![Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood | [Oliver Sacks]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51ZTXBIHi4L._SL175_.jpg "Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood | [Oliver Sacks]")
Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood
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- Regular Price :$24.95Special Offer: Learn how to get this for $7.49 !
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Average Customer Rating
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LENGTH10 hrs and 43 mins
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RELEASE DATE10-11-11
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AUDIO FORMATS
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Program TypeAudiobook
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PUBLISHER
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Publisher's Summary
Long before Oliver Sacks became a distinguished neurologist and best-selling writer, he was a small English boy fascinated by metals - also by chemical reactions (the louder and smellier the better), photography, squids and cuttlefish, H.G. Wells, and the periodic table.
In this endlessly charming and eloquent memoir, the author of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Awakenings chronicles his love affair with science and the magnificently odd and sometimes harrowing childhood in which that love affair unfolded.
In Uncle Tungsten we meet Sacks' extraordinary family, from his surgeon mother (who introduces the 14-year-old Oliver to the art of human dissection) and his father, a family doctor who imbues in his son an early enthusiasm for housecalls, to his "Uncle Tungsten", whose factory produces tungsten-filament lightbulbs. We follow the young Oliver as he is exiled at the age of six to a grim, sadistic boarding school to escape the London Blitz, and later watch as he sets about passionately reliving the exploits of his "chemical heroes" in his own home laboratory.
Uncle Tungsten is a crystalline view of a brilliant young mind springing to life, a story of growing up which is by turns elegiac, comic, and wistful, full of the electrifying joy of discovery.
©2001 Oliver Sacks (P)2011 Audible, Inc.
What the Critics Say
"Good prose is often described as glowing: luminous, numinous, glimmering, shimmering, incandescent, radiant. Sacks's writing is all that, and sometimes, no matter how closely you read it, you can't quite figure out what makes it so precisely, unsparingly light... By the time he was 15... Sacks's attention began drifting away from chemistry.... He can't quite say why he abandoned his first love and Mendeleev's Garden. His 'intellectual limitations? Adolescence? School?.... The inevitable course, the natural history, of enthusiasm, that burns hotly, brightly... and then, exhausting itself, gutters out?' No matter. With 'Uncle Tungsten,' Sacks has reignited the fire, so the rest of us can read by its glow." (The New York Times Book Review)
What Members Say
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Jeff Pickering, Ontario, Canada 05-02-12 Member Since 200750yrs old / audible member for 5 yrs library. 75% nonfiction, 15% classics and 10% fiction. History/Science/biography/Eng.18th cent fiction
- HELPFUL VOTES
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- REVIEWS
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"FOR COMMITED LOVERS OF OLIVER SACKS WORK"
I think this book will best, and perhaps only be enjoyed by A.) lovers of Oliver Sacks work..B) by those that love chemistry and the table of elements. C)...very patient readers willing to go through the history of his each and every chemical compound exposure to finally sieve from it a fascinating wonderful childhood story full of amazing influences from friends and family.
Im in A and C camps, so loving the mans work and being willing to endure very long extracts about chemicals that I will never be able to appreciate or understand, is a worthy price for me to have payed . I could only dream of coming from such a family and having such a fun and rewarding childhood. It goes far in explaining how Sacks has come to be the unique wonderful inspiration that has given us so much on so many levels.
Sacks writing certainly isn't for everyone, but I enjoy it and for those that have read his other work and have liked it, I think its a fair bet that you'll like this foray into his mostly charming and unbelievably lucky childhood. If you like his writing also try... A Leg to Stand On...2 of 2 people found this review helpful -
"Fascinating"
Any additional comments?If I had a wish to come true of meeting a living person to spend an hour with, I think It would be Oliver Sacks. Whole-brained thinker and creative as well as scientific and always wide open senses. Great book. Fascinating life as well as person.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful -
"Interesting background for fans of Oliver Sacks."
Any additional comments?Sacks discusses science and the history of science with the same enthusiasm that he had as a child, while sharing some biographical details that illuminate his subsequent career as a neurologist and observer of human perception.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful -
"Self indulgent."
I've read a number of Oliver's books and have enjoyed them all. This offering however had me reaching for the fast forward button on multiple occasions. There are chapters in this book where the author drones on and on about various minerals, alloys, compounds and chemical processes .... These section book simply confuses the reader and I found myself thinking 'why is Oliver telling me these things?'
There are sections in the book that I did enjoy such as the author's experiences during the war and excellent descriptions of his parents and household.3 of 5 people found this review helpful