Helen Epstein

Music Feature: “Shared Spaces” — Breaking the Silence

May 9, 2023
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So much of David Sakura’s narrative in Shared Spaces reminded me of the stories of other traumatized groups.

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Book Review: “Run Towards the Danger” — Grappling With Memories of Trauma

January 18, 2023
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Sarah Polley’s essay on sexual assault by itself is worth the price of the book, essential reading for anyone interested in the physical and psychological after-effects of violence against women.

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Book Review: “Dinners With Ruth” — Always Nice But Rarely Incisive

September 30, 2022
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Like a Hallmark movie, Dinners with Ruth is an engaging and entertaining story, with episodes of great pathos. It is an upbeat, easy-to-read gift book, which is undoubtedly what its publisher intended.

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Book Excerpt: Helen Epstein’s “Getting Through It: My Year of Cancer During Covid”

May 11, 2022
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Just after Covid arrived in North America, journalist Helen Epstein was diagnosed with endometrial cancer — one of a predicted 66,570 new cases of cancer of the uterine body in the United States in 2021.

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Book Review: “In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss” — A Brave and Heartrending Story

March 15, 2022
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This is a profoundly disturbing memoir about a subject that hits close to home for many readers.

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Book Review: “All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days” — Innovative History of a Female Anti-Nazi Resistance Leader

January 25, 2022
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What holds this wildly ambitious book together and drives the narrative is Rebecca Donner’s unwavering, partisan voice.

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Book Review: Sarah Ruhl’s “Smile: The Story of a Face”

October 16, 2021
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This is the voice of a wife, mother, sister, daughter, friend, patient, and author who wrote a memoir on her own terms. I can’t wait for Sarah Ruhl’s next play.

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Book Review: “Mike Nichols: A Life” — Portrait of a Protean Artist

March 4, 2021
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This nearly 600-page text is a closely detailed, comprehensive portrait by a biographer riveted, as many of us are, by his charismatic subject.

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Book Review: “From Left to Right” — The Story of Holocaust Historian Lucy S. Dawidowicz

December 7, 2020
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This biography of Lucy S. Dawidowicz performs the invaluable function of gathering relevant documents and drafting a narrative that rescues a fascinating historian from oblivion. But it does not add much to the history of the New York intellectuals.

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Book Review: “Fallout” — Memorably Detailing the Defeat of the Hiroshima Cover-Up

September 8, 2020
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I heartily recommend M.M. Blume’s excellent Fallout, which ably synthesizes large amounts of archival, historical, and biographical material from three continents.

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