The River of Consciousness

By: Oliver Sacks, Stuart Wilson

Narrated by: Dan Woren, Kate Edgar

Two weeks before his death, Oliver Sacks outlined the contents of The River of Consciousness, the last book he would oversee.

The bestselling author of On the Move, Musicophilia, and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Sacks is known for his illuminating case histories about people living with neurological conditions at the far borderlands of human experience. But his grasp of science was not restricted to neuroscience or medicine; he was fascinated by the issues, ideas, and questions of all the sciences. That wide-ranging expertise and passion informs the perspective of this book, in which he interrogates the nature not only of human experience but of all life.

In The River of Consciousness, Dr. Sacks takes on evolution, botany, chemistry, medicine, neuroscience, and the arts, and calls upon his great scientific and creative heroes – above all, Darwin, Freud, and William James. For Sacks, these thinkers were constant companions from an early age; the questions they explored – the meaning of evolution, the roots of creativity, and the nature of consciousness – lie at the heart of science and of this book.

The River of Consciousness demonstrates Sacks’s unparalleled ability to make unexpected connections, his sheer joy in knowledge, and his unceasing, timeless endeavor to understand what makes us human.

Critic reviews

Reading a book published after its authors death, especially if he is as prodigiously alive on every page as Oliver Sacks, as curious, avid and thrillingly fluent, brings both the joy of hearing from him again, and the regret of knowing it will likely be the last time . . . [The] combination of wonder, passion and gratitude never seemed to flag in Sacks’s life; everything he wrote was lit with it. But it was his openness to new ideas and experiences, and his vision of change as the most human of biological processes that synthesized all of his work (Nicole Krauss)

Millions of Sacks’s books have been printed around the world, and he once spoke of receiving 200 letters a week from admirers. For those thousands of correspondents, The River of Consciousness will feel like a reprieve – we get to spend time again with Sacks the botanist, the historian of science, the marine biologist and, of course, the neurologist

An incisive and generous inquiry into human nature

[Sacks’s] accumulated wisdom of our experience of time and consciousness makes a marvellous discrete series of meditations – and a profoundly moving one, since several of these pieces were written with the knowledge that his experience of both mysteries was soon coming to an end (Tim Adams)

Compelling . . . Sacks invites readers into his mind where they can experience the world from his unusually insightful perspective

A fascinating book

Sacks continues in this latest collection to focus on questions over answers; the result is a work that leaves plenty of room for possibility beyond what might be immediately observed . . . Intellectually, Sacks is, at heart, a philosopher

A writer of eloquence, he was always ready to see his medical specialist in reaction to the world and humanity . . . His greatest reverence is for the human mind

True to its title, the book is dictated by a flood of mental energy, thus it is more than mere sentimentality to say that, more than two years after his death, Sacks’s spirit still courses through us. Long may it flow

Reveals Sacks as a gleeful polymath and an inveterate seeker of meaning in the mold of Darwin and his other scientific heroes Sigmund Freud and William James . . . As this volume reminds us, in losing Sacks we lost a gifted and generous storyteller

A joy to read: a delicious supply of information and commentary organized by a gifted writer of a curious and humane intelligence

Fans of the late neurologist have another chance to enjoy this erudite, compassionate storyteller, essayist, and memoirist . . . This collection of 10 essays, some of which appeared previously in The New York Review of Books, was assembled by three colleagues from an outline provided by Sacks two weeks before his death in 2015 . . . A collection of dissimilar pieces that reveal the scope of the author’s interests—sometimes challenging, always rewarding

better read then listened to

I think it will be easier to keep up if you read this one then listen to it. Still interesting as every book by Oliver Sack

Interesting but cluttered

It was a very interesting listen but i had a hard time flowing the connections between the various topics. Last portion focuses mainly on the evolution of scientific findings and raw data into acceptable theories which i found to be, while interesting, unrelated to the theme of the book. Enjoyed it but wouldnt recommend it.