Eruption: The Untold Story of Mount St. Helens
Steve Olson, 2016
W.W. Norton & Co.
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780393242799
Summary
Survival narrative meets scientific, natural, and social history in the riveting story of a volcanic disaster.
For months in early 1980, scientists, journalists, sightseers, and nearby residents listened anxiously to rumblings in Mount St. Helens, part of the chain of western volcanoes fueled by the 700-mile-long Cascadia fault.
Still, no one was prepared when an immense eruption took the top off of the mountain and laid waste to hundreds of square miles of verdant forests in southwestern Washington State.
The eruption was one of the largest in human history, deposited ash in eleven U.S. states and five Canadian provinces, and caused more than one billion dollars in damage. It killed fifty-seven people, some as far as thirteen miles away from the volcano’s summit.
Shedding new light on the cataclysm, author Steve Olson interweaves the history and science behind this event with page-turning accounts of what happened to those who lived and those who died.
Powerful economic and historical forces influenced the fates of those around the volcano that sunny Sunday morning, including the construction of the nation’s railroads, the harvest of a continent’s vast forests, and the protection of America’s treasured public lands. The eruption of Mount St. Helens revealed how the past is constantly present in the lives of us all.
At the same time, it transformed volcanic science, the study of environmental resilience, and, ultimately, our perceptions of what it will take to survive on an increasingly dangerous planet.
Rich with vivid personal stories of lumber tycoons, loggers, volcanologists, and conservationists, Eruption delivers a spellbinding narrative built from the testimonies of those closest to the disaster, and an epic tale of our fraught relationship with the natural world. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1956-57
• Where—San Diego, California, USA
• Raised—eastern Washington State
• Education—B.A., Yale University
• Awards—Science-in-Society Award (National Association of Science Writers)
• Currently—lives in Seattle, Washington, USA
Steve Olson is a US writer who specializes in science, mathematics, and public policy. He is the author of a number of nonfiction trade books and has written for numerous magazines, including the Atlantic Monthly, Smithsonian, Science, Scientific American, Wired, Yale Alumni Magazine, Washingtonian, Slate, and Paste. His articles have been reprinted in Best American Science and Nature Writing 2003 and 2007.
Books
2002 - Mapping Human History: Genes, Race, and Our Common Origins
2004 - Count Down: Six Kids Vie for Glory at the World’s Toughest Math Competition
2010 - Anarchy Evolution: Faith, Science, and Bad Religion... (with Greg Graffin)
2016 - Eruption: The Untold Story of Mount St. Helens
Mapping Human History was a finalist for the National Book Awards and received the Science-in-Society Award from the National Association of Science Writers. Count Down was named a best science book of 2004 by Discover magazine.
Research on Ancestry
Mapping Human History contained a conjecture about human ancestry that was disputed when the book was published. The book claimed that the most recent common ancestor of everyone living on the Earth today must have lived just 2,000 to 3,000 years ago, a number that geneticists thought much too small.
However, a more formal version of the conjecture was proven by the author, working with coauthors Douglas Rohde and Joseph Chang, in a September 30, 2004, article in Nature. Using a model of the world’s landmasses and populations with moderate levels of migration, the authors calculated that the most recent common ancestor could have lived as recently as AD 55.
These results lead to some highly counterintuitive conclusions. In the generations before that of the most recent common ancestor, more and more people are common ancestors of everyone living on Earth today. At a time 2,000 to 3,000 years before the appearance of the most recent common ancestor, everyone in the world is either an ancestor of everyone living today or an ancestor of no one living today. Thus, everyone living today has exactly the same set of ancestors who lived 5,000 to 6,000 years ago, even though those ancestors are represented in very different proportions on a person’s family tree.
Da Vinci Code
In an article published in the Los Angeles Times on the day the movie The Da Vinci Code was released, Olson pointed to several other consequences of the analysis in the Nature paper. If Jesus has any descendants living in the world today, then almost everyone in the world is descended from Jesus. Furthermore, if a person living today has four or five grandchildren, so that his or her genealogical lineage is unlikely to go extinct within a few generations, that person is virtually guaranteed to be an ancestor of all humans in the Universe who will be living 2,000 to 3,000 years from now.
