The Forgetting: Alzheimer's: Portrait of an Epidemic

ISBN: 0385498381

Author: Shenk, David

Condition: New

NATIONAL BESTSELLERA powerfully engaging, scrupulously researched, and deeply empathetic narrative of the history of Alzheimers disease, how it affects us, and the search for a cure.Afflicting nearly half of all people over the age of 85, Alzheimers disease kills nearly 100,000 Americans 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 Alzheimers is now at the forefront of many medical and scientific agendas, for as the worlds population ages, the disease will touch the lives of virtually everyone. David Shenk movingly captures the diseases impact on its victims and their families, and he looks back through history, explaining how Alzheimers most likely afflicted such figures as Jonathan Swift, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Willem de Kooning. The result is a searing and graceful account of Alzheimers disease, offering a sobering, compassionate, and ultimately encouraging portrait.

• Shenk rises above the usual rhetoric of combat and cure