by Oliver Sacks

 

Oliver Sacks is best known as an explorer of the human mind, a neurologist whose gift for creating complex, insightful portrayals of people and their conditions fueled the phenomenal success of Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. But Sacks is also affiliated with The New York Botanical Garden and is a card-carrying member of the American Fern Society. Since childhood he has been fascinated by these primitive plants. A few years ago he took a fern foray to the beautiful, history-steeped Mexican province of Oaxaca with a number of NYBG pteridophiles, including curators John Mickel and Robbin Moran. Oaxaca Journal is Sacks’s illuminating account of this expedition, which reveals much about plants and their importance to society—especially developing societies. Sacks’s journal also shows how the act of travel can help us begin to pierce the mysteries of other cultures.