Personal
Olson is married to Lynn Olson, a long-time education journalist who is currently a senior program officer with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. They have two children, Sarah and Eric. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 3/17/2016.)
Book Reviews
Olson brings cinematic structure to descriptions of the events surrounding the eruption of Mount St. Helens on May 18, 1980, finding in them a lesson for those tasked with mitigating the effects of future disasters.... ]A] detailed and human-centered look at a terrible disaster.
Publishers Weekly
A thoroughly sourced, compelling, and significant read.
Booklist
(Starred review.) [A]n engrossing explanation of volcanology during the 1980s and how the eruption of Mount St. Helens altered the prevailing science. He also...describes the political wrangling surrounding the status of the devastated area. A riveting trek combining enthralling nature writing with engaging social history.
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 Eruption...then take off on your own:
1. Why does Steve Olson insist that those who died when Mt. St. Helens exploded were not at fault? How did those people end up being left in harm's way? Was any one person to blame? Was it a systemic failure? Or was it simply a fateful chain of events?
2, Talk about the system of "red zones" and "blue Zones." How did they work (or not work)?
3. Why was the growing bulge on the side of Mount St. Helen's not given the significance it deserved? How much did scientists understand and how much was conveyed to the public?
4. How did the long history of the area—the railroad, the logging industry, land grants and public set asides—contribute to the confusion before and devastation during the eruption.
5. Discuss the explosion itself. What suprised you most?
6. How has the eruption of Mount St. Helens altered the scientific understanding of volcanoes, as well as the resilience of nature?
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher. In the meantime, feel free to use these, online or off, with attribution.)
The Last Stone: A Masterpiece of Criminal Investigation
Mark Bowden, 2019
Grove/Atlantic
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780802147301
Summary
On March 29, 1975, sisters Katherine and Sheila Lyons, age 10 and 12, vanished from a shopping mall in suburban Washington, D.C. As shock spread, then grief, a massive police effort found nothing.
The investigation was shelved, and mystery endured.
Then, in 2013, a cold case squad detective found something he and a generation of detectives had missed. It pointed them toward a man named Lloyd Welch, then serving time for child molestation in Delaware.
As a cub reporter for a Baltimore newspaper, Mark Bowden covered the frantic first weeks of the story. In The Last Stone, he returns to write its ending.
Over months of intense questioning and extensive investigation of Welch’s sprawling, sinister Appalachian clan, five skilled detectives learned to sift truth from determined lies.
How do you get a compulsive liar with every reason in the world to lie to tell the truth? The Last Stone recounts a masterpiece of criminal interrogation, and delivers a chilling and unprecedented look inside a disturbing criminal mind. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 17, 1951
• Where—St. Louis, Missouri, USA
• Education—Loyola University of Maryland
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania
Mark Robert Bowden is an American journalist and writer. He is best known for his book Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War (1999) about the 1993 U.S. military raid in Mogadishu, Somalia. It was adapted as a motion picture of the same name and received two Academy Awards.
Early life
Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Bowden attended Loyola University Maryland. At college he was inspired to embark on a career in journalism by reading Tom Wolfe's book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.
Career
From 1979 to 2003, Bowden was a staff writer for The Philadelphia Inquirer. In that role he researched and wrote Black Hawk Down (1999) and Killing Pablo (2001), both of which appeared as lengthy serials in the newspaper before being published as books. Two previous books, Doctor Dealer (1987) and Bringing the Heat (1994), were also based on reporting he did for the Inquirer.
All told, over the years, Bowden has published more than a dozen books (see below).
Bowden is a national correspondent for The Atlantic and has contributed to Vanity Fair, Esquire, The New Yorker, Men's Journal, The Atlantic, Sports Illustrated, and Rolling Stone.
