Everything in Its Place

"In this final volume, Oliver Sacks examines the many passions of his own life, as a doctor engaged with the central questions of human existence, and as a polymath conversant in all the sciences. Everything in Its Place brings together writings--many never before published--on a rich variety of topics. Why do humans need gardens? How, and when, does a physician tell his patient she has Alzheimer's? What is social media doing to our brains? In several of the compassionate case histories included here, Sacks considers the enigmas of depression, psychosis, and schizophrenia for the first time, and in others he returns to conditions that have long fascinated him: Tourette's syndrome, aging, dementia, and hallucinations. In counterpoint to these elegant investigations of what makes us human, this volume also includes pieces that celebrate Sacks's love of the natural world--and his final meditations on life in the twenty-first-century. Everything in Its Place gives us an intimate portrait of a master writer and thinker at work."--Dust jacket.