A Molecule Away from Madness: Tales of the Hijacked Brain by Sara Manning Peskin. W.W. Norton 214 pp. $25.95 Even if you’ve never had any training in science, or know what you know of science…
Posts published by “Larry Bensky”
MEMO: To All Staff FROM: Management RE: Back to Work! March 21, 2022 Hello, and welcome back to the office! (Note: This is being sent to all employees of record. Those employed by MEGA INC.…
Review of ‘Loss of Memory is Only Temporary.’ By Johanna Kaplan. Ecco Press, HarperCollins. New York, 2022. 248 pp. $16.99. Mental Health, its circumstances, its manageable and unmanageable characteristics, its treatments, its colossal direct and…
A Review of “Bewilderment,” By Richard Powers. (WW Norton 278 pp. $27.95.) Movie screens are often tinged with it these days. Fiction and non-Fiction authors seem intrigued by it, when not immersed in the genre.…
Before I had any idea of who she was, I had seen Joan Didion on the stairs of the four-story Manhattan walkup where we both lived. It was a creaky old building that had somehow…
Morningside Heights by Joshua Henkin Pantheon Books, 2021; 292 pp. $26.95 Of all the dreaded afflictions that affect the human mind, the one that has come to be known as “Alzheimer’s Disease”* is surely among…
It was a cold early Summer night in 1963, when I first set foot in City Lights, the now legendary bookstore. Much has been made since of how unusual City Lights, then ten yers old,…
Berkeley, CA, January 11, 2021 — By now, you’ve probably seen the footage many times. Unless you’ve had the discipline and good sense to keep out of your life that which the unavoidable image merchants…
Berkeley, CA September 14, 2020 – “Grandpa, do you remember the day the sun didn’t come up?” “Couldn’t have happened.” “But there are videos. Look!” “Oh, that day. Actually the sun came up. It just…