Uncle Tungsten

Memories of a Chemical Boyhood

By: Oliver Sacks

Narrated by: Jonathan Davis

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.

Critic reviews

"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)

great ideas to encourage scientific curiosity

This book will inspire young minds to have scientific curiosity and teach you a lot about the chemical elements that make up everything around us.

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.

A OK

There's really no story here, but it's still a fun listen if you're into chemistry and biographies. Narration was pretty good.

A childhood of science

Would you consider the audio edition of Uncle Tungsten to be better than the print version?

I don't know.

What other book might you compare Uncle Tungsten to and why?

The Disappearing Spoon, which tells the story of the formation of Mendeleev's periodic table of the elements.

Which scene was your favorite?

I enjoyed the scene where he nearly asphyxiated himself by mixing chemicals in his bedroom as a child. Any modern parent would surly take away all the chemicals. Sacks' parents promptly put him up in safer quarters and encouraged his experimentation. Surely he is a genius but this was a genius in parenting and trusting an obviously bright and driven child.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

No, I enjoyed breaking it into parts as I drove to work each day.

Any additional comments?

None.

The enthusiasm and hunger to learn of youth!

Loved the stories behind Oliver’s many exposures and adventures as a youth. He truly had a wonderful insatiable mind. The book speaks to what parental and family support can do to establish a very effective crucible for creating a rich intellectual life from youth to adulthood!!!