Sacks: Uncle Tungsten

From Scienticity

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Oliver W. Sacks, Uncle Tungsten : Memories of a Chemical Boyhood. New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2001. viii + 337 pages.

Oliver Sacks is a neurosurgeon and writer. His writing is engaging, lucid, and enlightening. In this volume he recounts events from his own youth with an immediacy that turns the personal into the universal -- and enough amusing yet harrowing anecdotes to convince parents never to give chemistry sets to their children! I thought it was a page-turner, but with depth: bits of it have stayed with me long after I finished reading it.

-- Notes by JNS