Bob Silvers: the most scrupulous editor

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You are famous now: the success of 'Hat' and 'Awakenings'

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Bob Silvers: the most scrupulous editor

Oliver Sacks Scientist

		Views	Duration
201. Isaacson's artwork appears in colour in The New York Review...		190	01:36
202. Marching with the Deaf and Tourette’s society		178	04:10
203. Articles on deaf people for Bob Silvers become a book		162	00:45
204. Occasionally writing for The New Yorker		211	00:58
205. Writing about the 'oldest conductor': David Randolph		178	02:34
206. I am old-fashioned	1	344	00:38
207. John Bennet, my editor at The New Yorker		398	00:35
208. Bob Silvers: the most scrupulous editor		218	01:02
209. You are famous now: the success of 'Hat' and 'Awakenings'		181	03:02
210. Writing for the academic journals		375	03:40

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Bob Silvers, I should say, is the most scrupulous editor I’ve ever know, and when I wrote my piece on the revolution of the deaf, and then immediately afterwards took off for Australia, I was pursued by faxes and phone calls. He would phone me to... to ask how I felt about replacing a comma by a semicolon. It’s wonderful that 45 years later Bob is still at the helm, and talk about youthfulness at 80, Bob has no diminution in his energy, he looks 20 years younger, and he... he’s a marvellous man.

And there was a quiz recently in The New York Times, and they said, who is your favourite New Yorker? So I wrote Bob Silvers.

Oliver Sacks (1933-2015) was born in England. Having obtained his medical degree at Oxford University, he moved to the USA. There he worked as a consultant neurologist at Beth Abraham Hospital where in 1966, he encountered a group of survivors of the global sleepy sickness of 1916-1927. Sacks treated these patients with the then-experimental drug L-Dopa producing astounding results which he described in his book Awakenings. Further cases of neurological disorders were described by Sacks with exceptional sympathy in another major book entitled The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat which became an instant best seller on its publication in 1985. His other books drew on his rich experiences as a neurologist gleaned over almost five decades of professional practice. Sacks's work was recognized by prestigious institutions which awarded him numerous honours and prizes. These included the Lewis Thomas Prize given by Rockefeller University, which recognizes the scientist as poet. He was an honorary fellow of both the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and held honorary degrees from many universities, including Oxford, the Karolinska Institute, Georgetown, Bard, Gallaudet, Tufts, and the Catholic University of Peru.

Title: Bob Silvers: the most scrupulous editor

Listeners: Kate Edgar

Kate Edgar, previously Managing Editor at the Summit Books division of Simon and Schuster, began working with Oliver Sacks in 1983. She has served as editor and researcher on all of his books, and has been closely involved with various films and adaptations based on his work. As friend, assistant, and collaborator, she has accompanied Dr Sacks on many adventures around the world, clinical and otherwise.

Tags: The New York Times, Robert B Silvers

Duration: 1 minute, 2 seconds

Date story recorded: September 2011

Date story went live: 02 October 2012