“Through the Shadowlands: A Science Writer’s Odyssey into an Illness Science Doesn’t Understand” by Julie Rehmeyer

I have a hard time reviewing this book objectively, since so much of it feels almost creepily like I’m reading about myself. The descriptions of the crawling horror of the illness that takes over Rehmeyer’s life are so painfully familiar that I had a hard time restraining myself from shouting out, “Ha! It’s not just […]

“Warrior Patient” by Temple Williams

“Warrior Patient Rule No. 1: Choose to live. Take personal responsibility for getting better. It is not your doctor’s job. It is not God’s job. It is your job. God and your doctors might help. And they might not.” This is the first rule Temple Williams gives in his often humorous, and even more often […]

“The Opposite of Fate” by Amy Tan

Why is Amy Tan’s writing so great? Tan is one of my very favorite contemporary writers, and so this was a question I kept posing to myself as I read this collection of autobiographical essays on topics varying from Tan’s childhood to the time she was almost swept away in a flash flood while vacationing […]

“The Sky Wept Fire” by Mikail Eldin

What do you do when you’re an idealistic young journalist whose hometown suddenly turns into a war zone? Obviously, you grab your camera and your notepad and you start gathering stories. Only it turns out that a brutal civil war in your own country is more than just another story. There have been many appalling […]

“Zinky Boys” by Svetlana Alexievich

In “Zinky Boys,” Alexievich weaves together interviews with those who have been affected by the Soviet war in Afghanistan–soldiers, yes, but also doctors and nurses, civilian contractors, and, most tragically of all, the mothers and widows left behind–to create a document that is heartbreaking, harrowing, and utterly damning. Those who ended up in Afghanistan did […]

E. P. Clark: Author, Book Reviewer, and All-Around Literary Handiwoman

Memoir