He has taught journalism and creative writing at his alma mater, Loyola University Maryland, and was also a Distinguished Writer in Residence at the University of Delaware, from 2013–2017.
He lives in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania.
Books
1987 – Doctor Dealer: The Rise and Fall of an All-American Boy and His Multimillion-Dollar Cocaine Empire
1994 – Bringing the Heat
1999 – Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War
2001 – Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World's Greatest Outlaw
2002 – Our Finest Day: D-Day, June 6, 1944
2002 – Finders Keepers: The Story of a Man Who Found $1 Million
2006 – Road Work: Among Tyrants, Heroes, Rogues, and Beasts
2006 – Guests of the Ayatollah: The First Battle in America's War with Militant Islam
2008 – The Best Game Ever: Giants vs. Colts, 1958, and the Birth of the Modern NFL
2011 – Worm: The First Digital World War
2012 – The Finish: The Killing of Osama bin Laden
2016 – The Three Battles of Wanat and Other True Stories
2017 – Hue 1968
2019 – The Last Stone: A Masterpiece of Criminal Interrogation
Awards
2001 - Overseas Press Club's Cornelius Ryan Award–Best Book, for Killing Pablo
1997 - Overseas Press Club's Hal Boyle Award–Best Reporting from Abroad, on Battle of Mogadishu
1987 - Sunday Magazine Editors Association–Feature Writing Award
1980 - American Association for the Advancement of Science–Science Writing Award
(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 4/15/2019.)
Book Reviews
Bowden focuses on 21 months of questioning by a revolving cast of detectives, telling a stirring, suspenseful, thoughtful story that, miraculously, neither oversimplifies the details nor gets lost in the thicket of a four-decade case file. This is a cat-and-mouse tale, told beautifully. But like all great true crime, The Last Stone finds its power not by leaning into cliche but by resisting it—pushing for something more realistic, more evocative of a deeper truth. In this case, Bowden shows how even the most exquisitely pulled-off interrogations are a messy business, in which exhaustive strategizing is followed by game-time gut decisions and endless second-guessing and soul-searching.
Robert Kolker - New York Times Book Review
The Last Stone is a rigorous documenting of the 40-year journey taken by Montgomery County detectives and the cold-case team that interrogated Lloyd Welch. It's a riveting, serpentine story about the dogged pursuit of the truth, regardless of the outcome or the cost. And it's a useful reminder that in an age of science, forensics, and video and data surveillance, the ability of one human being to coax the truth from another remains the cornerstone of a successful investigation.
NPR
With its blistering descriptions of an American special-forces operation gone wrong, Mark Bowden’s 1999 nonfiction book Black Hawk Down made for excellent action-movie fare. The story told in his latest work, the deeply unsettling The Last Stone, unfolds more slowly but is no less potent. Bowden displays his tenacity as a reporter in his meticulous documentation of the case.
Alejandro de la Garza - Time
(Starred review) [A] narrative nonfiction masterpiece…. Bowden makes extensive use of taped recordings… to bring the reader inside the interrogation room as the detectives inch closer to the truth. This is an intelligent page-turner.
Publishers Weekly
As a rookie reporter in Maryland, Black Hawk Down author Bowden followed the 1975 disappearance of two preteen sisters. The case died despite a tip from 18-year-old Lloyd Welch. Then in 2013, a detective checking the files noticed that another girl had reported being followed that week by a man who in the police artist's sketch she'd been shown looked like Welch.
Library Journal
Riveting.… Bowden expertly maintains suspense as long as possible…. A keen synthesis of an intricate, decadeslong investigation, a stomach-churning unsolved crime, and a solid grasp of time, place, and character results in what is sure to be another bestseller for Bowden.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for THE LAST STONE … then take off on your own:
1. Start off your discussion, say, by tracing the path that prompted detectives to reopen the Lyon sisters' case nearly 40 years after their disappearance.
2. In 1975 when Lloyd Welch failed the lie detector test, why did the police dismiss him? Was their dismissal understandable at the time (because Welch was such a good liar)? Or was it careless police work?
