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Life and Letters
Oliver Sacks Put Himself Into His Case Studies. What Was the Cost?
The scientist was famous for linking healing with storytelling. Sometimes that meant reshaping patients’ reality.
By Rachel AvivDecember 8, 2025
Books
Why Hasn’t Medical Science Cured Chronic Headaches?
More than 1.2 billion people worldwide suffer from migraine and other debilitating conditions that are under-studied and often not taken seriously.
By Jerome GroopmanAugust 11, 2025
The Weekend Essay
Why Do Doctors Write?
For physicians, curiosity and care spill easily onto the page.
By Danielle OfriJune 7, 2025
A Critic at Large
The Battling Memoirs of The New Yorker
A host of accounts by the magazine’s staffers covers a full century of its history, but the trove of recollection is fraught and jumbled.
By Anthony LaneMay 5, 2025
Takes
Dhruv Khullar on Oliver Sacks’s “The Case of Anna H.”
Wonder and observation propelled not only Sacks’s writing but also his doctoring. He wanted to chronicle even when he couldn’t cure.
By Dhruv KhullarApril 27, 2025
Life and Letters
Coming Alive
In the nineteen-sixties, the English neurologist treated patients who had encephalitis lethargica and wrote constant updates about their progress, and his own.
By Oliver SacksSeptember 23, 2024
Annals of Inquiry
How a Rare Disorder Makes People See Monsters
A mysterious neurological condition makes faces look grotesque—and sheds new light on the inner workings of the brain.
By Shayla LoveAugust 1, 2024
Fiction
I Am Pizza Rat
Many times in my youth, I longed for just this outcome—my father humbled, literally and figuratively.
By Han OngOctober 16, 2023
The Musical Life
Oliver Sacks Gets an Opera
The composer Tobias Picker was a friend of the late neurologist, and now he’s turned the doctor’s “Awakenings” into an opera, with a double meaning.
By Eren OrbeyFebruary 20, 2023
Onward and Upward with the Arts
Hildegard of Bingen Composes the Cosmos
How a visionary medieval nun became a towering figure in early musical history.
By Alex RossJanuary 30, 2023
Books
Why Storytelling Is Part of Being a Good Doctor
Physicians’ education puts science front and center, but narrative can be a surprisingly powerful medicine.
By Jerome GroopmanJuly 18, 2022
Postscript
John Bennet, Enemy of the “Blah Blah Blah”
“An editor is like a shrink,” was one of many Bennetisms. He was that, and a lot more.
By Nick PaumgartenJuly 14, 2022
Books
The Revelations of Thom Gunn’s Letters
The late poet’s letters are a primer not only on literature but on the man himself.
By Hilton AlsMay 30, 2022
Books
Exercise Is Good for You. The Exercise Industry May Not Be
Amid the marketing of unattainable physical ideals, it’s easy to forget what made fitness fun.
By Margaret TalbotMarch 14, 2022
On Religion
What It Means to See Jesus
A new book, at once skeptical and devotional, considers visions of Christ from the early days of Christianity to the present.
By Casey CepDecember 24, 2021
The New Yorker Interview
Fleur Jaeggy Thinks Nothing of Herself
A conversation with the reclusive author of “Sweet Days of Discipline” and “The Water Statues” about writing, silence, and the soul.
By Dylan ByronOctober 24, 2021
Double Take
Sunday Reading: Intriguing Journeys
From the magazine’s archive: a selection of pieces about adventures of every shape and dimension.
By Erin OverbeyJune 27, 2021
Elements
The Challenges of Animal Translation
Artificial intelligence may help us decode animalese. But how much will we really be able to understand?
By Philip BallApril 27, 2021
Personal History
Living with a Visionary
For more than fifty years, my wife and I shared a world. Then, as Diana’s health declined, her hallucinations became her own reality.
By John MatthiasJanuary 25, 2021
Double Take
Sunday Reading: Medical Tales
From The New Yorker’s archive: stories that illuminate the mysteries and complexities of our bodies.
By Erin OverbeyJune 21, 2020
A Critic at Large
Why We Can’t Tell the Truth About Aging
A long life is a gift. But will we really be grateful for it?
By Arthur KrystalOctober 28, 2019
Double Take
Sunday Reading: Personal Histories
From The New Yorker’s archive: unforgettable glimpses into writers’ private lives.
