, and swimming - also drives his cerebral passions. He writes about his love affairs, both romantic and intellectual, his guilt over leaving his family to come to America, his bond with his schizophrenic brother, and the writers and scientists - A.R. Luria, W.H. Auden, Francis Crick - who influenced him. On the Move is the story of a brilliantly unconventional physician and writer - and of the man who has illuminated the many ways that the brain makes us human.

The impassioned, tender, and joyous memoir of one of our most remarkable and accomplished physicians.

Oliver Sacks was born in London in 1933, into a family of physicians and scientists. He received his medical education at Oxford and trained at Mt Zion Hospital in San Francisco and at UCLA. Since 1965, he has lived in New York City, where he is a professor of neurology at the NYU School of Medicine and consultant neurologist to the Little Sisters of the Poor. He is a visiting professor at the University of Warwick. Dr Sacks is a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books and the New Yorker, as well as various medical journals. He is the author of many books, including Musicophilia, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, and Awakenings (which inspired the Oscar-nominated film). For more information on Dr Sacks's work, please visit www.oliversacks.com.