3. How would you describe Lloyd Welch?
4. During the interrogations, Welch revealed information about his family. How would you describe the family and its impact on Welch—and, more important, how were they involved in the case?
5. How would you describe the detectives' interrogation strategy? Consider their use of deceit and trickery, good-cop-bad-cop role playing, last minute second guessing, and on-the-spot gut decisions. Talk about Dave Davis, for instance, who uses empathy as a tactic, as does Katie Leggett.
6. Follow-up to Question 5: Bowden writes of the interrogation process: "you descend, by necessity, a moral ladder onto slippery ground." Talk about the emotional toll the questioning took on the detectives: their self-doubt, soul-searching, and fears of being morally compromised.
7. According to Bowden, the detectives worried that Welch might be playing to their own biases. Were they "zeroing in on the truth, or was Lloyd just desperately inventing?" How did Welch evade the questioning? How did he toy with the detectives? Do you think he had a strategy? Or was he simply a gifted liar, playing it "by the seat of his pants"? Why, in the first place, does Welch even want to talk with the detectives? Why does he give them any information at all?
8. What do you think about the book's ending?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
I Will Always Write Back: How One Letter Changed Two Lives
Caitlin Alifirenka, Martin Ganda, 2015
Little, Brown for Young Readers
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316241335
Summary
The bestselling true story of an all-American girl and a boy from Zimbabwe and the letter that changed both of their lives forever.
It started as an assignment. Everyone in Caitlin's class wrote to an unknown student somewhere in a distant place.
Martin was lucky to even receive a pen-pal letter. There were only ten letters, and fifty kids in his class. But he was the top student, so he got the first one.
That letter was the beginning of a correspondence that spanned six years and changed two lives.
In this compelling dual memoir, Caitlin and Martin recount how they became best friends—and better people—through their long-distance exchange. Their story will inspire you to look beyond your own life and wonder about the world at large and your place in it. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Caitlin Alifirenka and Martin Ganda met as pen pals in 1997 and are still best friends today. Caitlin, an ER nurse, lives outside Philadelphia with her husband and young daughters. Martin currently lives in New York. He has dual degrees in mathematics and economics from Villanova University and an MBA in finance from Duke University. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
The remarkable tenacity of these two souls pulled like magnets across the world by their opposite polarities—one committed to helping, the other to surviving—is deeply affecting.… It's quite a little miracle of unexpected genuineness.
New York Times Book Review
(Starred review.) Sensitively and candidly demonstrating how small actions can result in enormous change, this memoir of two families' transformation through the commitment and affection of long-distance friends will humble and inspire.
Publishers Weekly
A well-written, accessible story that will open Western adolescents' eyes to life in developing countries.… [A] strong and inspiring story...and an eye-opening look at life in another culture (Gr 6 & up). —Michelle Anderson, Tauranga City Libraries, New Zealand
School Library Journal
A pen-pal correspondence between an American girl and a Zimbabwean boy blossoms into a lifelong friendship.…. A feel-good, message-driven book that may appeal to adults more than teens (with photographs–Age 12 & up).
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for I'LL ALWAYS WRITE BACK … then take off on your own:
1. Talk about the wide gap between Martin's hardscrabble life in Zimbabwe and Caitlin's privileged one in the U.S. How did two 12-year-olds from such vastly different backgrounds and expriences bridge the gap between them?
2. What do each of the two pen pals reveal about themselves as they write to one another? What dreams do each have, especially Martin?
3. How does her growing awareness of Martin's poverty affect her? In what way does the correspondence change Caitlin with regard to her American classmates?
4. What do you make of Caitlin sending a portion of her babysitting money to Martin? Was her act naive, condescending, or a genuinely inspired act of kindness?
5. What moved you most about his book?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body
Roxane Gay, 2017
HarperCollins
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062747891
Summary
A searingly honest memoir of food, weight, self-image, and learning how to feed your hunger while taking care of yourself.