By Erin OverbeySeptember 29, 2019
A Neurologist’s Notebook
How Much a Dementia Patient Needs to Know
Should a doctor replace an accustomed identity with a meaningless “reality”?
By Oliver SacksFebruary 25, 2019
Personal History
The Machine Stops
The neurologist on steam engines, smartphones, and fearing the future.
By Oliver SacksFebruary 4, 2019
Books
Briefly Noted
“Travelers,” “Screen Tests,” “Tragedy, the Greeks, and Us,” and “And How Are You, Dr. Sacks?”
August 19, 2019
Persons of Interest
Joyce Maynard’s Second Chances
She dropped out of Yale to live with J. D. Salinger, then was spurned for writing about their affair. Four and a half decades later, she is back at college. Have attitudes changed?
By Eren OrbeyFebruary 8, 2019
Under Review
Megan Boyle’s “Liveblog” and the Limits of Autofiction
Boyle’s persistence, attention to strange detail, and humorous sense of her own abjection in “Liveblog” begin to feel like a radical act. But the quest to transform life into literature, she realizes, can ruin the life.
By David S. WallaceNovember 29, 2018
Books
Bill Clinton and James Patterson’s Concussive Collaboration
“The President Is Missing” contains most of what you’d expect from this duo: politico-historical ramblings, mixed metaphors, saving the world. But why is there no sex?
By Anthony LaneJune 5, 2018
Under Review
The Science of the Psychedelic Renaissance
On trip reports from Timothy Leary, Michael Pollan, and Tao Lin.
By Emily WittMay 29, 2018
Books
Briefly Noted
“Goodbye, Vitamin,” “Out in the Open,” “Murder in Matera,” and “Insomniac City.”
October 9, 2017
Photo Booth
Revisiting Oliver Sacks’s “Island of the Colorblind,” in Photographs
By Max CampbellJuly 11, 2017
Maria Konnikova
How to Build a Time Machine
By Maria KonnikovaDecember 20, 2016
Page-Turner
A Year Without Oliver Sacks
By Orrin DevinskyAugust 18, 2016
Culture Desk
The Stores That Matter: Rebel Rebel and Three Lives & Company
By Hilton AlsJuly 9, 2016
Cultural Comment
Meeting Death with Words
By Tom RachmanJanuary 25, 2016
Books
Seeing the Spectrum
By Steven ShapinJanuary 17, 2016
Page-Turner
Swimming with Oliver Sacks
By Henri ColeJanuary 5, 2016
Postscript
Oliver Sacks
By Atul GawandeSeptember 7, 2015
Personal History
Filter Fish
By Oliver SacksSeptember 7, 2015
News Desk
Oliver Sacks, the Doctor
By Jerome GroopmanAugust 30, 2015
Double Take
Oliver Sacks in The New Yorker
By Joshua RothmanAugust 30, 2015
Books
Briefly Noted
May 11, 2015
A Neurologist’s Notebook
The Catastrophe
By Oliver SacksApril 20, 2015
Notebook
Ninth Avenue Reverie
By Oliver SacksMarch 23, 2015
Personal History
Holy Writ
By Mary NorrisFebruary 16, 2015
Page-Turner
Illustrating Murakami
By Roland KeltsDecember 30, 2014
Sidewalk Dept.
Night of the Ginkgo
By Oliver SacksNovember 17, 2014
Culture Desk
The Man Who Could Be Anyone
By Oliver SacksAugust 18, 2014
Double Take
Scientific Lives
By Erin OverbeySeptember 20, 2014
Annals of Technology
What People Cured of Blindness See
By Patrick HouseAugust 28, 2014
Sarah Larson
Robin Williams: The Best Weirdo
By Sarah LarsonAugust 12, 2014
Annals of Technology
Anatomy of an Earworm
By Maria KonnikovaFebruary 28, 2014
Double Take
Nine Decades of Science in The New Yorker
By Joshua RothmanApril 1, 2013
Field Trip
Hunting Horsetails
By Oliver SacksJuly 25, 2011
Ink
Rehearsal
By Peter StevensonJanuary 2, 2011
Goings On About Town
This Week
November 1, 2010
A Neurologist’s Notebook
Face-Blind
By Oliver SacksAugust 23, 2010
Double Take
Double Vision
By Jon MichaudAugust 17, 2010
A Neurologist’s Notebook
A Man of Letters
By Oliver SacksJune 21, 2010
Double Take
Eighty-Five from the Archive: Oliver Sacks
By Jon MichaudFebruary 22, 2010
Profiles
Brain Games
By John ColapintoMay 4, 2009
Briefly Noted
Books from Our Pages
December 7, 2008
Personal History
Parallel Play
A lifetime of restless isolation explained.
