Alumni in Print

Learning to Listen: A Life Caring for Children

T. Berry Brazelton’43
Da Capo Press, 2013

One of the nation’s foremost pediatricians, Dr. Brazelton documents his life and career in this new memoir. The book leads readers through his education at Princeton and Columbia, his experiences aboard a Navy destroyer in WWII, and the revelations that led him to challenge the prevalent view of the time—that newborns were blank slates, disabilities the fault of parents—by an insistence on the idiosyncrasies of children, whom he argued are born with different temperaments and genetic dispositions. His major contributions to the field, the Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale, which measures a baby’s response to nurturing, and Touchpoints, a map of development for a child’s first years, are discussed. The Wall Street Journal calls the book one of “gratitude and joy…[that] traces a lifetime devoted to understanding the critical months in a newborn’s life and the bonds between parent and baby in many cultures.”

Heart of Wisdom

Alan Clifford (Peter Cohn’62)
Lion Publishers, 2013

Paul Bergman secures a fellowship to study at the research facility of Leo Miller, a renowned cardiologist and survivor of the Bataan Death March. When Dr. Miller declines an award from the Japanese Medical Society—and in doing so forfeits an accompanying grant—he becomes embroiled in a controversy that threatens his career and tars the image of the university where he is a faculty member. The tale, written under Dr. Cohn’s pen name, blends the ethics of medicine with the harrowing legacy of WWII. Publisher’s Weekly called “Heart of Wisdom” “a thought-provoking read.”

To Sing Away the Darkest Days. 
Poems Re-Imagined from Yiddish Folksongs

Norbert Hirschhorn’62
Holland Park Press, 2013

Dr. Hirschhorn’s collection of poems, “To Sing Away the Darkest Days,” tells the story of a Jew in the Diaspora, using as inspirational material more than a thousand Yiddish folksongs. The songs were culled from dozens of sources—archives, CDs, internet collections—over the course of five years and represent a herculean effort to trace his own personal history while reviving his own links to Yiddish culture. Accompanying the poems is a bounty of documentation of the songs on which they are based, including the transliterated Yiddish texts, literal English translations, audio and video links, and historical information. 
 

The Healing Paradox: A Revolutionary Approach to Treating and Curing Physical and Mental Illness

Steven Goldsmith’69
North Atlantic Books, 2013

In “The Healing Paradox,” Dr. Goldsmith uses case studies and four decades of experience to propose a counterintuitive method of treating illness: Use the ailment against itself. His argument challenges the common approach of Western medicine—that disease is something to be squelched by all means necessary—which, he claims, leads to temporary solutions at best and a bevy of negative side effects at worst. We should embrace the causes of illness, he argues, and use them to achieve a cure. To undergird this assertion he provides a wealth of familiar examples: radiation, which can both cause cancer and treat it; vaccines, which provide immunity to disease by exposing us to it; and Ritalin, which is prescribed to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, though it is a stimulant. 

Urban Alchemy: Restoring Joy in America’s Sorted-Out Cities

Mindy Fullilove’78
New Village Press, 2013

Dr. Fullilove explores the ways our health is affected by the neighborhood in which we live. In “Urban Alchemy” she asks whether segregated neighborhoods beget public health problems and investigates possible remedies. By observing urbanists who were doing work directed at “unsorting the city,” she developed a taxonomy of nine “elements of urban restoration” the efforts had in common, elements she believes are applicable to all U.S. cities. 

Walking in Time

Alan M. Engler’80
CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013

Dr. Engler’s novel follows renowned plastic surgeon Thomas Randolph as he saunters through the Upper East Side, leading walking tours that focus on the history and architecture of New York’s Gilded Age. While his marriage falls apart and his practice is threatened by an evolving political landscape, Dr. Randolph retreats into the halcyon era of the turn of the century. Straddling the present and the past, Dr. Engler’s novel is both an informative guide to the august architecture of the Upper East Side and a tale of personal lives jeopardized by the passage of time. The book mentions real figures from Columbia and Presbyterian Hospital history, hospital founder James Lenox and Columbia surgeon James Markoe, whose father and brother also were prominent Columbia physicians in their time. The book also includes references to the original Presbyterian Hospital on East 70th Street and other hospitals from New York’s Gilded Age.

CAREERS: A Brainwise Guide to Finding Fulfillment at Work

Josh Gibson’98
Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry, 2012

A book written by a team of psychiatrists that included 
Dr. Gibson seeks to understand why some people find satisfaction in their jobs. Mixing practical wisdom with psychological and neurological data, “CAREERS” boils down the secret to seven principles: change, appreciate, risk, explore, endure, reflect, and sacrifice. To illustrate these core behaviors, the authors present 
case examples, seeking to reframe the concept of a career as a 
grand endeavor to improve ourselves. 

​The Biology of Luck

Jacob M. Appel’09
Elephant Rock Books, 2013

Dr. Appel’s latest novel is a romantic story within a story, 
taking place across the five boroughs of New York City. A tour guide, Larry Bloom, fantasizes about an upcoming date with Starshine Hart, a beautiful libertine being courted by two very different men. Her imagined escapades form the basis of the story Bloom is writing, which will culminate in his winning her heart. Bloom’s novel is interwoven with the story of the real “dream 
date,” in which he guides his love interest on a tour of the city.