This is a beautiful book. It’s an ode to a beloved person who is living inside a stranger. The author and son, Jonathan Kozol, visits his father, Dr. Harry Kozol, who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease, in a care facility. The son carefully records his interactions with his dad— noting both the deterioration in his father’s thinking process, and also the sudden bright spots of memory that deeply endear him to his dad. In addition, Jonathan brings his dog, Persnickity, to visit his father who becomes quite fond of this canine.

Jonathan notes which personnel who care for his dad most appreciate his father by how they actively interact with him. The son expresses disdain for people who talk “over” others with cognitive defects, treating those affected as if they are not an active part of a surrounding conversation. Later, Jonathan moves his father out of the care facility back into the home in which he lived with his wife prior to his mental deterioration.

I liked that the author talked about issues that were related to his parents, but not specifically about them — the idea that some individuals believe older people lose their worth to society and are seen as more expendable and also the idea that some medical practitioners are not as “on the ball” as we expect them to be. This latter issue left me particularly uneasy.

What I liked most about this book was the author’s love and devotion to both parents. It came across clearly, page after page, until the end. What a beautiful tribute to both of the author’s parents this memoir is.

I found the epilogue to be especially stirring. In it, the author’s father reversed a previous demand that Jonathan give up his employment fighting for social justice and instead go into a more academic-oriented career. He relented to his son with the words to encourage Jonathan to follow his own heart, saying “You’re going to be fine.”

I would love to read other books by this author. He has such a sensitivity for others, and I like how he expresses this in words. This is a book written with love and respect, and for that I found it warm and endearing. It did a job on my heartstrings. Read it if you have/had parents whom you love/loved despite any difficulties they suffer/suffered. ( )

I wanted to read this book for a couple reasons -- one because I loved so many of the books wherein Kozol has chronicled the ills of society and issues of social justice. As an educator, I particularly valued Kozol's books about education. Secondly, I too have faced what Kozol faced, experiencing the "theft of memory" losing my mother one day at a time. The brilliance and aptness of the title grabbed me, as did the narrative of Kozol's deeply personal book. His father was not just anyone suffering from Alzheimers but a leading specialist in the area of brain research. Thus Dr. Kozol had a grasp of what was happening to him. While I appreciated that unique perspective, what struck even more story of the father son relationship. Although a very different book for Kozol, it did not disappoint. ( )

I have long admired Jonathan Kozol as a writer, an advocate, and a person. His latest book explores the complex issues of caring for aging parents with his characteristic clarity and grace. Both his parents lived past the age of 100 and he did his utmost to keep them healthy, at home, and content. The book primarily focuses on his relationship with his father, an esteemed psychiatrist and neurologist. Among his father's papers, the son discovers connections with Eugene O'Neill and other famous and infamous patients. But to me, those revelations were of more interest to biographers and historians. Most of us will be more fascinated with how his father can precisely identify what he is experiencing as Alzheimer's begins to interfere with his thoughts and memory. And many of us will find deep meaning in Jonathan's efforts to maintain his parents' integrity and personality as long as possible. ( )

This was the first book I won through a Goodreads giveaway! Although I thought there was a lot of emotion behind this book, which I admired so much, the end result was a little disjointed and disorganized. I loved all of the material concerning his father and his mother as they were struggling through their old age, as well as all of the anecdotes about their various caretakers. However, there were some parts about Dr. Kozol that Jonathan wrote that seemed an awful lot like "here's some stuff that my father did that I found in his files." These sections weren't compelling, perhaps because of the second hand way it was told. Although I'm sure Dr. Kozol's relationships with Eugene O'Neill, Patty Hearst, and the Boston strangler were interesting, the manner in which they were presented here was lacking in urgency and personality. ( )

I listened to this book as an audiobook, read wonderfully by Sean Runnette. This is the story of the author's relationship with his father (with both his parents, really), in his father's final years, as his decline from Alzheimer's takes its inevitable toll.

Jonathan Kozol is an educator and established writer in his own right, often writing about the state of education in the United States. His father, Dr. Harry Kozol was a neuropsychiatrist, highly respected and accomplished in his field. His clients included some rather high-profile names, as well, but, as his son Jonathan recounts, in going through his father's papers, notes and files, the elder Kozol was a highly ethical man in his dealings with all his patients and always treated everyone with the same care and respect. I did wonder about some of the details revealed about some of those high profile patients, but I am going to assume that Kozol, being a seasoned writer himself, did due diligence when it came to permissions and patient confidentiality, I enjoyed the trips down memory lane for Jonathan, as he revealed his father's (and to a lesser degree, his mother's) early lives. Both parents lived long, full lives (both dying at 100+ years). This memoir chronicles with great love, lives well-lived and the tragedy of this insidious disease. He also chronicles the tremendous amount of care (and expense) required to allow a life of dignity to proceed to its natural end. He was fortunate that he had the resources, financial and otherwise, to allow this to happen for his parents, as I suspect that many - maybe most - people would not have such means available to them. The quality of care, too, for the very elderly, and infirm, is another source of very real concern, as Kozol experienced first hand from his father's primary physicians. I wish this was an area of medicine that was making better progress, as we age, ourselves. Overall, I enjoyed this book. The reader's voice was excellent, soft-spoken, and loving. ( )