Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
From the National Book Award winner, a powerful and timely rumination on how we can draw on historical examples of "survivor power" to understand the upheaval and death caused by the COVID-19 pandemic--and collectively heal In this moving and ultimately hopeful meditation on the psychological aftermath of catastrophe, award-winning psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton calls forth his life's work to show us how to cope with the lasting effects and legacy of the COVID-19 pandemic. The result is a thought-provoking examination of life in the face of COVID-19 from one of the most profound thinkers of our time.
When the people of Hiroshima experienced the unspeakable horror of the atomic bombing, they responded by creating an activist "city of peace." Survivors of the Nazi death camps took the lead in combating mass killing of any kind and converted their experience into art and literature that demonstrated the resilience of the human spirit. Drawing on the remarkably life-affirming responses of survivors of such atrocities, Lifton, "one of the world's foremost thinkers on why we humans do such awful things to each other" (Bill Moyers), shows readers how we can carry on and live meaningful lives even in the face of the tragic and the absurd.
Surviving Our Catastrophes offers compelling examples of "survivor power" and makes clear that we will not move forward by denying the true extent of the pandemic's destruction. Instead, must truly reckon with COVID-19 effects on ourselves and society--and find individual and collective forms of renewal.
Synopsis
Brilliant essays from the renowned Nation columnist--aka the Mad Law Professor--tackling questions of identity, bioethics, race, surveillance, and more Beginning with a jaw-dropping rumination on a centuries-old painting featuring a white man with a black man's leg surgically attached (with the expired black leg-donor in the foreground), contracts law scholar and celebrated journalist Patricia J. Williams uses the lens of the law to take on core questions of identity, ethics, and race.
With her trademark elegant prose and critical legal studies wisdom, Williams brings to bear a keen analytic eye and a lawyer's training to chapters exploring the ways we have legislated the ownership of everything from body parts to gene sequences--and the particular ways in which our laws in these areas isolate non-normative looks, minority cultures, and out-of-the-box thinkers. At the heart of "Wrongful Birth" is a lawsuit in which a white couple who use a sperm bank sue when their child "comes out black"; "Bodies in Law" explores the service of genetic ancestry testing companies to answer the question of who owns DNA. And "Hot Cheeto Girl" examines the way that algorithms give rise to new predictive categories of human assortment, layered with market-inflected cages of assigned destiny.
In the spirit of Dorothy Roberts, Rebecca Skloot, and Anne Fadiman, The Miracle of the Black Leg offers a brilliant meditation on the tricky place where law, science, ethics, and cultural slippage collide.