"I ate and ate and ate in the hopes that if I made myself big, my body would be safe. I buried the girl I was because she ran into all kinds of trouble. I tried to erase every memory of her, but she is still there, somewhere.… I was trapped in my body, one that I barely recognized or understood, but at least I was safe."
New York Times bestselling author Roxane Gay has written with intimacy and sensitivity about food and bodies, using her own emotional and psychological struggles as a means of exploring our shared anxieties over pleasure, consumption, appearance, and health.
As a woman who describes her own body as “wildly undisciplined,” Roxane understands the tension between desire and denial, between self-comfort and self-care.
In Hunger, she casts an insightful and critical eye on her childhood, teens, and twenties—including the devastating act of violence that acted as a turning point in her young life—and brings readers into the present and the realities, pains, and joys of her daily life.
With the bracing candor, vulnerability, and authority that have made her one of the most admired voices of her generation, Roxane explores what it means to be overweight in a time when the bigger you are, the less you are seen. Hunger is a deeply personal memoir from one of our finest writers, and tells a story that hasn’t yet been told but needs to be. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—October 26, 1974
• Where—Omaha, Nebraska, USA
• Education—Ph.D., Michigan Technicalogical University
• Currently—lives in Layfayette, Indiana, and Los Angeles, California
Roxane Gay is an American feminist writer, professor, editor and commentator. She is an associate professor of English at Purdue University, contributing opinion writer at the New York Times, founder of Tiny Hardcore Press, essays editor for The Rumpus, and co-editor of PANK, a nonprofit literary arts collective.
Early life and education
Gay was born in Omaha, Nebraska, to a family of Haitian descent. She attended high school at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire.
Gay holds a doctoral degree in rhetoric and technical communication from Michigan Technological University. The title of her dissertation was, "Subverting the subject position: toward a new discourse about students as writers and engineering students as technical communicators."
Career
After completing her Ph.D., Gay began her academic teaching career in Fall 2010 at Eastern Illinois University, where she was assistant professor of English. While at EIU, in addition to her teaching duties she was a contributing editor for Bluestem magazine, and she also founded Tiny Hardcore Press. Gay worked at Eastern Illinois University until the end of the 2013-2014 academic year, taking a job in August 2014 at Purdue University as associate professor of creative writing.
Much of Gay's written work deals with the analysis and deconstruction of feminist and racial issues through the lens of her personal experiences with race, gender identity, and sexuality. She is the author of the short story collection Ayiti (2011), the novel An Untamed State (2014), the essay collection Bad Feminist (2014), the short story collection Difficult Women (2017), and Hunger (2017).
She also edited the book Girl Crush: Women's Erotic Fantasies. In addition to her regular contributions to Salon and the now defunct HTMLGiant, her writing has appeared in Best American Mystery Stories 2014, Best American Short Stories 2012, Best Sex Writing 2012, A Public Space, McSweeney’s, Tin House, Oxford American, American Short Fiction, West Branch, Virginia Quarterly Review, NOON, Bookforum, Time, Los Angeles Times, The Nation and New York Times Book Review.
In July 2016, Gay and poet Yona Harvey were announced as writers for Marvel Comics' World of Wakanda, a spin-off from the company's Black Panther title, making her the first black woman to be a lead writer for Marvel.
Reception
Gay's publication of the novel An Untamed State and essay collection Bad Feminist in the summer of 2014 led Time Magazine to declare, "Let this be the year of Roxane Gay." The magazine noted of her inclusive style: "Gay’s writing is simple and direct, but never cold or sterile. She directly confronts complex issues of identity and privilege, but it’s always accessible and insightful."
In the United Kingdom's The Guardian, critic Kira Cochrane offered a similar assessment:
While online discourse is often characterised by extreme, polarised opinions, her writing is distinct for being subtle and discursive, with an ability to see around corners, to recognise other points of view while carefully advancing her own. In print, on Twitter and in person, Gay has the voice of the friend you call first for advice, calm and sane as well as funny, someone who has seen a lot and takes no prisoners.
