The Sound of Gravel: A Memoir
Ruth Wariner, 2016
Flatiron Books
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250077691
Summary
A riveting, deeply affecting true story of one girl’s coming-of-age in a polygamist family.
Ruth Wariner was the thirty-ninth of her father’s forty-two children. Growing up on a farm in rural Mexico, where authorities turn a blind eye to the practices of her community, Ruth lives in a ramshackle house without indoor plumbing or electricity.
At church, preachers teach that God will punish the wicked by destroying the world and that women can only ascend to Heaven by entering into polygamous marriages and giving birth to as many children as possible.
After Ruth’s father—the man who had been the founding prophet of the colony—is brutally murdered by his brother in a bid for church power, her mother remarries, becoming the second wife of another faithful congregant.
In need of government assistance and supplemental income, Ruth and her siblings are carted back and forth between Mexico and the United States, where Ruth’s mother collects welfare and her stepfather works a variety of odd jobs. Ruth comes to love the time she spends in the States, realizing that perhaps the community into which she was born is not the right one for her.
As she begins to doubt her family’s beliefs and question her mother’s choices, she struggles to balance her fierce love for her siblings with her determination to forge a better life for herself.
Recounted from the innocent and hopeful perspective of a child, The Sound of Gravel is the remarkable memoir of one girl’s fight for peace and love. This is an intimate, gripping tale of triumph, courage, and resilience. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1972
• Where—Colonia LeBaron, Chihuahua, Mexico
• Education—Southern Oregon University
• Currently—lives in Portland, Oregon
Ruth Wariner lives in Portland, Oregon. After Wariner left Colonia LeBaron in Mexico, the polygamist Mormon colony where she grew up, she moved to California, where she raised her three youngest sisters. After earning her GED, she put herself through college and graduate school, eventually becoming a high school Spanish teacher. She remains close to her siblings and is happily married. The Sound of Gravel is her first book. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
(Starred review.) [An] intense memoir of growing up in a sect of polygamous Mormons.... Fed up with hearing "It’s God’s will" whenever something goes wrong, [Wariner] rescues herself and then eventually writes this memoir, which condemns using religion to evade moral responsibility. This well-written book is hard to put down and hard to forget.
Publishers Weekly
Haunting. Rather than delving into the particulars of the community’s beliefs, Wariner reveals them as they arise. This gives great depth to the portrayal of her situation. With power and insight, Wariner’s tale shows a road to escape from the most confining circumstances.
Booklist
Engrossingly readable from start to finish, the book not only offers a riveting portrayal of life in a polygamist community. It also celebrates the powerful bond between siblings determined to not only survive their circumstances, but also thrive in spite of them. An unsentimental yet wholly moving memoir.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. What does the title, "The Sound of Gravel" mean? How many references to it did you find, and what affect did the sound of gravel have on some of the characters?
2. What did you think of Ruth’s decision to narrate her story from her childhood perspective? Do you think it would’ve been a different experience to read about these events if they had been written in an adult’s voice? Why or why not?
3. From the very beginning, Ruth’s life was dictated by tradition. Traditions can give a child comfort and stability, but for Ruth and her siblings, even the traditions of their religion couldn’t instill much stability. How do you decide when a tradition is doing more harm than good? What traditions and familial expectations have shaped your life, and how have you reshaped some of them upon reaching adulthood?
4. Growing up, Ruth was surrounded by women who could be considered to be both strong and weak at the same time. In what ways were the women in Ruth’s life strong? In which ways were they weak? How did their role affect family dynamics? How did it affect your opinion of Ruth’s mother’s choices in particular?
5. Ruth writes of her mom receiving a special Christmas card from Matt: "Her tears that day were joyful, like the tears she cried when we sang "Happy Birthday" to her each year. I cried too, but only much later, when I realized how little she had asked of the world, and how even that had been too much for the world to give." Have you ever felt that way at times in your own life?
6. What characteristics of Ruth’s early life gave you glimpses of the young woman she would become? Did you notice signs of strength and survival in her early on? What elements from your own childhood do you still carry within you today?
7. How did Ruth navigate deciding whom she could trust as a child? How important is the ability to trust? How did Ruth’s ability to trust evolve as she grew up?
8. Think about a time when you made a decision that was contrary to your family’s wishes—as Ruth’s mom did when she left California to re-join Lane in New Mexico. She seemed blinded by love. Have you ever been in a similar situation where you were blinded by an emotion and made a choice? In hindsight, what would you have done differently?
9. Many people say they would do "anything" for their siblings. Putting yourself in Ruth’s shoes, do you think you would have made the same dramatic decision she did, regarding her younger siblings, at the end of the book?
10. Ruth writes of the women of LeBaron: "People talked about happiness and love, but I witnessed precious little evidence of it." How could people speak of love and happiness if they’ve never known it? After reading this memoir, do you think it’s possible for polygamous marriages to produce healthy, happy children and families? Do you think Ruth’s perception of love is forever tainted?
11. Ruth’s older brother, Matt, ended up living polygamy back at Colonia LeBaron. What do you think changed his mind since he seemed so strongly against it when he first left the Colony?
12. How did this memoir make you reflect on your own life? Were there any parts of it that you were surprised to be able to identify with?
(Questions courtesy of the author.)
SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome
Mary Beard, 2015
Liveright
608 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780871404237
Summary
A sweeping, revisionist history of the Roman Empire from one of our foremost classicists.
Ancient Rome was an imposing city even by modern standards, a sprawling imperial metropolis of more than a million inhabitants, a "mixture of luxury and filth, liberty and exploitation, civic pride and murderous civil war" that served as the seat of power for an empire that spanned from Spain to Syria.
Yet how did all this emerge from what was once an insignificant village in central Italy? In S.P.Q.R., world-renowned classicist Mary Beard narrates the unprecedented rise of a civilization that even two thousand years later still shapes many of our most fundamental assumptions about power, citizenship, responsibility, political violence, empire, luxury, and beauty.
