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• From the cover 9780385352567|excerpt
  
  Sacks / RIVER OF CONSCIOUSNESS
  
  Darwin and the Meaning of Flowers
  
  We all know the canonical story of Charles Darwin: the twenty-­two-­year-­old embarking on the Beagle, going to the ends of the earth; Darwin in Patagonia; Darwin on the Argentine pampas (managing to lasso the legs of his own horse); Darwin in South America, collecting the bones of giant extinct animals; Darwin in Australia—­still a religious believer—­startled at his first sight of a kangaroo (“surely two distinct Creators must have been at work”). And, of course, Darwin in the Galápagos, observing how the finches were different on each island, starting to experience the seismic shift in understanding how living things evolve that, a quarter of a century later, would result in the publication of On the Origin of Species. The story climaxes here, with the publication of the Origin in November 1859, and has a sort of elegiac postscript: a vision of the older and ailing Darwin, in the twenty-­odd years remaining to him, pottering around his gardens at Down House with no particular plan or purpose, perhaps throwing off a book or two, but with his major work long completed.
  
  Nothing could be further from the truth. Darwin remained intensely sensitive both to criticisms and to evidence supporting his theory of natural selection, and this led him to bring out no fewer than five editions of the Origin. He might indeed have retreated (or returned) to his garden and his greenhouses after 1859 (there were extensive grounds around Down House, and five greenhouses), but for him these became engines of war, from which he would lob great missiles of evidence at the skeptics outside—­descriptions of extraordinary structures and behaviors in plants very difficult to ascribe to special creation or design—­a mass of evidence for evolution and natural selection even more overwhelming than that presented in the Origin.
  
  Strangely, even Darwin scholars pay relatively little attention to this botanical work, even though it encompassed six books and seventy-­odd papers. Thus Duane Isely, in his 1994 book, One Hundred and One Botanists, writes that while
  
  more has been written about Darwin than any other biologist who ever lived . . . [he] is rarely presented as a botanist. . . . The fact that he wrote several books about his research on plants is mentioned in much Darwinia, but it is casual, somewhat in the light of “Well, the great man needs to play now and then.”
  
  Darwin had always had a special, tender feeling for plants and a special admiration, too. (“It has always pleased me to exalt plants in the scale of organised beings,” he wrote in his autobiography.) He grew up in a botanical family—­his grandfather Erasmus Darwin had written a long, two-­volume poem called The Botanic Garden, and Charles himself grew up in a house whose extensive gardens were filled not only with flowers but with a variety of apple trees crossbred for increased vigor. As a university student at Cambridge, the only lectures Darwin consistently attended were those of the botanist J. S. Henslow, and it was Henslow, recognizing the extraordinary qualities of his student, who recommended him for a position on the Beagle.
  
  It was to Henslow that Darwin wrote very detailed letters full of observations about the fauna and flora and geology of the places he visited. (These letters, when printed and circulated, were to make Darwin famous in scientific circles even before the Beagle returned to England.) And it was for Henslow that Darwin, in the...

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  Starred review from September 25, 2017
  Acclaimed neurologist Sacks (1933–2015) demonstrates the range of his knowledge of evolution, botany, chemistry, medicine, neuroscience, and the arts in this collection of 10 essays he was working on before his death in 2015. The book is a tribute to his appreciation of all that’s beautifully complex in humans. In “Darwin and the Meaning of Flowers,” Sacks examines Darwin’s late-career studies of plants and worms, writing of Darwin’s belief that natural beauty “always reflected function and adaptation at work.” In “Speed,” he lauds William James for his exploration of the perception of time and how it was altered “by the effects of certain drugs.” Sacks also lends his own perspective on the perception of time, gleaned from working with patients with “disorders of neural speed,” which he documented in 1973’s Awakenings. One of the most moving pieces, “The Fallibility of Memory,” argues that humans are “landed with memories which have fallibilities, frailties, and imperfections—but also great flexibility and creativity.” Sacks pays homage to Freud in “Mishearings,” asserting that Freudian slips are more than expressions of repressed feelings: “They reflect, to some extent, one’s own interests and experiences.” Sacks also writes about his own cancer in “A General Feeling of Disorder” and how a respite from sickness filled him with gratitude. Readers will feel a similar sense of gratitude for the extraordinary work that Sacks left behind.

• Narrator Dan Woren's deep middle-American voice won't be mistaken for the reedier British tones of the late Oliver Sacks, and fans familiar with that voice may miss some of Sacks's sprightliness. However, Woren's reading is solid and easy to follow, and none of the wonder of Sacks's thinking is lost--particularly, his ability to synergize theories and concepts across scientific disciplines in a deeply personal way. Sacks begins with plants and moves through insects, animals, and finally to human beings as he explores consciousness: What is it? Who or what has it? How have we understood or misunderstood it across time? This audio presentation allows one to leave one's eyes free to gaze out on a world transformed by what one is hearing. K.W. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

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