A group of feminist scholars and activists analyzed Gay's Bad Feminist for "Short Takes: Provocations on Public Feminism," an initiative of the feminist journal Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society.
Personal
Gay began writing essays as a teenager; her work has been greatly influenced by a sexual assault she experienced at age 12. She is also a competitive Scrabble player in the U.S. Gay is bisexual. (From Wkipedia. Retrieved 2/2/2017 .)
Book Reviews
Gay turns to memoir in this powerful reflection on her childhood traumas.… Timely and resonant, you can be sure that Hunger will touch a nerve, as so much of Roxane Gay’s writing does.
Newsday
Wrenching, deeply moving…a memoir that’s so brave, so raw, it feels as if [Gay]’s entrusting you with her soul.
Seattle Times
(Starred review.) This raw and graceful memoir digs deeply into what it means to be comfortable in one’s body. Gay denies that hers is a story of “triumph,” but readers will be hard pressed to find a better word.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Displays bravery, resilience, and naked honesty from the first to last page.… Stunning…essential reading.
Library Journal
(Starred review.) A heart-rending debut memoir from the outspoken feminist and essayist.… An intense, unsparingly honest portrait of childhood crisis and its enduring aftermath.
Booklist
(Starred review.) A heart-rending debut memoir from the outspoken feminist and essayist.… An intense, unsparingly honest portrait of childhood crisis and its enduring aftermath.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for Hunger…then take off on your own:
1. Probably the best place to begin a discussion for Roxane Gay's Hunger is to talk about your own battle with body image: weight gains and losses, sense of shame, and whatever other emotional rollercoasters you've found yourself on.
2. Next up: In what ways does this book resonate with you? Think back to your early life, your upbringing, and how those years might have set you on the path you're on today.
3. Gay was the victim of rape when she was younger. How does that tramua play into her overeating?
4. Consider the views of other people. As Gay writes, "People see bodies like mine and make their assumptions. They think they know the why of my body. They do not."
What assumptions do you make of overweight peoople? What assumptions do you think people make (or might make) of you?
5. Talk about the paradox Gay points to: wanting acceptance for her body shape…yet wanting to change it. Can that tension ever be resolved — not just for overweight people but for anyone who doesn't fit the image of physical perfection our society worships?
6. Speaking of society: in what way does our cultural obsession with body shape contribute to Gay's (or, really, almost anyone's) sense of shame regarding the body?
7. Gay writes: "I do not know why I turned to food. Or I do" and "I do not have an answer to that question, or I do." What does Gay know…or not know about why she eats? What about you? Do you have answers for your own body weight?
8. Why does Gay denounce shows like The Biggest Loser and Extreme Makeover: Weight Loss Edition?
9. Care to tackle this passage from the book?
When you’re overweight, your body becomes a matter of public record in many respects. Your body is constantly and prominently on display.… Fat, much like skin color, is something you cannot hide, no matter how dark the clothing you wear, or how diligently you avoid horizontal stripes.… People are quick to offer statistics and information about the dangers of obesity, as if you are not only fat but incredibly stupid, unaware, and delusional about your body and a world that is vigorously inhospitable to that body.… You are your body, nothing more, and your body should damn well become less.
10. How familiar are you with the latest science regarding body weight, particularly the part that genetics and "hunger hormones" (Ghrelin and Leptin) play? If some bodies are hard-wired to gain weight …well, then what?
11. If Roxane Gay were sitting with you right now, what you you say to her?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, HER Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed
Lori Gottlieb, 2019
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
432 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781328662057
Summary
From a New York Times best-selling author, psychotherapist, and national advice columnist, a hilarious, thought-provoking, and surprising new book that takes us behind the scenes of a therapist’s world—where her patients are looking for answers (and so is she).
One day, Lori Gottlieb is a therapist who helps patients in her Los Angeles practice. The next, a crisis causes her world to come crashing down.
Enter Wendell, the quirky but seasoned therapist in whose office she suddenly lands.
