紐約時報譽為─醫學界的桂冠詩人

　　《睡人》、《火星上的人類學家》、《錯把太太當帽子的人》腦神經科學家奧利佛‧薩克斯Oliver Sacks遺作，帶領讀者探索意識之河

　　薩克斯以其充滿詩意與同理心的文字，師法早期研究者生動的病例寫作風格，引領讀者透過豐富的神經科學病例故事，探索人類大腦與心智的奧秘。然而，隨著年歲與罹病，薩克斯的寫作也融入了更多對於自身狀態的解析，以及長年行醫、研究的過程裡提煉出的省察。在這本離世前兩週才完稿交予親友的手稿，更反映薩克斯人生最後時光裡的所思所感。

　　全書包含十章主題各自獨立的散文，以不同的切片省思意識的意義。人類與植物的演化歷程、觀念的躍進流轉，以及關於時間、速度的體驗、記憶、創造力…在各種神經失調的奇特案例裡，窺見大腦與心智的奧妙多樣。更飽含豐富的科學史以及人文哲學思想，道出達爾文是如何鍾情於研究植物，而佛洛伊德在投入精神分析領域前，原可能是開拓神經科學研究的重要一員。兼容歷史與前沿神經科學研究，反思個人也展望宏觀演化，本書是博學家薩克斯，留給讀者最後的精彩禮物。(文/博客來編譯)
From the best-selling author of Gratitude, On the Move, and Musicophilia, a collection of essays that displays Oliver Sacks's passionate engagement with the most compelling and seminal ideas of human endeavor: evolution, creativity, memory, time, consciousness, and experience.

Oliver Sacks, a scientist and a storyteller, is beloved by readers for the extraordinary neurological case histories (Awakenings, An Anthropologist on Mars) in which he introduced and explored many now familiar disorders--autism, Tourette's syndrome, face blindness, savant syndrome. He was also a memoirist who wrote with honesty and humor about the remarkable and strange encounters and experiences that shaped him (Uncle Tungsten, On the Move, Gratitude). Sacks, an Oxford-educated polymath, had a deep familiarity not only with literature and medicine but with botany, animal anatomy, chemistry, the history of science, philosophy, and psychology. The River of Consciousness is one of two books Sacks was working on up to his death, and it reveals his ability to make unexpected connections, his sheer joy in knowledge, and his unceasing, timeless project to understand what makes us human.



OLIVER SACKS was born in 1933 in London and was educated at Queen’s College, Oxford. He completed his medical training at San Francisco’s Mount Zion Hospital and at UCLA before moving to New York.

Familiar to the readers of TheNew Yorker and The New York Review of Books, Dr. Sacks spent more than fifty years working as a neurologist and wrote many books, including The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Musicophilia, and Hallucinations, about the strange neurological predicaments and conditions of his patients. The New York Times referred to him as ＂the poet laureate of medicine,＂ and over the years he received many awards, including honors from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Royal College of Physicians. His memoir On the Move was published shortly before his death in August 2015.