Artful, impassioned memoir of a youth spent lost in the blinding light of chemistry from neurologist/essayist Sacks (The Island of the Colorblind, 1998, etc.). He grew up in wartime England in a sizeable extended intellectual family: doctors, mathematicians, physicists, chemists, and general polymaths. Early on an uncle introduced Oliver to the thrall of metals, and he came to know gold, silver, copper, tungsten, and so many others as a child knows an attic or a woodlot, by taste and smell and quirk: the cry of tin as it bends, the nobility of iridium, radium's "ultimate, fatal red." He became a familiar of their gleam and slick, heft and chroma, and especially their inviolacy, for his was a precarious world-if he wasn't having bombs dropped on his head in London, he was being savagely beaten at boarding school-and he found security and relief in the stability of metals. In a kind and gracious voice, Sacks guides readers on his journey of passionate discovery into the romance of chemistry. He depicts the discipline as a detailed, naturalistic, and descriptive science, a 19th-century one, but make no mistake about it, lots of pure science marches through these pages-accompanied, thankfully, by its ability to spark wonder and delight. Robert Boyle and Antoine Lavoisier are introduced, as are Humphry Davy and his alkaline earth metals, John Dalton and his atomic theory, the wild and extravagant Dmitry Mendeleev, whose periodic table sends Sacks reeling with an appreciation of the mind's ability to decipher the "superarching principle uniting and relating all the elements." Sacks always has an eye skinned for the evocative and poignant in this history of family and science, from his brother's madness to the intensity of limelight to the intoxication of radioactivity, not to mention his own decaying orbit under the spell of chemistry. The realm of science is alchemy in Sacks's hands as he spins pure gold from base metals. (24 drawings, 4 pages of photos) First printing of 75,000

Sacks' parents were, and his three brothers became, physicians before him, so it was, perhaps, inevitable--certainly it was expected--that he would become one, too. He did, but beforehand, in his childhood and early adolescence, he was enthralled with chemistry. His family fueled his fascination, for besides a mother who answered his early questions about metals and demonstrated to him their peculiar properties, he had an uncle whose business produced tungsten filament bulbs and who was so enamored of the metal and its properties that he maintained a lab in which he showed his nephew the neat things that could be done with tungsten and other elements. Uncle Tungsten, as his nephews called him, also recounted the history of chemistry to Oliver, whose prodigious curiosity lapped it up. Soon the boy had a home lab and was duplicating trailblazing experiments by Scheele, Lavoisier, Davy, and other pioneering chemists. Chemistry later led him to photography, magnetism, and radiology, and all along, he learned more about the history of his passion. In a memoir every bit as engrossing as the neurological case histories in The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (1986), Awakenings (1990), An Anthropologist on Mars (1995), and The Island of the Colorblind (1997), Sacks recalls his childhood preoccupation and the history he learned. Thus this is both the story of a particular English boy's life just before, during, and after World War II and a maximally engaging, personalized overview of chemistry, from Robert Boyle to Madame Curie. --Ray Olson

Sacks, a neurologist perhaps best known for his books Awakenings (which became a Robin Williams/Robert De Niro vehicle) and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, invokes his childhood in wartime England and his early scientific fascination with light, matter and energy as a mystic might invoke the transformative symbolism of metals and salts. The "Uncle Tungsten" of the book's title is Sacks's Uncle Dave, who manufactured light bulbs with filaments of fine tungsten wire, and who first initiated Sacks into the mysteries of metals. The author of this illuminating and poignant memoir describes his four tortuous years at boarding school during the war, where he was sent to escape the bombings, and his profound inquisitiveness cultivated by living in a household steeped in learning, religion and politics (both his parents were doctors and his aunts were ardent Zionists). But as Sacks writes, the family influence extended well beyond the home, to include the groundbreaking chemists and physicists whom he describes as "honorary ancestors, people to whom, in fantasy, I had a sort of connection." Family life exacted another transformative influence as well: his older brother Michael's psychosis made him feel that "a magical and malignant world was closing in about him," perhaps giving a hint of what led the author to explore the depths of psychosis in his later professional life. For Sacks, the onset of puberty coincided with his discovery of biology, his departure from his childhood love of chemistry and, at age 14, a new understanding that he would become a doctor. Many readers and patients are happy with that decision. (Oct.) Forecast: This book is as well-written as Sacks's earlier works, and should get fans engrossed in the facts of his life and opinions. Look for an early spike on the strength of his name, and strong sales thereafter. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Having so eloquently probed the life of others, Sacks now takes a look at himself, unearthing the source of his scientific curiosity in a sometimes troubled childhood in wartime Britain. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Sacks (Awakenings) is one of a handful of contemporary scientist-authors with immediate name recognition, and deservedly so. Best known for the tales of his experiences as a clinical neurologist, he has a special gift for conveying the humanity and hopes of patients struggling with sometimes bizarre mental disorders. In his memoir, he writes with the same enthusiasm and empathy about his boyhood infatuation with chemistry. As a youth, Sacks was insatiably curious about the properties of chemical substances and was ardently encouraged by his family, especially his Uncle Dave, nicknamed "Uncle Tungsten" for the light bulbs he manufactured with tungsten wire filaments. Delighting in the experiments that he conducted, Sacks also read about and clearly idolized the great chemists. His book is much more than just the lab notes of a junior chemist, though. It is also about growing up Jewish and coming of age in London during the wartime years. The passion that Sacks felt for learning permeated every aspect of his young life, and it comes through vividly in his adult prose. Tungsten could not possibly have a more inspiring spokesman. Highly recommended for all libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/1/00.] Gregg Sapp, Science Lib., SUNY at Albany (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Imagine yourself as a gifted youth born to an educated and supportive Jewish family living in WW II England where you are introduced to the fascination of discovery very early in life, exposed to the fearful suppression of twisted adults and the terror of war, and attempting to develop a personal worldview from family philosophies that ranged from confirmed Zionism through orthodox philosophies to more moderate conservative views. If you will stretch your imagination this far, then you will have a sense of one facet of neurologist Sacks's autobiographical Uncle Tungsten. Named after his Uncle Dave who manufactured tungsten light filaments and introduced the author to the fascinating world of metals, the book goes further than the usual autobiography. Containing many very informative footnotes, it smoothly digresses into beautifully written histories of chemistry and physics with marvelous examples taken from Sacks's sometimes-dangerous personal explorations as a child and young man. Written by one of the best writers of nonfiction alive today, the book gives a view of the science of chemistry that is denied most young people today in the interests of safety, if nothing else. Highly recommended; should be required reading for every aspiring young scientist. All levels. P. R. Douville emeritus, Central Connecticut State University