A Leg to Stand On

Dr. Oliver Sacks’s books Awakenings, An Anthropologist on Mars, and the bestselling The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat have been acclaimed for their extraordinary compassion in the treatment of patients affected with profound disorders.

In A Leg to Stand On, it is Sacks himself who is the patient: an encounter with a bull on a desolate mountain in Norway has left him with a severely damaged leg. But what should be a routine recuperation is actually the beginning of a strange medical journey when he finds that his leg uncannily no longer feels like part of his body. Sacks’s brilliant description of his crisis and eventual recovery is not only an illuminating examination of the experience of patienthood and the inner nature of illness and health but also a fascinating exploration of the physical basis of identity. 

This 1984 classic is now available in an expanded edition with a new foreword, written by Kate Edgar, executive director of the Oliver Sacks Foundation.

Dr. Oliver Sacks spent more than fifty years working as a neurologist and writing books about the neurological predicaments and conditions of his patients, including The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Musicophilia, and Awakenings. The New York Times referred to him as "the poet laureate of medicine," and over the years, he received many awards, including honors from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Royal College of Physicians. His memoir, On the Move, was published shortly before his death in August 2015.