The Forgetting
Alzheimer's: Portrait of an Epidemic
by David Shenk
List Price: $13.95
Pages: 304
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 0385498381
Publisher: Anchor Books
Afflicting nearly half of all persons over the age of 85, Alzheimer's disease kills nearly 100,000 Americas a year as it insidiously robs them of their memory and wreaks havoc on the lives of their loved ones. It was once minimized and misunderstood as forgetfulness in the elderly, but Alzheimer's is now at the forefront of many medical and scientific agendas, for as the world's population ages, the disease will kill millions more and touch the lives of virtually everyone.
The Forgetting is a scrupulously researched, multilayered analysis of Alzheimer's and its social, medical, and spiritual implications. David Shenk presents us with much more than a detailed explanation of its causes and effects and the search for a cure. He movingly captures the disease's impact on its victims and their families, and he looks back through history, explaining how Alzheimer's most likely afflicted such figures as Jonathan Swift, Ralph Waldo Emerson,and William de Kooning. The result is a searing, powerfully engaging account of Alzheimer's disease, offering a grim but sympathetic and ultimately encouraging portrait.
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1. What is the difference between a healthy brain and a sick one?
2. What comparisons might be made between early childhood development and Alzheimer's?
3. By what processes—historic, scientific, semantic, cultural—have certain forms of dementia come to be known as Alzheimer's?
4. By holding the story of Ralph Waldo Emerson's mental decline in a light cast by the story of the molecular biology community's efforts to combat Alzheimer's, Shenk's prologue illustrates the principal juxtaposition that frames The Forgetting. And by including in that prologue not only an excerpt from Emerson's poem "Brahma" but a reference to the Barbara Walters/Monica Lewinsky interview that coincided with the keynote address of the Molecular Mechanisms in Alzheimer's Disease conference, Shenk prepares his reader for the broad scope of the rest of his book, a book as likely to quote from Plato or Shakespeare as to refer to The New England Journal of Medicine and gaze at William de Kooning's paintings. Why do you suppose Shenk elected to work with such a broad canvas?
5. Plato "insisted that those suffering from 'the influence of extreme old age' should be excused from the commission of the crimes of sacrilege, treachery, and treason." Keeping in mind that Plato was talking about people suffering the influence of old age, but keeping in mind as well that the onset of Alzheimer's is gradual and often undiagnosed, do you feel that old age alone should be a mitigating factor in any other crimes? Would you take this a step further and argue that society should make a legal distinction for elderly people, jut as it does for juveniles?
6. "We are the sum of our memories. Everything we know, everything we perceive, every movement we make is shaped by them." Despite the truth of Shenk's statement, most people go through their daily lives entirely unmindful, if not unaware, of the role played by memory in their behavior. Try to articulate the ways in which your memories have made you what and who you are.
7. Short of medical treatment, what options would you like to see available for people who learn that they have early Alzheimer's? How would you plan for your future and the future of you family if you were to become one of those people?
8. Shenk writes of Alzheimer's patients and their families struggling to create meaning out of their loss. Do you think that such meaning exists? Do you, too, desire to find meaning in suffering?
9. Should the government continue to allow Alzheimer's patients to give away all assets to their children in order to qualify for government-sponsored care?
10. Nonfiction books can be as suspenseful as novels. Discuss the ways in which Shenk achieves suspense in The Forgetting.
11. Are you encouraged or discouraged by the advances that have been made in our understanding of Alzheimer's over the past century?
12. Many of us are caregivers to Alzheimer's patients. Discuss Shenk's proposal that "the caregiver's challenge is to escape the medical confines of disease and to assemble a new humanity."
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"Riveting . . . Superb . . . A wonderfully readable history of the brain and of memory."
—San Francisco Chronicle Book Review
"A remarkable addition to the literature of the science of the mind . . . Shenk has drawn together threads of neurobiology, art history, and psychology into a literary portrait of Alzheimer's disease perfectly balanced between sorrow and wonder, devastation and awe."
—Los Angeles Times Book Review
"An elegant new book . . . Shenk rises above the usual rhetoric of combat and cure, enabling us to confront Alzheimer's not as an alien pestilence but as part of the human condition."
—Newsweek
"Written with a researcher's attention to detail and a storyteller's ear."
—The New York Times Book Review
"Destined to be a classic . . . Shenk's guided tour is free of medical jargon, filled instead with clear and sometimes memorable phrasing."
—The Seattle Times
"A fascinating meditation . . . Shenk has found something beautiful and soulful in a condition that forces people to live in the perpetual ‘now.' . . . Deeply affecting."
—The Washington Post Book World
"A graceful, masterful portrait of [the] illness. . . Readers can't help but be taken by Shenk's humanity and compassion, which brim throughout."
—The Los Angeles Times
"Compelling and immensely humane . . . Shenk's integration of historical and scientific information and personal stories makes for an absorbing read."
—Newsday
"A dazzling literary and scientific history of Alzheimer's disease."
—Detroit Free Press
"A brilliant and quirky new book on Alzheimer's [that] offers food for thought on the unthinkable and a new, deeper understanding of the coming epidemic."
—Salon.com
"Carefully researched and engagingly written."
—The Wall Street Journal
"Shenk makes the science understandable and recounts personal stories that are both moving and illuminating. . . . A fascinating account of what memories are made of."
—Business Week
"An excellent new book."
—The New Yorker
"Beautifully written and philosophically minded."
—Time Out New York
"Fascinating . . . As good as the science in this book is, it takes a back seat to Shenk's eloquent reflections on the meaning of memory and aging, and their connection to our sense of self."
—The Washington Monthly
"Absorbing and enlightening...an engrossing story."
—The Times Literary Supplement (London)
"Told plainly and movingly. . . . Anyone appalled by the possibility of losing their mind, or who has watched another's being stolen by Alzheimer's, should read this excellent book: I guess that's all of us."
—New Scientist
"Shenk is a wonderful writer on science....He has an eye for the social and financial forces that shape scientific interests and he brings key players, whether proteins or people, to dramatic life."
—The Independent (London)
"Highly recommended."
—Journal of the American Medical Association
"The definitive work on Alzheimer's. A truly remarkable book."–John Bayley, author of Elegy for Iris
