This month my book club read Still Alice, neuroscientist Lisa Genova’s haunting novel about a Harvard cognitive science professor who discovers, at age 50 and the height of her career, that she is succumbing to early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. My take on the book was that I learned a tremendous amount about the disease but that…

Someone told me recently, “I don’t know how you do it all.” I’ve heard this before and it’s nice that I fooled that person, but here is the truth: I am going a bit barmy with overcommitment. This weekend I sat down to my gnawing to-do list and felt entirely overwhelmed. In part that’s because…

Have you ever preferred to simply write a check to charity rather than get involved in people’s messy, desperate lives? I confess that I have. Thankfully, some people are more courageous and compassionate than I am. One of them is Jane Knuth, a suburban math teacher from Michigan who began volunteering at a Catholic charity…

If you’re unlucky enough to be depressed, our society tells you to pop a pill and put on a happy face — anything to avoid wallowing in sadness. But today’s guest blogger, Eric G. Wilson, suggests in his new memoir The Mercy of Eternity: A Memoir of Depression and Grace (Northwestern University Press, 2010) that…

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