What’s On My Book Shelf
Atul Gawande, Being Mortal.
This book, and the related articles he published din the New Yorker, leading up to its publication (“The Way We Age Now,” 23 April 2007 and “Testing, Testing,” 6 December 2009) sparked my own interest in what is unique about medical care for the aging and what is tragic about aging in America. The book provides anecdotes from Gawande’s life as a son, an observer of societies formal and informal, and a doctor. He makes a case for medical professionals (and readers) to focus on quality of life vs. further pathologizing, testing and pushing for prolonged living.
Watch him on Frontline in this video.
Irvin Yalom
Irvin Yalom is one of my favorite authors and thinkers. He grew up in my own home town of Washington, DC, son of immigrants from Russia. His published works reflect his unique patient experiences, his personal life and his love of literature and philosophy.
He became famous for developing the main tenets around group therapy in 1970, when he first published The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy.
Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death is a book full of Yalom’s stories of clients who all share a fear of death and Yalom’s reminder that confrontation of mortality can be frightening but also liberating - we are tiny specks in the universe yet have unlimited freedom in our very many choices.
Here is one of his most famous quotes:
“Our existence is forever shadowed by the knowledge that we will grow, blossom, and, inevitably, diminish and die.”
A Matter of Life and Death: This book is a collaboration of Irvin Yalom and his wife, Marilyn. In this book, Irvin’s wife, Marilyn, a feminist historian and author, decides that she will not try to live through her terminal cancer diagnosis but will create a Good Death under her terms. The psychiatrist who has counseled so many through death is now experiencing it. He and Marilyn take turns writing about their feelings and decisions. This is a beautiful book that brings any reader into the thinking and feeling of anyone facing and experiencing the loss of their best friend and love of their life.
Steve Leder, The Beauty of What Remains.
This is a recent (2021) book, in which Rabbi Steve Leder (of the Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles) brings comfort and wisdom to the reader in a series of essay-like chapters. Rabbi leader successfully weaves together: his skills as an orator and writer; his experience as a comforter to his greater congregation; his own bittersweet relationship with his father; his grief over his father’s death and relevant and resonant references to recent losses related to Covid-19.
Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep.
This is a fascinating book that will make you rethink your sleeping habits from a day-to-day issue to a long-term “medicine” that could prolong your life. Matthew Walker is a neuroscientist and sleep scientist who considers sleep to be the cheapest medication around to improve almost all domains of health, which the medical profession and the average human consider to be critically important: obesity, mental health, cancer, cognition and Alzheimer’s disease as well as the more superficial concerns for all ages (puffy eyes and test taking ability). Our bodies are tuned to a circadian rhythm that many of us think we can outsmart. Perhaps it takes being an older-ish person like myself to appreciate this wisdom. To look backwards and say Whoops! and forward to saying, “oh my god this is so important!”
Jonathan Reisman, The Unseen Body.
Being an Aging Life Care manager means I am in doctors’ offices almost daily. I have the great privilege of working with wonderful doctors and learn from them every day. This book provides a wonderful backdrop to being an eavesdropper on medical consultations. This book makes the human anatomy and initial approaches to medicine approachable and gives the reader at any stage of knowledge an understanding of how the proverbial knee bone is connected to the thigh bone. Reisman applies such a wonderful layer of his own personal un-knowingness, including how he connected his New York City mushroom foraging experience and classes in tanning to his appreciation of the human body. as a doctor.
If you have not read the book Salt Fat Acid Heat, you should!!! Like The Unseen Body, it encourages the reader to understand the context, the larger parts, and then to use that information to be resourceful with the material (items in a recipe or addressing a bodily ailment)
Fresh Air interview with Dr. Reisman about The Unseen Body