A heartbreaking yet hopeful journey through the painful chaos of a loved one’s compassionate care.
Ronald Reagan’s daughter shares her experience as a caregiver for her Alzheimer’s-stricken father.
For the better part of a decade, writer Davis took care of her father during his gradual cognitive descent into dementia. That experience, documented in her heart-rending book The Long Goodbye (2004), forms the foundation for this guide for providers and family members seeking to provide optimal assistance to their loved one while maintaining self-care. Davis generously shares anecdotes from her painful yet always compassionate tenure with her father as well as experiences from those within the support group she founded in 2011, Beyond Alzheimer’s. Throughout, the author weaves in advice for caregivers to better evaluate unfamiliar situations—e.g., sundowning (“as the day winds down, the person gets worse”)—and to improve reactions to more classic dementia scenarios such as emotional outbursts and disorientation. Though she personally battled isolation, exhaustion, helplessness, and a fear of death, her journey was not without small gifts of positive light. Davis shares buoyant revelations about how her family, fractured by “distance and dissonance,” formed a more closely knit bond even as Reagan’s cognitive and physical health declined. During the blessing of shared time, she also learned more intimate details about her father. The author outlines several unique characteristics and types of dementia, moving from initial onset to the debilitating progressive stages. She encourages readers to obtain an accurate diagnosis and offers suggestions on navigating contentious situations like hiring an outside aide and maintaining safety measures and restrictions. She stresses the importance of avoiding guilt and denial and finding an anchoring support group. “Once you let go of the rope,” she writes, “you have to deal with the waters around you.” Her bracing narrative is a vital supportive resource for anyone navigating the choppy waters of Alzheimer’s within a familial network.
A heartbreaking yet hopeful journey through the painful chaos of a loved one’s compassionate care.Pub Date: Sept. 28, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-63149-798-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.
A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.
To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781982181284
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.
The chef, rapper, and TV host serves up a blustery memoir with lashings of self-help.
“I’ve always had a sick confidence,” writes Bronson, ne Ariyan Arslani. The confidence, he adds, comes from numerous sources: being a New Yorker, and more specifically a New Yorker from Queens; being “short and fucking husky” and still game for a standoff on the basketball court; having strength, stamina, and seemingly no fear. All these things serve him well in the rough-and-tumble youth he describes, all stickball and steroids. Yet another confidence-builder: In the big city, you’ve got to sink or swim. “No one is just accepted—you have to fucking show that you’re able to roll,” he writes. In a narrative steeped in language that would make Lenny Bruce blush, Bronson recounts his sentimental education, schooled by immigrant Italian and Albanian family members and the mean streets, building habits good and bad. The virtue of those habits will depend on your take on modern mores. Bronson writes, for example, of “getting my dick pierced” down in the West Village, then grabbing a pizza and smoking weed. “I always smoke weed freely, always have and always will,” he writes. “I’ll just light a blunt anywhere.” Though he’s gone through the classic experiences of the latter-day stoner, flunking out and getting arrested numerous times, Bronson is a hard charger who’s not afraid to face nearly any challenge—especially, given his physique and genes, the necessity of losing weight: “If you’re husky, you’re always dieting in your mind,” he writes. Though vulgar and boastful, Bronson serves up a model that has plenty of good points, including his growing interest in nature, creativity, and the desire to “leave a legacy for everybody.”
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4478-5
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
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