The River of Consciousness


The River of Consciousness is a collection of ten essays by the writer, naturalist, and neurologist Oliver Sacks. Some of the essays are dedicated to specific figures such as Darwin, Freud, and William James.

Synopsis

The River of Consciousness compiles the following essays:
  1. Darwin and the Meaning of Flowers
  2. Speed
  3. Sentience: The Mental Lives of Plants and Worms
  4. The Other Road: Freud as a Neurologist
  5. The Fallibility of Memory
  6. Mishearings
  7. The Creative Self
  8. A General Feeling of Disorder
  9. The River of Consciousness
  10. Scotoma: Forgetting and Neglect in Science

Reception

The Chicago Tribune reviewed The River of Consciousness, Praising Sacks' "ability to braid wide reading". In a review for the Wall Street Journal Laura J. Snyder notes that the volume "reminds us, in losing Sacks we lost a gifted and generous storyteller.” In a review published by The Guardian the physician Gavin Francis writes: For those thousands of correspondents, The River of Consciousness will feel like a reprieve – we get to spend time again with Sacks the botanist, the historian of science, the marine biologist and, of course, the neurologist.