From the foundational myth of Romulus and Remus to 212 ce—nearly a thousand years later—when the emperor Caracalla gave Roman citizenship to every free inhabitant of the empire, S.P.Q.R. (the abbreviation of "The Senate and People of Rome") examines not just how we think of ancient Rome but challenges the comfortable historical perspectives that have existed for centuries by exploring how the Romans thought of themselves: how they challenged the idea of imperial rule, how they responded to terrorism and revolution, and how they invented a new idea of citizenship and nation.
Opening the book in 63 bce with the famous clash between the populist aristocrat Catiline and Cicero, the renowned politician and orator, Beard animates this “terrorist conspiracy,” which was aimed at the very heart of the Republic, demonstrating how this singular event would presage the struggle between democracy and autocracy that would come to define much of Rome’s subsequent history.
Illustrating how a classical democracy yielded to a self-confident and self-critical empire, S.P.Q.R. reintroduces us, though in a wholly different way, to famous and familiar characters—Hannibal, Julius Caesar, Cleopatra, Augustus, and Nero, among others—while expanding the historical aperture to include those overlooked in traditional histories: the women, the slaves and ex-slaves, conspirators, and those on the losing side of Rome’s glorious conquests.
Like the best detectives, Beard sifts fact from fiction, myth and propaganda from historical record, refusing either simple admiration or blanket condemnation. Far from being frozen in marble, Roman history, she shows, is constantly being revised and rewritten as our knowledge expands.
Indeed, our perceptions of ancient Rome have changed dramatically over the last fifty years, and S.P.Q.R., with its nuanced attention to class inequality, democratic struggles, and the lives of entire groups of people omitted from the historical narrative for centuries, promises to shape our view of Roman history for decades to come. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—January 1, 1955
• Where—Much Wenlock, Shopshire, England, U.K.
• Education—B.A., M.A., Ph.D., Cambridge University
• Awards—(See "Honors" below)
• Currently—lives in England
Winifred Mary Beard is an English Classical scholar. She is Professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge a fellow of Newnham College, and Royal Academy of Arts Professor of ancient literature. She is also the classics editor of The Times Literary Supplement, and author of the blog, "A Don's Life," which appears in The Times as a regular column. Her frequent media appearances and sometimes controversial public statements have led to her being described as "Britain's best-known classicist."
Youth and education
Beard, an only child, was born in Much Wenlock, Shropshire, England. Her mother, Joyce Emily Beard, was a headmistress and an enthusiastic reader. Her father, Roy Whitbread Beard worked as an architect in Shrewsbury. She recalled him as "a raffish public-schoolboy type and a complete wastrel, but very engaging."
Beard attended Shrewsbury High School, a private school for girls. During the summer she participated in archaeological excavations; this was to earn money for recreational spending.
At the age of eighteen she was interviewed for a place at Newnham College, Cambridge, and sat for the then-compulsory entrance exam. She had thought of going to King's, but rejected it when she discovered the college did not offer scholarships to women.
Beard received a BA (Honors) at Newnham, which in time was converted to an MA. She remained at Cambridge for her 1982 Ph.D. thesis entitled, The state religion in the late Roman Republic: a study based on the works of Cicero.
Feminism
Beard discovered during her first year at Newnham, an all woman's school, that some men in the university held dismissive attitudes toward the academic potential of women. It was an attitude that served to strengthen her determination to succeed. She also developed feminist views that have remained "hugely important" in her later life. Although she later described "modern orthodox feminism" as partly cant, she has also said that should could not "understand what it would be to be a woman without being a feminist."
Career
From 1979 to 1983 Beard lectured in Classics at King's College London. She returned to Cambridge in 1984 as a Fellow of Newnham College—the only woman lecturer in the Classics faculty. That same year she published, with Michael Crawford, Rome in the Late Republic.
In 1992 she became Classics editor of The Times Literary Supplement.
In 2004, Beard became Professor of Classics at Cambridge. She also was elected Visiting Sather Professor of Classical Literature for 2008–2009 at the University of California, Berkeley, where she delivered a series of lectures on "Roman Laughter."
In 2010, on BBC Two, Beard presented the graphic historical documentary, Pompeii: Life and Death in a Roman Town, submitting remains from the town to forensic tests, aiming to show a snapshot of the lives of the residents prior to the eruption of Vesuvius.
In 2011 she took part in a television series, Jamie's Dream School on Channel 4, and for BBC Two in 2012 she wrote and presented the three part television series, Meet the Romans with Mary Beard, a series which attempted to show how ordinary people lived in Rome, what she called "the world's first global metropolis."
In 2013, Beard became the pin-up girl for The Oldie, the UK's version of the US's AARP magazine.
In August 2014, Beard was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian opposing Scottish independence in the run-up to the September referendum on that issue.
Controversy
Shortly after the 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, Beard was one of several authors invited to contribute articles on the topic to the London Review of Books. She wrote that once "the shock had faded," many people thought "the United States had it coming," and that "[w]orld bullies, even if their heart is in the right place, will in the end pay the price" (the so-called "Roosting Chickens argument"). In a November 2007 interview, she stated that the hostility these comments provoked had still not subsided, although she believed it had become a standard viewpoint that terrorism was associated with American foreign policy.
Personal
In 1985 Beard married Robin Cormack. She had a daughter called Zoe in 1985 and a son called Raphael in 1987.
Honors
2014 - Royal Academy of Arts, Professor of Aancient Literture
2013 - Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE)
2013 - National Book Critics Circle Award (Criticism) shortlist for Confronting the Classics
2008 - Wolfson History Prize for Pompeii: Life of a Roman Town
2005 - Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries
Books
1985 - Rome in the Late Republic (with Michael Crawford)
1989 - The Good Working Mother's Guide
1990 - Pagan Priests: Religion and Power in the Ancient World (editor with John North)
1995 - Classics: A Very Short Introduction (with John Henderson)
1998 - Religions of Rome (with John North and Simon Price)
2000 - The Invention of Jane Harrison
2001 - Classical Art from Greece to Rome (with John Henderson)
2005 - The Colosseum (with Keith Hopkins)
2007 - The Roman Triumph
2008 - Pompeii: The Life of a Roman Town
2013 - Confronting the Classics: Traditions, Adventures and Innovations
2014 - Laughter in Ancient Rome: On Joking, Tickling, and Cracking Up
2015 - SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome
(Authior bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 1/3/2016.)
