  | Book Details Title: Between Heaven and Hell: The Story of My Stroke |
Book DescriptionReview “A deeply affecting examination of mortality, ambition and the priorities of a man who dodged death to live better days.” —Dave Eggers, bestselling author of The Circle, Zeitoun, and A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius“Touching, informative, sometimes funny, sometimes harrowing, I couldn’t put it down.” —Anne Lamott, New York Times bestselling author“Talbot demonstrates the conviction of someone who has been there and back and now knows what is really at stake.. Inspiration for others facing similar challenges.” —Kirkus Reviews“What makes this book so special is the complete absence of resentment and self-pity. This is a story beyond catharsis—it’s a rebirth, a celebration, a hallucinatory and joyous examination of the aftermath of illness with love and gratitude infused on every page.” —Susannah Cahalan, author of Brain on Fire and The Great Pretender“Between Heaven and Hell should be an indispensable help for all those who survive strokes and those who care for survivors in the aftermath.” –Writers & Readers“A lighthearted look at myriad effects that a serious medical trauma can have on a person’s life.. Given the fatal and often mentally debilitating nature of strokes, it makes sense that such memoirs are so few; Talbot’s accomplishment is rare and that much more impressive.” –San Francisco Examiner“A gripping narrative. Between Heaven and Hell is a very honest and personal tale of Talbot’s struggles and healing-both physical and emotional-in the year following his stroke.” –Alta magazine Read more About the Author David Talbot is the esteemed author of four popular history books, and the founder and original editor in chief of one of the first entirely digital publications, Salon magazine. A former senior editor of Mother Jones magazine, Talbot is a journalist and columnist who has written for the New Yorker, Time, Rolling Stone, The Guardian, the San Francisco Chronicle and other publications. His book Season of the Witch was a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller for four years and was the 2015 San Francisco One City One Book pick. Read more Customers Review: (I’ve written a long review of this book, which I hope will appear soon either on a literary site or my own blog. But until then, here’s a snapshot of my thoughts.)David Talbot—journalist, popular historian, longtime San Francisco resident, and author of Season of the Witch—has written a surprisingly vulnerable, intimate, often funny and engaging memoir which chronicles the November 2017 stroke that has left him physically devastated yet, at times, oddly peaceful and carefree. As he writes at the end of the book with a nod to the cover art by William Blake, the ordeal left him “ravaged and reborn, all at once.”Talbot has always had a gift for capturing the zeitgeist. And so, in this memoir, he somehow pulls his experience outside of himself. While keeping his feet on the earth, as in the cover art, he reaches for meaning. What could be indulgent and deeply depressing, a plodding chronicle of loss, becomes something else. Flashbacks to his 10-year-stint as founder and editor-in-chief of Salon.com and his ultimately futile attempts to get one of his highly political books made into a Hollywood TV series are interesting and revealing.Talbot’s brave self-awareness about his twilight existence in the sterile, noisy San Francisco of today helped me take stock of my own life here. I loved this book.
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4 reviews