Afflicting nearly half of all persons over the age of 85,Alzheimer’s disease kills nearly 100,000 Americas a year as itinsidiously robs them of their memory and wreaks havoc on the livesof their loved ones. It was once minimized and misunderstood asforgetfulness in the elderly, but Alzheimer’s is now at theforefront of many medical and scientific agendas, for as theworld’s population ages, the disease will kill millions more andtouch the lives of virtually everyone.
The Forgetting is a scrupulously researched, multilayeredanalysis of Alzheimer’s and its social, medical, and spiritualimplications. David Shenk presents us with much more than adetailed explanation of its causes and effects and the search for acure. He movingly captures the disease’s impact on its victims andtheir families, and he looks back through history, explaining howAlzheimer’s most likely afflicted such figures as Jonathan Swift,Ralph Waldo Emerson,and William de Kooning. The result is asearing, powerfully engaging account of Alzheimer’s disease,offering a grim but sympathetic and ultimately encouragingportrait.
David Shenk is the author of three previous books, includingData Smog, which The New York Times hailed asan “indispensable guide to the big picture of technology’s culturalimpact.” A former fellow at the Freedom Forum Media Studies Centerat Columbia University, he has written for Harper’s, Wired,Salon, The New Republic, The Washington Post, and The NewYorker, and is an occasional commentator for NPR’s AllThings Considered. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with hiswife and daughter.
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