Book Reviews
[A] sprawling but humane volume that examines nearly 1,000 years in the early history of that teeming city and empire…[Beard] is a debunker and a complicatof...and charming company. In SPQR she pulls off the difficult feat of deliberating at length on the largest intellectual and moral issues her subject presents (liberty, beauty, citizenship, power) while maintaining an intimate tone.... Ms. Beard's prose is never mandarin, yet she treats her readers like peers. She pulls us into the faculty lounge and remarks about debates that can make or end academic careers.... You come to Ms. Beard's books to meet her as much as her subjects. They are idiosyncratic and offbeat, which is to say, pleasingly hers.
Dwight Garner - New York Times
In SPQR, her wonderful concise history, Mary Beard unpacks the secrets of the city’s success with a crisp and merciless clarity that I have not seen equaled anywhere else…. We tend to think of the Romans as coarser successors to the Greeks. Yet Beard, who doubles as a Cambridge professor and a television lecturer of irresistible salty charm, shows us how the Roman Republic got underway at almost the same time as the Athenian democracy. And it evolved into just the kind of mixed system that sophisticated commentators like Aristotle and Polybius approved of.
Ferdinand Mount - New York Times Book Review
Where SPQR differs most from the standard history is in its clear-sighted honesty…. Beard tells this story precisely and clearly, with passion and without technical jargon…. SPQR is a grim success story, but one told with wonderful flair.
Greg Woolf - Wall Street Journal
Beard does precisely what few popularizers dare to try and plenty of dons can’t pull off: She conveys the thrill of puzzling over texts and events that are bound to be ambiguous, and she complicates received wisdom in the process. Her magisterial new history of Rome, SPQR…is no exception…. The ancient Romans, Beard shows, are relevant to people many centuries later who struggle with questions of power, citizenship, empire, and identity.
Emily Wilson - Atlantic
[Fun] helps define what sets Beard apart as commentator and what sets SPQR apart from other histories of Rome. Though she here claims that 50 years of training and study have led up to SPQR, Beard wears her learning lightly. As she takes us through the brothels, bars, and back alleys where the populus Romanus left their imprint, one senses, above all, that she is having fun.
James Romm - New Republic
A masterful new chronicle…. Beard is a sure-footed guide through arcane material that, in other hands, would grow tedious. Sifting myth from fact in dealing with the early history of the city, she enlivens—and deepens—scholarly debates by demonstrating how the Romans themselves shaped their legendary beginnings to short-term political ends…. Exemplary popular history, engaging but never dumbed down, providing both the grand sweep and the intimate details that bring the distant past vividly to life.
Economist
(Starred review.) The first millennium of Rome is Beard's topic in this delightful and extensive examination of what made Rome, and why we should care. Since the author is a well-known popularizer of classical studies, it is no surprise that this is a humorous and accessible work, but it is also extremely rigorous. —Margaret Heller, Loyola Univ. Chicago Libs.
Library Journal
(Starred review.) The acclaimed classicist delivers a massive history of ancient Rome...[writing] fascinatingly about how Rome grew and sustained its position.... Beard's enthusiasm for her subject is infectious and is well-reflected in her clever, thoroughly enjoyable style of writing. Lovers of Roman history will revel in this work, and new students will quickly become devotees.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also, consider these LitLovers talking points to start a discussion for SPQR:
1. What are some parallels you noticed between the culture and politics of ancient Rome and our own society?
2. Mary Beard refers to exploring ancient Rome as "walking a tight rope, a very careful balancing act." What does she mean?
3. Talk about the city's double nature: its impressive achievements (e.g, architecture, legal system) versus its squalid aspects (e.g., filth, slavery).
4. Beard, in writing about Edward Gibbon's 18th-century Decline and Fll of the Roman Empire, comments that Gibbons "lived in an age when historians made judgments." She assures us, however that she will not be making judgments. Does she adhere to this promise—is she judgment-free? Whatever your answer, is it a weakness or a strengtth of her writing?
5. Why does our understanding of Roman history matter?
6. Beard says that the rulers of Rome never planned to build an empire (they didn't even have maps). What, then, was the impetus to continue conquering more land and subjugating more people until it controlled what seemed to be the whole of the inhabited world? What was the secret of its success?
7. Follow-up to Question 6: Perhaps a better question than the above is what made Rome great?
8. What was Rome's stance on immigration? Did it's openness to foreign people weaken or strengthen the empire? Any parallels to today?
9. What happened to the Roman Republic? How did it fall and lead to the rise of autocracy, to Octavian and dynastic rule?
10. Talk about e a few of the longstanding myths that Beard debunks. What about Cleopatra's suicide, for instance?
11. How much did you know about Rome before reading SPQR? What have you learned that surprised you or, perhaps, supported what you already understood about the ancient world? What struck you most in reading Beard's history?
12. Much is made about Beard's humorous approach to the history of Rome. What did you find funny?
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)
Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges
Amy Cuddy, 2015
Little, Brown & Co.
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316256575
Summary
Have you ever left a nerve-racking challenge and immediately wished for a do over?
Maybe after a job interview, a performance, or a difficult conversation? The very moments that require us to be genuine and commanding can instead cause us to feel phony and powerless. Too often we approach our lives' biggest hurdles with dread, execute them with anxiety, and leave them with regret.
By accessing our personal power, we can achieve "presence," the state in which we stop worrying about the impression we're making on others and instead adjust the impression we've been making on ourselves.
As Harvard professor Amy Cuddy's revolutionary book reveals, we don't need to embark on a grand spiritual quest or complete an inner transformation to harness the power of presence. Instead, we need to nudge ourselves, moment by moment, by tweaking our body language, behavior, and mind-set in our day-to-day lives.
Amy Cuddy has galvanized tens of millions of viewers around the world with her TED talk about "power poses." Now she presents the enthralling science underlying these and many other fascinating body-mind effects, and teaches us how to use simple techniques to liberate ourselves from fear in high-pressure moments, perform at our best, and connect with and empower others to do the same.
Brilliantly researched, impassioned, and accessible, Presence is filled with stories of individuals who learned how to flourish during the stressful moments that once terrified them. Every reader will learn how to approach their biggest challenges with confidence instead of dread, and to leave them with satisfaction instead of regret. (From the publisher.)