By Tim PageAugust 13, 2007
A Neurologist’s Notebook
Stereo Sue
why two eyes are better than one.
By Oliver SacksJune 12, 2006
A Neurologist’s Notebook
The Case of Anna H.
A pianist slowly loses the ability to see and read, yet preserves, and even deepens, a life in music.
This summary is AI-generated.
By Oliver SacksSeptember 30, 2002
Photograph
PERSONAL HISTORY: Brilliant Light by Oliver Sacks
By Robert ParkharrisonDecember 12, 1999
Profiles
The Furniture Philosopher
Living with the constraints of Parkinson’s, Ed Weinberger has achieved the physically impossible—both in life and in art.
By Lawrence WeschlerNovember 1, 1999
Annals of Science
Dr. Edelman’s Brain
Gerald Edelman has already won one Nobel Prize, and could win a second. Now, in his most revolutionary work, he is continuing where Darwin 10’ off—with a theory that may solve the mystery of how the human brain gives rise to the mind.
By Steven LevyApril 25, 1994
A Neurologist’s Notebook
An Anthropologist on Mars
What is it like to be keenly intelligent and to care deeply about science and animal life—but to feel absolutely alienated from even the simplest human emotions and interactions? Temple Grandin knows, and her experiences offer rare insight into the enigma of autism.
By Oliver SacksDecember 20, 1993
Comment
Notes and Comment
As Soviet power recedes, Francis Fukuyama’s tidy “end of history” collides with resurgent nationalism, ancestral feuds, and nuclear realities.
This summary is AI-generated.
By Lawrence WeschlerJanuary 22, 1990
The Current Cinema
The Feminine Mystique
“Fatal Attraction,” “Baby Boom,” and “The Princess Bride.”
By Pauline KaelOctober 12, 1987
Books
Alone but Not Aloof
A review of “W. H. Auden—A Tribute,” edited by Stephen Spender.
This summary is AI-generated.
By John UpdikeSeptember 29, 1975
Double Take
Nine Decades of Science in The New Yorker
By Joshua RothmanApril 1, 2013
News Desk
Highlights of the Out Loud Podcast, 2010
By Blake EskinDecember 16, 2010
Photo Booth
May Castleberry, Oliver Sacks, and the Island of Rota
By Elisabeth BiondiDecember 1, 2010
Goings On About Town
This Week
November 1, 2010
Books
Brain Drain
By James WoodSeptember 28, 2009
Profiles
Brain Games
By John ColapintoMay 4, 2009
Books
Books from Our Pages
A list of books and cartoon collections, including “Twenty-eight Artists and Two Saints,” by Joan Acocella, “Mere Anarchy,” by Woody Allen, and many others.
This summary is AI-generated.
December 10, 2007
A Neurologist’s Notebook
The Abyss
Music and amnesia.
By Oliver SacksSeptember 17, 2007
Onward and Upward with the Arts
Disappearing Act
Cate Blanchett branches out.
By John LahrFebruary 5, 2007
A Neurologist’s Notebook
Speed
Aberrations of time and movement.
By Oliver SacksAugust 16, 2004
The Theatre
The Big Roundup
Richard Foreman takes on the ghosts of imperialism.
By Hilton AlsJanuary 19, 2004
The Art World
Ghosts
The dazzling mystery of de Kooning’s last paintings.
By Peter SchjeldahlApril 30, 2001
Profiles
The Novelist and the Nun
Mark Salzman shares an epiphany with his subject.
By Lawrence WeschlerSeptember 25, 2000
Photograph
PERSONAL HISTORY: Brilliant Light by Oliver Sacks
By Robert ParkharrisonDecember 12, 1999
Profiles
The Furniture Philosopher
Living with the constraints of Parkinson’s, Ed Weinberger has achieved the physically impossible—both in life and in art.
