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Title: Two Weeks of Life: A Memoir of Love, Death, and Politics
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Manufacturer: Basic Books
List Price: $26.00
Our Price: $13.00
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| Customer Reviews: |
| Two Weeks of Life: A Memoir of Love, Death, and Politics by Basic Books Engaging and enlightening | | Eleanor Clift weaves personal revelations, interesting sidebars and her keen political insight from beginning to end in this engrossing memoir--it is a valuable tool for anyone dealing with the loss of a love. | | Two Weeks of Life: A Memoir of Love, Death, and Politics by Basic Books Two Weeks of Life provokes thoughts about how we die. | | Eleanor Clift has written a very thought-provoking book about her husband's death from cancer and its contrast with the very public controversy about Terri Schiavo's life and death at the same time. Questions about how we die and the right to choose that option in the face of terminal disease or being in a vegatative state are addressed. The courage shown by the terminally ill person and his or her spouse and loved ones is impressive. Eleanor Clift has always impressed me as a very caring and intelligent person and this book confirms that impression. A difficult subject treated very compassionately. | | Two Weeks of Life: A Memoir of Love, Death, and Politics by Basic Books Disappointed |
I wanted very much to like this book, and I did--but only somewhat.
The Terri Schiavo material began to seem like filler to me and made me lose interest in the rest of the book. I followed the Schiavo case rather closely when it was in the news, and I didn't buy this book expecting more re-hash of it--but that's what I got.
| | Two Weeks of Life: A Memoir of Love, Death, and Politics by Basic Books A Clear Look at Hard Facts | You probably know Eleanor Clift, or at least know of her. On Sundays, she's the one being yelled at on The McLaughlin Group. Anyone who's seen that show knows she is a tough professional who stands her ground. This book proves it. Even in the hardest of times, Clift is a journalist to the core. She declares in the early pages that this is a love story, and indeed it is, as she records the love she shared with her husband, Tom Brazaitis, as together they faced his spreading cancer and eventual death. But it is more than a memoir.
At the same time she is recording in precise and difficult detail the last two weeks of Tom's life lived peacefully in the living room of their home with the help of hospice, she tells of another story of life and death taking place in Florida--that of Terri Schiavo. Terri Schiavo's story dominated the news as her husband and parents debated the decision of continuing to sustain Terri's life. The governor and courts of Florida became involved, and then the dispute was taken to congress and the president. While Clift was caring for Tom every night, she was involved as a journalist and commentator covering the Schiavo controversy. Her husband, also a journalist, had insisted early on that Clift continue her professional commitments. She did.
Now she has taken these two simultaneous events and combined them into an account that is both an intense personal memoir and a clear analysis of the hard decisions that face families when a loved one's life is ending. She gives her story clearly while she weaves in the Schiavo story in even-handed reporting. "I'm a journalist by training and instinct. That reporting is the vehicle for my journey to make sense of the physical, ethical and moral issues legitimately raised by both sides in the debate," Clift explains in the preface to the book.
This is a difficult topic, but one that most of us will have to face at some point. While the book is serious and straightforward, it is not difficult to read. In fact, it is a pleasure both to share the personal story and to benefit from Clift's clear writing. The inclusion at book's end of several columns written for the Cleveland Plain Dealer by Brazaitis across the course of his struggle makes the story even more tender and personal.
by Patricia Nordyke Pando
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women | | Two Weeks of Life: A Memoir of Love, Death, and Politics by Basic Books Two Very Different Approaches to End of Life | Eleanor Clift does a great job of combining journalism and memoir. She objectively reports on the events surrounding the bitter dispute over Terry Schiavo's end of life, including the political maneuverings of Congress and the personal battle between Michael Schiavo and his wife's family. I followed that story closely as it was happening but learned new details reading Two Weeks of Life.
Ironically, as Ms. Clift is reporting on a very public and tumultuous end of life experience, she is very privately living her own with the impending death of her husband; a story she tells not as a journalist, but as a wife who is losing a beloved partner. The book presents the Schiavo story from the outside looking in and Clift's own story very much from the inside looking out. It illustrates the complexity of end of life decisions and our culture's difficulty in coming to any consensus on these issues. Ms. Clift also includes some interesting antecdotes about her experiences as a journalist, including an interesting discussion with Justice Sandra Day O'Connor about her position on Roe v Wade.
There is nothing superfluous in Clift's writing, which is very straightforward and clear. I recommend the book to anyone interested in reading an interesting story and, of course, to anyone who has a special interest in end of life issues.
| | Two Weeks of Life: A Memoir of Love, Death, and Politics by Basic Books Product Description | What has become known as the Schiavo affair-the death of a brain-damaged woman in Florida in 2005, and the controversy that surrounded it-was a revelatory moment in American society. For the first time, the nation got a clear view of both the fanaticism gripping the religious right and the political power it could bring to bear even when the vast majority of the country disagreed with it. But it was also a turning point: a moment when America seemed to glimpse a dangerous radicalism, and began to pull back. Eleanor Clift witnessed this event from a unique vantage point. At the same time that Schiavo was dying in her Florida hospice, Clift’s husband, Tom Brazaitis, was dying of cancer at home; the two passed away within a day of each other. Two Weeks of Life alternates between these two stories to provide a moving commentary on how we deal, or fail to deal, with dying in modern America. |
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