See Amy Cuddy's TED talk.
Author Bio
• Birth—July 27, 1972
• Where—Robesonia, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Colorado; M.A., Ph.D., Princeton University
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in
Amy Joy Casselberry Cuddy is an American social psychologist known for her research on stereotyping and discrimination, emotions, power, nonverbal behavior, and the effects of social stimuli on hormone levels. She is an Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.
Cuddy speaks about the psychology of power, influence, nonverbal communication, and prejudice. Her TED talk, delivered in Edinburgh, Scotland in 2012, has been viewed more than 27 million times and ranks second among the most-viewed TED talks.
Personal backgrond
Cuddy grew up in a very small Pennsylvania Dutch town, Robesonia, Pennsylvania. She is a classically trained ballet dancer and worked as a roller-skating waitress when she was an undergraduate at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
When she was a sophomore in college she sustained a serious head injury in a car accident. Her doctors told her she was not likely to fully recover and should anticipate significant challenges finishing her undergraduate degree. Her IQ fell temporarily by two standard deviations, which is about 30 points in IQ test.
She eventually completed her undergraduate studies, earning a B.A. degree in Social Pschology at the University of Colorado. She continued her studies in Social Psychology at Princeton, attaining both her M.A. and Ph.D.
Cuddy has often tweeted of her love for live music, and spent a number of seasons following the Grateful Dead. She has one son. In August 2014, in Aspen, Colorado, she married Paul Coster.
Career
Prior to joining Harvard Business School, Cuddy was an Assistant Professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, where she taught leadership in organizations in the MBA program and research methods in the doctoral program. She was also an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Rutgers University, where she taught undergraduate social psychology. At Harvard Business School, she has taught MBA courses on negotiation, and power and influence, as well as executive education courses.
Research
Cuddy studies the origins and outcomes of how people judge and influence each other. She has done experimental and correlational research on stereotyping and discrimination (e.g., against Asian Americans, elderly people, Latinos, working mothers), the causes and consequences of feeling ambivalent emotions (e.g., envy and pity), nonverbal behavior and communication, and hormonal responses to social stimuli.
Research
Along with Susan Fiske and Peter Glick (Lawrence University), Cuddy developed the Stereotype Content Model (SCM) and the Behaviors from Intergroup Affect and Stereotypes (BIAS) Map. These are used to make judgments of other people and groups within two core trait dimensions, warmth and competence, and to discern how these judgments shape and motivate our social emotions, intentions, and behaviors. [10] This work has been cited over 9000 times.
Power posing
Cuddy carried out an experiment with Dana Carney and Andy Yap (UC-Berkeley) on how nonverbal expressions of power (i.e., expansive, open, space-occupying postures) affect people’s feelings, behaviors, and hormone levels.
In particular, they claimed that adopting body postures associated with dominance and power (“power posing”) for as little as two minutes can increase testosterone, decrease cortisol, increase appetite for risk, and cause better performance in job interviews. This was widely reported in popular media. New York Times columnist David Brooks summarized the findings, “If you act powerfully, you will begin to think powerfully.”
This and related research has been published in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Psychological Science, Research in Organizational Behavior, Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, and Science.
Criticism
In 2014, Eva Ranehill and other researchers tried to replicate this experiment with a larger group of participants and a double-blind setup. Ranehill et al. found that power posing increased subjective feelings of power, but did not affect hormones or actual risk tolerance. They published their results in Psychological Science.
Carney, Cuddy, & Yap responded in the same issue of Psychological Science, with an overview of 33 published studies related to power posing, including the Ranehill et al. study. Almost all had reported significant effects of some kind. The overview noted methodological differences between their 2010 study and the Ranehill replication, which may have moderated the effects of posing.
Two statistics researchers at the Wharton School, Simmons & Simonsohn, later shared a meta-analysis of the same 33 studies on their statistics blog. Based on the distribution of p-values reported across the studies (the 'p-curve'), they concluded that studies so far have demonstrated little to no average effect of power posing. This remains a point of contention among other researchers[citation needed].
Awards and honors
2014 - World Economic Forum Young Global Leader
2012 - TEDGlobal Speaker
2013 - Time magazine "Game Changer"
2011 - Rising Star Award, Association for Psychological Science (APS)
2010 - Psychology Today, The Top 10 Psychology Studies of 2010
2010 - Cover story, Harvard Magazine, Nov-Dec, 2010
2009 - The HBR List: Breakthrough Ideas for 2009, Harvard Business Review
(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 12/14/2015.)
Book Reviews
Cuddy is very sharp in her analysis of...affirmation; body language; how to nudge yourself along via incremental changes.... [But] Cuddy falls back too often on the unchallenged insights of “a widely recognized expert” as well as unhelpful diagnostic questions—e.g., “What three words best describe you as an individual?”
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also, consider these LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for Presence:
1. Define the term "presence" as it's used by Amy Cuddy. Do you people in your life who have presence as the book describes it?
2. What does it mean to build your sense of personal power without a sense of arrogance? How does increasing your power help you be your better self?
3. What situations in your own life might you envision using (or having used) the lessons spelled out in Presence? Have you tried her power stance yet?
4. Talk about one of the central premises of this book—how mind and body work together to affect who we are and how we're perceived? What are the ways in which the body affects the mind.
5. Criticism of Cuddy's work has been leveled by other scientists, who haven't yet attained the same results in their experiments as Cuddy and her associates have. (See Amy Cuddy's bio above). Do a bit more research on her critics and discuss your own findings, whether they're legitimate or not.
6. What is the most striking, insightful, or powerful piece of information you came across in reading Amy Cuddy's book?
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)
The Turner House
Angela Flournoy, 2015
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780544705166
Summary
The Turners have lived on Yarrow Street for over fifty years. Their house has seen thirteen children grown and gone—and some returned; it has seen the arrival of grandchildren, the fall of Detroit’s East Side, and the loss of a father.
The house still stands despite abandoned lots, an embattled city, and the inevitable shift outward to the suburbs.
