SACKS, Oliver
SACKS, Oliver
Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1972. Second printing, in the same format and dust jacket as the first of 1970. 298pp. Blue cloth boards; gilt spine titles; dust jacket. Moderate shelf-wear and soiling to the bookcloth, particularly spine. Former owner's name and address penned on the front pastedown. Some light spotting to the top and upper fore-edge of the textblock. Unclipped jacket with minor rubbing/soiling and light crumpling at extremities. A very good copy in a quite presentable jacket. Signed, dated ("3/10/97"), and inscribed by Sacks on front flyleaf.
The celebrated neurologist's first book, written while working at a headache clinic in the Bronx. Sacks undertook the work after an amphetamine-fueled reading of a rare 19th century migraine treatise by Edward Liveing--an experience so transportive that, decades later in The New Yorker, Sacks would write, "At times, I was unsure whether I was reading the book or writing it." Inspired, he determined become the "Liveing of our time," and completed the first draft of Migraine in a mere nine days--only to swear off amphetamines once and for all.