Book of the Week: On the Move

21 May 2016

I forgot how it got on my reading list, but this week I read On the Move by Oliver Sacks. Oliver Sacks is known for writing many books as neurologist and this book is his autobiography that was published shortly before he died. The book is a bit long, but I enjoyed it. Oliver tells stories about the people, giving a face to the neurological conditions. Being a good writer allows him to surface things to the public and medical community that would normally be ignored. Since he was a neurologist, the development of the field and his work as a doctor frames most of the book. His mother, father and two older brothers were also doctors. He grew in up Jewish in Britain, but eventually moved the the United States and stayed there to practice medicine. The historical context in the book is great. He describes riding a motorcycle around the United States and all throughout California before the big interstates. There is a certain romanticism with riding a motorcycle around the country to embrace nature before having to worry about getting run off the road by a car. He would ride a thousand miles during the weekend and go back to work on Monday. When he wasn’t riding his motorcycle on the weekends he was doing drugs. It is amazing that your doctor does hard drugs on the weekends and goes back to work on Monday. Oliver was a man of many talents, he spent time on Muscle Beach and broke a weight-lifting record with a 600-pound squat. He also talks about being gay when it wasn’t acceptable in Britain and how his brother and wife got him a whore in Paris. He eventually got a lot of sex after, especially after moving to San Francisco, California. There’s nothing like two bodies clad in leather up against each other on a motorcycle. [caption id=”attachment_5029” align=”aligncenter” width=”840”] Oliver Sacks at Muscle Beach w/ BMW motorcycle[/caption] Purchase On the Move on Amazon.com or check it out from your local library.