With his balding head, cardigan, and khakis, he seems to have come straight from Therapist Central Casting. Yet he will turn out to be anything but.
As Gottlieb explores the inner chambers of her patients’ lives—a self-absorbed Hollywood producer, a young newlywed diagnosed with a terminal illness, a senior citizen threatening to end her life on her birthday if nothing gets better, and a twenty-something who can’t stop hooking up with the wrong guys—she finds that the questions they are struggling with are the very ones she is now bringing to Wendell.
With startling wisdom and humor, Gottlieb invites us into her world as both clinician and patient, examining the truths and fictions we tell ourselves and others as we teeter on the tightrope between love and desire, meaning and mortality, guilt and redemption, terror and courage, hope and change.
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone is revolutionary in its candor, offering a deeply personal yet universal tour of our hearts and minds and providing the rarest of gifts: a boldly revealing portrait of what it means to be human, and a disarmingly funny and illuminating account of our own mysterious lives and our power to transform them. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—December 20, 1966
• Where—Los Angeles, California, USA
• Education—Yale; Stanford University; Pepperdine University
• Currently—lives in Los Angeles, California
Lori Gottlieb is an American writer and psychotherapist, who is best known for her weekly "Dear Therapist" advice column in The Atlantic. She was born in Los Angeles, California, and studied language and culture at both Yale and Stanford University.
While in her 20s, Gottlieb worked as a film and TV executive until she decided to return to Stanford to study medicine. It was during medical school that she published her first book, an experience that inspired her to pursue a career in writing. Since then, Gottlieb has published New York Times bestsellers, which have been translated into 20 languages.
Gottlieb went on to become a commentator for National Public Radio and a contributing editor for The Atlantic. She has written for many publications, including The New York Times, Time, Slate, People, Elle, Glamour, Cosmopolitan, and O, The Oprah Magazine. She frequently appears as an expert on mental health topics on television and radio such as The Today Show, Good Morning America, The CBS Early Show, CNN, the BBC, and NPR.
After her child was born, Gottlieb went back to school again, this time to Pepperdine University, where she earned a graduate degree in clinical psychology. As she writes in her website:
As both therapist and writer, I’m interested in going inside ourselves in order to get outside of ourselves—to experience the ways in which connection reveals our humanity and, ultimately, transforms us.
Books
2000 - Stick Figure: A Diary of My Former Self
2010 - Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough
2019 - Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed
(Author bio adapted from publisher and author website.)
Book Reviews
Gottlieb’s book is perhaps the first I’ve read that explains the therapeutic process in no-nonsense terms while simultaneously giving hope to therapy skeptics like me who think real change through talk is elusive.
Judith Newman - New York Times
Who could resist watching a therapist grapple with the same questions her patients have been asking her for years? Gottlieb, who writes the Atlantic’s "Dear Therapist" column, brings searing honesty to her search for answers.
Washington Post
An addictive book that's part Oliver Sacks and part Nora Ephron. Prepare to be riveted.
People
The Atlantic's "Dear Therapist" columnist offers a startlingly revealing tour of the therapist’s life, examining her relationships with her patients, her own therapist, and various figures in her personal life.
Entertainment Weekly
A psychotherapist and advice columnist at The Atlantic shows us what it’s like to be on both sides of the couch with doses of heartwarming humor and invaluable, tell-it-like-it-is wisdom.
Oprah Magazine
A no-holds-barred look at how therapy works.
Parade
[S]parkling.… Gottlieb portrays her patients… with compassion, humor, and grace. For someone considering but hesitant to enter therapy, Gottlieb’s thoughtful and compassionate work will calm anxieties about the process.
Publishers Weekly
Written with grace, humor, wisdom, and compassion, this [is a] heartwarming journey of self-discovery.
Library Journal
The coup de grace is Gottlieb’s vulnerability with her own therapist. Some readers will know Gottlieb from her many TV appearances or her "Dear Therapist" column, but even for the uninitiated-to-Gottlieb, it won’t take long to settle in with this compelling read.