But now, as ailing matriarch Viola finds herself forced to leave her home and move in with her eldest son, the family discovers that the house is worth just a tenth of its mortgage.
The Turner children are called home to decide its fate and to reckon with how each of their pasts haunts—and shapes—their family’s future.
Praised by Ayana Mathis as “utterly moving” and “un-putdownable,” The Turner House brings us a colorful, complicated brood full of love and pride, sacrifice and unlikely inheritances. It’s a striking examination of the price we pay for our dreams and futures, and the ways in which our families bring us home. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1984-85
• Rasised—southern Califonia, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Southern California; M.F.A., Iowa Writers' Workshop
• Currently—N/A
Angela Flourny is the author of The Turner House, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, a Summer 2015 Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, and a New York Times Sunday Book Review Editors' Choice.
She is a National Book Foundation "5 Under 35" Honoree for 2015. Her fiction has appeared in the Paris Review, and she has written for the New York Times, New Republic and Los Angeles Times.
Flournay was raised in southern California by a mother from Los Angeles and a father from Detroit where she spent summers visiting her grandparents. She received her B.A. from the University of Southern California and her M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She has taught at the University of Iowa and The Writer's Foundry at St. Joseph's College in Brooklyn. She is joining the faculty at Southern New Hampshire University's low-residency MFA program in Spring 2016. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
[A]n engrossing and remarkably mature first novel…Flournoy's prose is artful without being showy. She takes the time to flesh out the world…In her accretion of resonant details, Flournoy recounts the history of Detroit with more sensitivity than any textbook could…That Flournoy's main characters are black is central to this book, and yet her treatment of that essential fact is never essentializing. Flournoy gets at the universal through the patient observation of one family's particulars. In this assured and memorable novel, she provides the feeling of knowing a family from the inside out, as we would wish to know our own.
Matthew Thomas - New York Times Book Review
An elegant and assured debut.
Washington Post
With The Turner House, Flournoy has written an utterly unsentimental love story that, rather like the house on Yarrow Street, manages to make room for everyone.
Christian Science Monitor
One of the many strengths of this book—entertaining, well-written and keenly insightful without calling attention to itself—is its clear-eyed, unsentimental vision. Flournoy never ignores the problems afflicting family and place—a 13-child clan and Detroit—even as she pays homage to both.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
The Turner House [is] not only a first novel but a lamentation for and a paean to Detroit, from the mid-1940s to the present day, a funny yet heart-wrenching book, both beautiful and revealing of all the ways close human beings relate to one another (and to places and things) over time.
Buffalo News
Nobody can take you from joyful to infuriated as fast as your brother or sister. Similarly, the ups and downs of the 13 siblings that populate The Turner House, the first novel by Angela Flournoy, whip from laugh-out-loud to heart-crushing. Still, she proves even bonds that have stretched a mile long have the ability to snap back.
Essence Magazine
The Turner House speeds along like a page-turner. Flournoy’s richly wrought prose and intimate, vivid dialogue make this novel feel like settling deeply into the family armchair.
Entertainment Weekly
Flournoy has written an epic that feels deeply personal...Flournoy’s finely tuned empathy infuses her characters with a radiant humanity.
Oprah Magazine
Epic, ambitious and strikingly executed, The Turner House is an impressive debut novel. In the grand tradition of family dramas by the late Bebe Moore Campbell, it is lively and entertaining, with subtle humor and engaging voice. Flournoy manages the difficult feat of skillfully telling the stories of 13 children, their parents and accompanying spouses and love interests in an irresistible style. Here we have a deeply satisfying portrayal of relationships among those to whom we, for better or worse, are related by blood.
The Root
[A] dynamite Detroit debut.... The Turner House belongs on the shelf with the very finest books about one of America’s most dynamic, tortured, and resilient cities.... There are cracklingly alive scenes inside pawn shops and factories, casinos and living rooms. Flournoy has a deft touch with the verbal and psychological sparring between spouses, siblings, and parents and children.... One of Flournoy’s great achievements is that she doesn’t draw attention to the fact that virtually every one of her characters is black. This is just part of the novel’s oxygen and furniture, a Detroit given. Therein lies its quiet strength...Angela Flournoy is an exciting new talent whose debut has enriched Detroit’s flowering literature. Read The Turner House, and I’m sure you’ll join me in waiting, eagerly, to see what its gifted author comes up with next.
Millions
What is rarer, and much more difficult, in a story is to involve numerous family members as point-of-view characters. Faulkner set the standard with As I Lay Dying, and contemporary incarnations like A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan and The Middlesteins by Jami Attenberg have run the spectrum. This is exactly the challenge that Angela Flournoy takes on in her debut novel The Turner House, with admirable success.... The Turner House is a wonderfully crafted glimpse into the intimacy of family, and shows immense promise for Flournoy.
Bustle
(Starred review.) Flournoy’s debut is a lively, thoroughly engaging family saga with a cast of fully realized characters.... [She] evokes the intricacies of domestic situations and sibling relationships, depicting how each of the Turners’ lives has been shaped by the social history of their generation. She handles time and place with a veteran’s ease as the narrative swings between decades....absorbing.
Publishers Weekly
Debut novelist Flournoy limns the fate of African Americans who have seen their hard-won success in reaching the middle class in a single generation blown to bits by our continuing economic malaise.
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Encompassing a multitude of themes, including aging and parenthood, this is a compelling read that is funny and moving in equal measure.
Booklist
What makes The Turner House profound is its reality, its observation of a family so diverse and well-drawn that they seem real.... We rarely find such an honest portrait of what it means to be a sibling—defined by your differences as much as your similarities—as the one Flournoy gives us.
BookPage
A complicated portrait of the modern American family emerges in Flournoy's debut novel.... Flournoy's writing is precise and sharp, and despite several loose ends...the novel draws readers to the Turner family almost magnetically. A talent to watch.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Throughout the book, characters struggle with the concept of belonging—to blood relations, in-laws, and even the city of Detroit. What does it mean to “belong” in a group? How do characters come to terms with their own feelings of belonging by the end of the novel?
2. The city of Detroit plays a large role in the way characters see themselves, particularly for Francis Turner in the 1940s. How does the city itself contribute to the story of the Turner family? Can you imagine a similar story taking place elsewhere, or is the story inextricably tied to Detroit?
