Awakenings

Front Cover
Knopf Canada, Mar 4, 2011 - Psychology - 464 pages
Awakenings — which inspired the major motion picture — is the remarkable story of a group of patients who contracted sleeping-sickness during the great epidemic just after World War I. Frozen for decades in a trance-like state, these men and women were given up as hopeless until 1969, when Dr. Oliver Sacks gave them the then-new drug L-DOPA, which had an astonishing, explosive, "awakening" effect. Dr. Sacks recounts the moving case histories of his patients, their lives, and the extraordinary transformations which went with their reintroduction to a changed world.
 

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Photo Insert
PREFACE TO THEORIGINAL EDITION
PREFACE TO THE1990 EDITION
FOREWORD TO THE1990 EDITION
Prologue
Awakenings
ROLANDO P
FRANK G
MARIA G
RACHEL I
AARON E87
GEORGE W90
CECIL M92
LEONARD L
Perspectives

MIRIAM H
LUCY K
MARGARET A
MIRON V
GERTIE C
MARTHA N
IDA T
EPILOGUE 1982
POSTSCRIPT 1990
Appendices
GLOSSARY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Copyright

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About the author (2011)

Oliver Sacks is the author of Awakenings, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, and many other books, for which he has received numerous awards, including the Hawthornden Prize, a Polk Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and lives in New York City, where he is a practicing neurologist. He recently accepted a new position at Columbia University.

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