By Lawrence WeschlerNovember 1, 1999
The Art World
De Kooning as Melodrama
What do the late paintings really reveal?
By Calvin TomkinsFebruary 3, 1997
Books
Briefly Noted
Reviews of “Guided Tours of Hell,” by Francine Prose, “Sporting with Amaryllis,” by Paul West, “The Invention That Changed the World,” by Robert Buderi, “Life on the Line,” by Faye Wattleton, and “The Island of the Colorblind,” by Oliver Sacks.
This summary is AI-generated.
February 3, 1997
Annals of Science
Dr. Edelman’s Brain
Gerald Edelman has already won one Nobel Prize, and could win a second. Now, in his most revolutionary work, he is continuing where Darwin 10’ off—with a theory that may solve the mystery of how the human brain gives rise to the mind.
By Steven LevyApril 25, 1994
A Neurologist’s Notebook
Sudden Sight, After a Lifetime of Blindness
With a simple operation, a man who had been blind since childhood miraculously regained his vision. Then he had to learn to see a world he no longer knew.
By Oliver SacksMay 3, 1993
Life and Letters
The Prince of Books
His new novel has made Roberto Calasso an international sensation, but in Italy he is also celebrated as a publisher who has helped to change the way the literati think
By Andrea LeeApril 19, 1993
A Neurologist’s Notebook
The Landscape of His Dreams
A Tuscan émigré, Franco Magnani rebuilds a vanished village from seizure-haunted memory, turning obsessive nostalgia into a salvaging art.
This summary is AI-generated.
By Oliver SacksJuly 20, 1992
Greetings, Friends!
Greetings, Friends!
By Roger AngellDecember 21, 1987
Fiction
Women and Children First
By Francine ProseJanuary 12, 1987
Greetings, Friends!
Greetings, Friends!
By Roger AngellDecember 16, 1985
Personal History
Altered States
Self-experiments in chemistry.
By Oliver SacksAugust 20, 2012
Double Take
Transcendence on Demand
By Jon MichaudAugust 17, 2012
News Desk
Highlights of the Out Loud Podcast, 2010
By Blake EskinDecember 16, 2010
Page-Turner
Well Covered: Five for Fall
By Deirdre Foley MendelssohnOctober 19, 2010
Books
Brain Drain
By James WoodSeptember 28, 2009
Fish Tales
Clupeophilia
By Oliver SacksJuly 13, 2009
Onward and Upward with the Arts
Balanchine Said
By Arlene CroceJanuary 18, 2009
Culture Desk
Popular Science
By Shauna LyonAugust 12, 2008
Closer Look Dept.
BOTANISTS ON PARK
By Oliver SacksAugust 6, 2007
A Neurologist’s Notebook
Recalled to Life
When patients suffer a loss of language, must they also lose their sense of self?
By Oliver SacksOctober 24, 2005
The Theatre
The Big Roundup
Richard Foreman takes on the ghosts of imperialism.
By Hilton AlsJanuary 19, 2004
Neurologist's Notebook
The Mind’s Eye
What the blind see
By Oliver SacksJuly 21, 2003
Profiles
The Novelist and the Nun
Mark Salzman shares an epiphany with his subject.
By Lawrence WeschlerSeptember 25, 2000
Personal History
Brilliant Light
A chemical boyhood.
By Oliver SacksDecember 13, 1999
Personal History
Brilliant Light
By Oliver SacksDecember 12, 1999
Reckonings
Freud Rising
An embattled new exhibit shows that the Viennese visionary has outlasted the wars against psychoanalysis.
By Daphne MerkinNovember 2, 1998
The Theatre
One Man’s Madness
Two at the Roundabout.- “The Father” and ‘Molly Sweeney.”
By Nancy FranklinJanuary 22, 1996
A Neurologist’s Notebook
The Landscape of His Dreams
A Tuscan émigré, Franco Magnani rebuilds a vanished village from seizure-haunted memory, turning obsessive nostalgia into a salvaging art.
This summary is AI-generated.
By Oliver SacksJuly 20, 1992
Greetings, Friends!
Greetings, Friends!
By Roger AngellDecember 16, 1985
Spirituality, Mind-Body, Gender, Ecology, Ageing, Peace, Scrapbook (in English and Korean)