3. Cha-Cha sees himself as the patriarch of the family, but he also has trouble getting his siblings to listen to him. In what ways does Cha-Cha’s view of himself as the leader prevent his siblings from trusting or respecting him?
4. In their final meeting (p. 241), Alice tells Cha-Cha that she thinks his haint has made him feel extraordinary, and that she doesn’t think he really wants to let it go. Do you agree with her observation? What might the haint provide to Cha-Cha that he otherwise lacks in his life?
5. Alice describes Cha-Cha as the prime minister of his family, and Viola as the queen; she has the title, but is not concerned with day-to-day governance. What is your impression of Viola when you first meet her in the novel, and how does that impression change over time?
6. As the baby, Lelah thinks she has missed out on many of the best moments and secrets in Turner family history. How might her role as the youngest have contributed to her addiction to gambling? Do you think she has truly turned a corner by the novel’s end?
7. Lelah and David become close very quickly. Why do you think Lelah is drawn to David, and why does David not break things off when he finds out about Lelah staying on Yarrow Street?
8. Troy is the only sibling not present at the party that takes place the end of the novel. Did you get the impression that he is on the path to change? Why or why not?
9. Both Francis and Cha-Cha have a precarious relationship with belief, both in religion and the supernatural. How does each character’s beliefs shift over time, and what effect do those changes have on their relationship to others?
10. Compare and contrast Lelah and Cha-Cha’s reactions to the news of Viola’s worsened condition. What do their reactions tell us about their similarities and differences? What do we learn about their roles in the family?
11. The move from Arkansas to Detroit is very important to Turner family history, and it places them among the hundreds of thousands of African Americans who moved North during the Great Migration. How is Francis and Viola’s relationship changed by the move? How do the challenges they face in Detroit contribute to the way they raise their children?
12. At its core, do you see the Turners as a strongly bonded family? What does it mean for a family to be bonded, especially when people move further away from one another and start their own families?
(Questions from the author's website.)
On the Move: A Life
Oliver Sacks, 2015
Knopf Doubleday
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385352543
Summary
When Oliver Sacks was twelve years old, a perceptive schoolmaster wrote: “Sacks will go far, if he does not go too far.”
It is now abundantly clear that Sacks has never stopped going. With unbridled honesty and humor, Sacks writes about the passions that have driven his life—from motorcycles and weight lifting to neurology and poetry.
He writes about his love affairs, both romantic and intellectual; his guilt over leaving his family to come to America; his bond with his schizophrenic brother; and the writers and scientists—W. H. Auden, Gerald M. Edelman, Francis Crick—who have influenced his work.
On the Move is the story of a brilliantly unconventional physician and writer, a man who has illuminated the many ways that the brain makes us human. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 9, 1933
• Where—Willesden, London, England, UK
• Death—August 30, 2015
• Where—New York City, New York
• Education—B.A., M.D., Oxford University
• Awards—(see below)
Oliver Wolf Sacks was a British neurologist, naturalist, and author who spent his professional life in the United States. For Sacks, the brain was the "most incredible thing in the universe" and therefore a valuable field of study. He became widely known for writing best-selling case histories about his patients' disorders, with some of his books adapted for film and stage.
Early life
Sacks was born in Willesden, London, England, the youngest of four children born to Jewish parents: Samuel Sacks, a Lithuanian Jewish physician, and Muriel Elsie Landau, one of the first female surgeons in England. Sacks had a large extended family, including the director and writer Jonathan Lynn and first cousins, the Israeli statesman Abba Eban, and the Nobel Laureate Robert Aumann.
When Sacks was six years old, he and his brother Michael were evacuated from London to escape the Blitz, retreating to a boarding school in the Midlands where he remained until 1943. Unknown to his family, at the school, he and his brother Michael "subsisted on meager rations of turnips and beetroot and suffered cruel punishments at the hands of a sadistic headmaster."
He later attended St Paul's School in London. During his youth he was a keen amateur chemist, as recalled in his 2001 memoir Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood. He also came to share his parents' enthusiasm for medicine, entering Queen's College, Oxford, in 1951. There he earned a BA degree in physiology and biology in 1956.
Although not required, Sacks chose to stay on for an additional year to undertake research, having been inspired by a course taught by Hugh Macdonald Sinclair. Sacks recalls,
I had been seduced by a series of vivid lectures on the history of medicine.... And now, in Sinclair's lectures, it was the history of physiology, the ideas and personalities of physiologists, which came to life.
Sacks then became involved with the school's Laboratory of Human Nutrition under Sinclair, focusing his research on the toxic and commonly abused drug Jamaica ginger, known to cause irreversible nerve damage. After devoting months to research, he was disappointed by the lack of help and guidance he received from Sinclair, so he wrote uphis research findings but stopped working on the subject.
As a result of his disappointment, he fell into depression, at which point his tutor at Queen's College and his parents suggested he take time away from his studies. In the summer of 1955, his parents offered to send him to an Israeli kibbutz where, they felt, the physical labor would do him good.
Sacks later described his experience on the kibbutz as an "anodyne to the lonely, torturing months in Sinclair's lab." He lost 60 pounds (27 kg), traveled around the country, scuba dived in the Red Sea, and began to reconsider his future. "I was 'cured' now; it was time to return to medicine, to start clinical work, seeing patients in London."
Medical training
Sacks began medical school in 1956 and for the next two and half years took courses in medicine, surgery, orthopedics, pediatrics, neurology, psychiatry, dermatology, infectious diseases, obstetrics and various other specialties. He followed up his formal training with a year-long internship at Middlesex Hospital, split between its medical and neurological units. However, after completing the internships in 1960, Sacks was uncertain about his future.
He left England and flew into Montreal, Canada, on his 27th birthday. He visited the Montreal Neurological Institute and the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF), telling them that he wanted to be a pilot. After some interviews and checking his background, RCAF told him he would be best in medical research. It was suggested that he take time to reconsider. He used the next three months to travel across Canada, deep into the Canadian Rockies, which he described in his personal journal, later published as Canada: Pause, 1960.
