Reviewed by Kevin Farley, Collection Librarian for the Humanities
Acclaimed author and physician Oliver Sacks (who teaches and practices neurology in New York City) is best known for his studies of extreme cases of illness that afflict the central nervous system or the brain, impairing physical, intellectual, and emotional functions. In books such as The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, An Anthropologist on Mars, Seeing Voices (an elegant study of deafness), and especially Awakenings (which was made into a Hollywood film, with the shy, eccentric, determined Sacks portrayed brilliantly by Robin Williams), Sacks separates the ravages of illness from the essential humanity that survives — and shows how, paradoxically, illnesses may also bring gifts, developing parts of our minds and talents that lay undiscovered within us. In Uncle Tungsten, Sacks finally, and delightfully, turns his curious and insightful mind upon himself, looking back over a long career and trying to discover the origins of his varied interests, especially for science and chemistry. The "Uncle Tungsten" of the book's title refers to Sacks' maternal uncle, Dave, who encouraged Sacks as a child in his explorations of the minerals and chemicals that comprise the world. And it is the story of his childhood that makes Uncle Tungsten so moving — of the encouragement, inspiration, and abundant love that marked the large Sacks family in their London home, even in the darkest and most dangerous days of the Blitz, when the child Oliver was sent away to the English countryside to escape Hitler's bombs. Sacks preserves this vanished world, the London of his Jewish ancestors, and pays homage to the excitement and wonder he inherited from them, carrying him forward into a lifelong search for the essence of our humanity.
