Eleven years ago, doctors told retired Wesleyan University professor Jeffrey Butler that he needed a pacemaker to ensure that his heart did not stop during hernia surgery. So he was outfitted with the device, which kept his heart going, “while doing nothing to prevent his slide into dementia, incontinence, near-muteness, misery and helplessness.” A year earlier, Butler had … [Read more...]
Stories of justices’ lives enrich look at U.S. death penalty
When the U.S. Supreme Court struck down death penalty laws in 1972, it effectively reversed the death sentences of more than 700 inmates, including 96 in Florida. The high court’s ruling in Furman v. Georgia was decided 5-4. The nine justices wrote nine separate opinions totaling more than 600 pages. It was the longest and most confusing decision in Supreme Court history, in … [Read more...]
Physician takes alternative medicine to task, witheringly
In 1977, Joey Hofbauer, age 7, was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease, a cancer of the lymph nodes. Doctors said that chemotherapy and radiation would give the boy an excellent chance of survival. But the parents decided, instead, to treat their son with laetrile, an unproven natural remedy made from apricot pits. Three years later Joey was dead. In 1987 the Food and Drug … [Read more...]
‘The Unwinding’: Tearing down the house that FDR built
In his ambitious new book, George Packer describes the rise of “organized money” in business and politics and the collapse, or unwinding, of “the Roosevelt Republic that had reined for almost half a century.” Packer’s nimble prose moves the story along, although the book suffers from disorganization and an odd mixture of short profiles of several celebrities and longer … [Read more...]
‘Shouting’ a poignant look at growing sound of silence
Nearly 50 million Americans suffer from hearing loss, most of it related to aging and exposure to loud noise. For more than two decades Katherine Bouton has lived with hearing loss so severe that it forced her to quit her job as a New York Times editor. Although Shouting Won’t Help is sometimes overly technical and is stuffed with statistics, the book nevertheless provides an … [Read more...]
Story of literacy campaign at its best when children speak
At age 35, John Wood left the world of business, a decision he chronicled in Leaving Microsoft to Change the World. Now he has written a sequel titled Creating Room to Read. One cannot help but admire Wood’s obvious determination to combat illiteracy in underdeveloped nations in Asia and Africa. While vacationing in Nepal in 1998, Wood visited a primary school that had a … [Read more...]
A strong debut from a promising writer
Ayana Mathis was stunned when Oprah Winfrey called recently to say that she had selected Mathis’s debut work of fiction, The Twelve Tribes of Hattie, as her next book club selection. Mathis’s well-crafted first novel tells the story of Hattie Shepherd, a teenager who leaves Georgia in 1923 and heads north to Philadelphia in search of a better life. Hattie and her lazy, … [Read more...]
Writer recounts her mission to the homeless
Danielle Steel is one of today’s best-known fiction authors, having written 85 novels that have sold more than 590 million copies. But hardly anyone knew that for more than a decade Steel and a small band of supporters were quietly and anonymously giving sleeping bags and winter jackets to homeless people in San Francisco. The program began after Steel’s 19-year-old son … [Read more...]
Until the end, mother, son bonded over books
Mary Anne Schwalbe and her son Will shared a longtime passion for books. She had been a dean at Harvard and Radcliffe and he was editor-in-chief of a major New York book publisher. When Mary Anne was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2007, the two decided to read books together in what he later dubbed “The End of Your Life Book Club.” Will Schwalbe describes his growing … [Read more...]
In new edition of ‘Farewell,’ a look at Hemingway’s creative process
Ernest Hemingway’s reputation as a master of 20th century American literature is based in part on A Farewell to Arms, his searing story of war and love, first published in 1929. This new edition of the esteemed novel adds 40 pages of jottings and drafts, including dozens of alternative endings, which show how much Hemingway struggled to get it right. Although the book is … [Read more...]