He next made his way from there to the United States where he completed a residency in Neurology at Mt. Zion Hospital in San Francisco, as well as fellowships in Neurology and Psychiatry at UCLA. It was during his time at UCLA that he experimented with various recreational drugs, describing his experiences in his 2012 book Hallucinations.
Medicine
After completing his residency in neurology in 1965, Sacks relocated to New York to became professor of neurology at New York University School of Medicine, remaining with that institution for most of his career.
In 1966 he began consulting at chronic care facility Beth Abraham Hospital in the Bronx. He worked there with a group of survivors of the 1920s outbreak of encephalitis lethargica—sleeping sickness—who had been unable to move on their own for decades. The story of their treatment became the basis of Sacks's most well-known book, his 1973 Awakenings.
Sacks's work at Beth Abraham helped lay the foundation for the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function, and Sacks served as honorary medical adviser. The Institute honored Sacks with its first Music Has Power Award in 2000 and again in 2006. The latter commemorated "his 40 years at Beth Abraham and honor his outstanding contributions in support of music therapy and the effect of music on the human brain and mind."
From 1966 to 2007, Sacks served as an instructor and later as clinical professor of neurology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He also held an appointment at the New York University School of Medicine from 1992 to 2007.
In July 2007, he joined the faculty of Columbia University Medical Center as a professor of neurology and psychiatry. At the same time, he was appointed Columbia University's first "Columbia University Artist" in recognition of his work in bridging the arts and sciences.
Sacks returned to New York University School of Medicine in 2012, serving as a professor of neurology and consulting neurologist in the center's epilepsy center.
In addition to his academic work, Sacks maintained a practice in New York City. He also served on the boards of The Neurosciences Institute and the New York Botanical Garden.
Writing
Beginning in 1970, Sacks wrote of his experience with neurological patients. His books have been translated into more than 25 languages. In addition, he was a regular contributor to The New Yorker, New York Review of Books, and various medical, scientific and general publications. He was awarded the Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing about Science in 2001.
Sacks's work was featured in a "broader range of media than those of any other contemporary medical author." In 1990 the New York Times referred to him as "a kind of poet laureate of contemporary medicine." His books use a wealth of narrative detail to focus on the experiences of patients who are often able to adapt despite neurological conditions usually considered incurable.
Awakenings, his most famous book (and the basis for the 1990 feature film), describes his use of the then new drug levodopa on post-encephalitic patients at Beth Abraham. The 1973 book was also the subject of the first documentary made for the British television series Discovery.
In other books, he describes cases of Tourette's syndrome and the various effects of Parkinson's disease. The title essay in his 1985 book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat centers on a man with visual agnosia—the inability of the brain to interpret visual information—and was the subject of a 1986 opera by Michael Nyman.
His article "An Anthropologist on Mars," which won a Polk Award for magazine reporting, is about Temple Grandin, the autistic professor who instituted more human treatment methods in the beef cattle industry. Seeing Voices, Sacks's 1989 book, covers a variety of topics in Deaf studies.
In his book The Island of the Colorblind, Sacks wrote about an island whose residents have a high incidence of achromatopsia—total color blindness, low visual acuity, and high photophobia. He also describes the Chamorro people of Guam, many of whom suffer from a neurodegenerative disease known as Lytico-Bodig disease—a devastating combination of ALS, dementia and parkinsonism. Along with Paul Alan Cox, Sacks published papers suggesting a possible cause for the cluster—a toxin from the cycad nut transmitted by the flying fox bat.
In November 2012, Sacks released his book Hallucinations which examines why ordinary people sometimes experience hallucinations. "Hallucinations don't belong wholly to the insane, " he explains. "Much more commonly, they are linked to sensory deprivation, intoxication, illness or injury."
Sacks also wrote about the little known phenomenon called Charles Bonnet syndrome, which has been found to occur in elderly people who have lost their eyesight.
Sacks was the author of The Mind's Eye, The Oxcaca Journal, On The Move: A Life, and numerous articles in The New Yorker.
Criticism
Sacks sometimes faced criticism from the medical and disability studies communities.
- Arthur K. Shapiro, an expert on Tourette syndrome, called Sacks's work "idiosyncratic," relying too heavily on anecdotal evidence.
- Researcher Makoto Yamaguchi thought Sacks's mathematical explanations in his study of the numerically gifted savant twins (The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat), were irrelevant.
- British academic and disability rights activist Tom Shakespeare called Sacks "the man who mistook his patients for a literary career," while another critic called his work "a high-brow freak show."
Sacks responded, "I would hope that a reading of what I write shows respect and appreciation, not any wish to expose or exhibit for the thrill...but it's a delicate business."
Personal
Sacks declined to share details from his personal life until later in life. In a 2001 interview he discussed his severe shyness—describing it as "a disease" and a lifelong impediment to his personal interactions. Much later, in a 2015 Vanity Fair article, he talked about his earlier years in California when he indulged in
...staggering bouts of pharmacological experimentation, underwent a fierce regimen of bodybuilding at Muscle Beach (for a time he held a California record, after he performed a full squat with 600 pounds across his shoulders), and racked up more than 100,000 leather-clad miles on his motorcycle. And then one day he gave it all up—the drugs, the sex, the motorcycles, the bodybuilding.
He waged a lifelong battle with prosopagnosia—face blindness—which he discussed in a 2010 New Yorker piece. He also wrote about a near-fatal accident at 41, a year after the publication of Awakenings, when he fell and broke his leg while mountaineering alone.
Sacks lived alone, never marrying. In 2008, after nearly 35 years of celibacy, he entered into a relationship with writer and New York Times contributor Bill Hayes. In his 2015 autobiography On the Move: A Life, he addressed his homosexuality for the first time.
Illness and death
In 2006 Sacks underwent radiation therapy for a uveal melanoma in his right eye. He discussed his loss of stereoscopic vision caused by the treatment in a 2010 article, and expanded on it later that year in his book The Mind's Eye.
In January, 2015, metastases from the ocular tumor were discovered in his liver and brain. Sacks announced this development in a February New York Times op-ed piece and estimated his remaining time in "months." He expressed his intent to "live in the richest, deepest, most productive way I can," adding...