Booklist
(Starred review) [V]ivacious.… Throughout, the author puts a very human face on the delicate yet intensive process of psychotherapy while baring her own demons. Saturated with self-awareness and compassion, this is an irresistibly addictive tour of the human condition.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. In her author’s note, Gottlieb explains why she uses the term "patients" rather than "clients" in the book, though neither quite satisfies her. What does each term suggest about the person described and the therapeutic relationship?
2. Revisit the four epigraphs that introduce each part of the book, and consider how they resonate with the stories of the patients we follow: John, Julie, Charlotte, Rita, and Lori herself. Which patient’s arc resonates most for you?
3. What does Gottlieb learn from each of her patients? In what ways does she identify with them? In what ways do you?
4. If you have a therapist, what do you think you want from him/her? Have you ever shared Lori’s experience, and that of her patients, of wanting to specific advice, or wondering what the therapist is thinking about you?
5. Is it reassuring or uncomfortable to see inside a therapist’s head? What was it like peering inside Gottlieb’s consultation group, when she and her colleagues are discussing a patient that the group suggests she "break up with"?
6. When Lori asks Wendell whether he likes her, he says that he does but not for the reasons she’s asking to be liked: he likes her neshama (Hebrew for "spirit" or "soul"). When do you see glimpses of someone’s soul? Given how much all of us share deep down in our psyches, how much do you think our souls differ? Could it be Lori’s very humanity—the parts of her that he himself relates to—that Wendell feels affection for?
7. In a funny moment in the book, Lori explains that while she’s surrounded by therapists—in her office, in her consultation group, in her friendships—she can’t find a therapist for herself because she needs the space of the therapy room to be "separate and distinct." How does Wendell’s reaction to Lori’s crisis differ from that of her close friends, including Jen, who’s also a therapist? How might our friends’ love for us make their way of soothing us less helpful in the long run?
8. Gottlieb writes: "It’s Wendell’s job to help me edit my story"(115). How was her story about herself holding her back and how does she revise it by the end of the book? How do her patients revise their stories about themselves? Have you ever had to rewrite your own self-narrative in order to move forward?
9. Compare Lori’s and Wendell’s styles as therapists. Would you prefer one to the other? What does Lori learn from Wendell? How does her interaction with him change her own practice?
10. The ultimate concerns the psychiatrist Irvin Yalom identifies—death, isolation, freedom, and meaninglessness—are theological and philosophical concerns as well. Would you turn to therapy, religion, or another wisdom source to explore them? How might the guidance you receive from each source differ?
11. Gottlieb notes that contemporary culture is rendering the ingredients for emotional health more elusive, such as real connection with others, time and patience for processing our experiences, and enough silence to hear ourselves. Have you noticed a change in your own emotional health (or that of your loved ones) as our lives become increasingly digitalized? What do you do to offset the damaging effects of an online age?
12. Lori Google-stalks Boyfriend and also Wendell—what problems does this cause in each case? Think about the Google-stalking you’ve done. How do you feel after you’ve learned something about someone in this way? Has it helped or hurt your relationships? What does this use of the internet reveal about us?
13. In Chapter 39, "How Humans Change," Gottlieb outlines one model of behavioral change and applies its stages to Charlotte’s case. Think about changes you’ve made in your own life. What helped you to make them? Do you recognize these stages?
14. After reading about Julie’s preparations for death, did you look up from the book and see the world any differently? Do you have a bucket list? Have you ever tried writing your own obituary? What have you learned from these exercises?
15. By the end of the book, do you feel you’ve internalized Gottlieb’s voice? Pick one of your current dilemmas and imagine what she might say about it. Are you conscious of carrying inside you the voices of people you’ve been close to? Has your conversation with those voices evolved over time?
16. What do you learn from this book that you can apply to your relationship with yourself? With others? Gottlieb introduces several psychological terms, such as projective identification (204) and displacement (367)—do you find it useful to have names and definitions for behaviors you recognize in yourself or others? If you were to put something you learned from this book into practice, what would that look like?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
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