I want and hope in the time that remains to deepen my friendships, to say farewell to those I love, to write more, to travel if I have the strength, to achieve new levels of understanding and insight.
Sacks died from the disease on August 30, 2015, at his home in Manhattan. He was 82.
Honors
???? - Fellow—Royal College of Physicians (FRCP)
1990 - Honorary Doctorate: Georgetown University
1991 - Honorary Doctorate: (3) Tufts University, New York Medical College, and College of Staten Island
1992 - Honorary Doctorate: (2) Medical College of Pennsylvania and Bard College
1996 - Member: American Academy of Arts and Letters (Literature)
1999 - Fellow: New York Academy of Sciences; Honorary Fellow—The Queen's College, Oxford.
2002 - Fellow: American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Humanities and Arts / Literature)
2001 - Honorary Doctorate: Queen's University (Ontario); Lewis Thomas Prize—Rockefeller University
2005 - Honorary Doctorate: 2) Oxford University and Gallaudet University
2006 - Honorary Doctorate: Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru
2008 - Honorary Doctorate: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
2008 - Commander of the order of the British Empire (CBE)
Sacks was named to the position "Columbia Artist" from Columbia University in 2007, a post that was created specifically for him. The title granted Sacks unfettered access to the University, regardless of department or discipline.
The minor planet 84928 Oliversacks, discovered in 2003, was named in his honor.
In February 2010 Sacks was named as one of the Freedom From Religion Foundation's Honorary Board of distinguished achievers. He described himself as "an old Jewish atheist." (Author bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 11/18/2015.)
Book Reviews
[D]eeply moving…. Dr. Sacks trains his descriptive and analytic powers on his own life, providing a revealing look at his childhood and coming of age, his discovery and embrace of his vocation, and his development as a writer. He gives us touching portraits, brimming with life and affection, of friends and family members…. This is a more intimate book than Dr. Sacks's earlier ventures into autobiographical territory…and the more he tells us about himself, the more we come to see how rooted his own gifts as an artist and a doctor are in his early family experiences in England and what he once thought of as emotional liabilities…[Sacks's] writing, which [he] says gives him a pleasure "unlike any other," has also been a gift to his readers—of erudition, sympathy and an abiding understanding of the joys, trials and consolations of the human condition.
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times
With On the Move, [Sacks] has finally presented himself as he has presented others: as both fully vulnerable and an object of curiosity…. The primary mark of a good memoir is that it makes you nostalgic for experiences you never had, and Sacks captures the electrifying discoveries he made, especially those in his early career, with vivid, hard-edge prose…. Sacks's ability to enact and celebrate intuition in medicine and precision in art is singular.
Andrew Solomon - New York Times Book Review
Marvelous.... He studies himself as he has studied others: compassionately, unblinkingly, intelligently, acceptingly and honestly.
Wall Street Journal
Intriguing.... When describing his patients and their problems, he is attentive and precise, straightforward and sympathetic, and he brings these worthy qualities to his descriptions of his younger self.
Washington Post
Remarkably candid and deeply affecting.... Sacks’s empathy and intellectual curiosity, his delight in, as he calls it, "joining particulars with generalities" and, especially, "narratives with neuroscience"—have never been more evident than in his beautifully conceived new book.
Boston Globe
[A] wonderful memoir, which richly demonstrates what an extraordinary life it has been.... A fascinating account—a sort of extended case study, really—of Sacks’s remarkably active, iconoclastic adulthood.
Los Angeles Times
[Sacks is] a wonderful storyteller.... It’s his keen attentiveness as a listener and observer, and his insatiable curiosity, that makes his work so powerful.
San Francisco Chronicle
(Starred review.) Sacks's writing is lucid, earnest, and straightforward, yet always raptly attuned to subtleties of character and feeling in himself and others; the result, closely following his announcement that he has terminal cancer, is a fitting retrospective of his lifelong project of making science a deeply humanistic pursuit.
Publishers Weekly
Sacks, now 81, writes of early school memories, first loves, and his desire to travel. He even utilizes entries from a journal he kept while traveling coast to coast on a motorcycle in the United States.... Frank and candid, Sacks sounds as though he's talking to the reader from across the dinner table. His story is a reminder that we create our own journeys. —Caitlin Kenney, Niagara Falls P.L, NY
Library Journal
The prolific physician's adventure-filled life.... Describing himself as quiet, shy, and solitary, [Sacks] nevertheless has become a man of many passions: science, medicine, motorbikes, and, for years, assorted drugs.... Despite impressionistic chronology, which occasionally causes confusion and repetition, this is an engaging memoir by a consummate storyteller.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also, consider using these LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for On the Move:
1. After reading his autobiography, what do you think of Oliver Sacks? How would you describe him—both as a man and as a physician? How familiar were you with Sacks and his work before reading On the Move? Have you read any other books by Oliver Sacks? if so, how does this one compare?
2. During the London Blitz, Oliver and his brother Michael were sent to a boarding school where he was bullied and beaten. What effect, both good and bad, did this treatment have on his life? In what way does Sacks see those experiences as aiding him in his work with patients?
3. Talk about the various influences in Oliver's young life, including this brother's schizophrenia, that prompted him to enter medicine.
4. Sacks is open about his shyness. Elsewhere, he has likened it to a disease, although most of us would consider it simply a personality trait. What do you think? How did Sacks's shy personality shape his life?
5. Follow-up to Question 4: Given Sack's excessive shyness, how does one explain his years in California, during the 60s—his biker days, drug addiction, and obsessive body building? This immoderate risk-taking would seem at odds with a painfully shy individual. Or would it?
6. How would you describe Sacks's gifts as a physician?
7. What do you think of his mother's reaction to Sack's homosexuality? What part might her anger have played in Sacks's adult life? Although Sacks himself doesn't speculate, do you want to give it a try?
8. What do you make of Sacks's 35-year celibacy?
9. Sacks has been accused of exploiting his patients for gain and fame and for substituting empirical evidence with anecdotal evidence. If medicine is based on a strict adherence to hard data, what room is there for the "soft" patient narratives of Oliver Sacks?
10. Talk about what you found most surprising in this book—or inspiring, humorous, offensive, or anything especially memorable about Oliver Sacks and his life.
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)