Hard to Forget: An Alzheimer's Story [Hardcover]

Charles P. Pierce (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 25, 2000

In this remarkable book, Charles P. Pierce intertwines two dramatic stories-the scientific race to discover the causes of Alzheimer's and the moving experiences of the Pierce family as they struggle with the disease.
        
More than four million Americans develop Alzheimer's every year, just as Charles Pierce's father did-horrifically and genetically-and in Hard to Forget, Pierce takes us deep into the country of this disease, to explore how it affects both the body and a family. When his father is diagnosed with Alzheimer's, the author goes on a quest to discover everything he can about the disease. He discusses here Dr. Alois Alzheimer's work early in the twentieth century, then shows how Watson and Crick's announcement of the double-helix structure of DNA opened up the field of Alzheimer's research and led to discoveries by the "genome cowboys"-Dr. Allen Roses, Dr. Peter Hyslop, and others-of the genetic components of the disease. At the heart of this book, too, is the powerful, emotional story of how the Pierce family coped with Alzheimer's and with the threat that the author-and his children-might also inherit it.
        
Elegant and richly informative, Hard to Forget is a unique and provocative book.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

One day Pierce's father, John, left his home in Massachusetts on an errand. He wound up three days later in a Vermont jail. The police assumed from his confused state that he was intoxicated. In actuality, he was suffering from Alzheimer's disease--a fact that both Pierce (a writer-at-large for Esquire and a regular contributor to National Public Radio) and his mother long refused to acknowledge: "I felt the truth bending inside me, turning the last three mad days into some familiar shape, and I realized what I was feeling was the comfort of denial." Pierce makes a notable contribution to the growing literature on this affliction by combining a family memoir with an overview of Alzheimer's history since its discovery in 1906 by Alois Alzheimer and of the state of current research into the genetic causes of the disease. Among the scientists whose work Pierce covers are Allen Roses and Peter Hyslop, whom he labels the "Genome Cowboys" and who, Pierce claims, failed to receive due credit for their discovery of an early-onset gene because of rivalry in the scientific community. The author poignantly describes how he detached himself emotionally from his father's worsening condition and how this detachment affected his wife, Margaret, and children. Margaret was the sole family member who accepted her father-in-law's disease and tried to combat her mother-in-law's consistent denial. Pierce himself is at great risk for Alzheimer's--in addition to his father, three uncles died of the disease--but, as yet, he admits, he has not been tested. He has, however, overcome his resistance to the truth and in so doing has crafted this excellent memoir. Author tour. (Apr.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Shortly before Memorial Day in 1985, Pierce's 70-year-old father went to the florist to buy flowers for the family graves. Three days later, he was found by police sitting in his car in Montpelier, VT, 250 miles away from his Massachusetts home, unable to remember his name or telephone number. Soon afterward he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's--a diagnosis that the family, especially Pierce's mother, refused to accept. Beneath the author's denial lurked the fear that he, too, would become a victim of the disease--his father's four brothers also died from it. A writer for Esquire, the Boston Globe, and GQ, Pierce used his journalistic skills to learn everything he could about the disease's history and prognosis and the search for its genetic links--while witnessing his father's decline. His book is a fascinating account of the fierce competition among the "genome cowboys" (the cutting-edge scientists racing to be first to identify new Alzheimer's genes). Although his genetic explanations are somewhat murky, Pierce's writing talents and his revelations of the darker side of genetic research and of families struggling to make sense of this devastating disorder make for a refreshing change from most feel-good, first-person Alzheimer's accounts. Highly recommended for aging collections.
-Karen McNally Bensing, Benjamin Rose Inst., Cleveland
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Random House; 1ST edition (April 25, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679452915
• ISBN-13: 978-0679452911
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 5.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #517,195 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Charles P. Pierce was born December 28, 1953 in Worcester, MA. Six months earlier, his mother hid in the basement as a massive tornado leveled his future hometown of Shrewsbury, MA The effect of prenatal imprinting is still being debated in medical circles, but a connection does not seem implausible.

He is a 1975 graduate of Marquette University, where he majored in journalism and brewery tours. He was delighted to combine his vocation and his avocation once again when he returned to Milwaukee to cover the trial of Jeffrey Dahmer.

He attended graduate school at Boston College for two days. He is a former forest ranger for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and still ponders the question of what possesses people to go into the woods and throw disposable diapers up into trees.

He began his journalism career writing bowling agate for the Milwaukee papers, and remains justly proud of his ability to spell multi-syllabic, vowel-free Eastern European names. He has written for the alternative press, including Worcester Magazine and the Boston Phoenix, and was a sports columnist for The Boston Herald. He was a feature writer and columnist for the late, lamented sports daily, The National. He has been a writer-at-large for a men's fashion magazine, and his work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the LA Times Magazine, the Nation, the Atlantic and The Chicago Tribune, among others. Although he is no longer a contributor, he remains a devoted reader. He is a frequent contributor to to Eric Alterman's Altercation, the American Prospect and Slate. Charlie appears weekly on National Public Radio's sports program Only A Game and is a regular panelist on NPR's game show, Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me. Since July 1997 he has been a writer at large at Esquire, covering everything from John McCain to the Hubble telescope, with more than a few shooting stars thrown in between. In April 2002, he joined the staff of the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, where he writes political and general interest features.

Charles Pierce is the recipient of numerous professional awards and honors. On several occasions, he was named a finalist for the Associated Press Sports Editor's award for best column writing, and it has been suggested that if only he would wear a tie, they might have let him win. He was a 1996 National Magazine Award finalist for his piece on Alzheimer's disease "In the Country of My Disease," and has expanded the piece into a book Hard to Forget: An Alzheimer's Story for Random House. In 2004, he won a National Headliners Award for his Globe Magazine piece, "Deconstructing Ted". Depending on which year this is, Charlie Pierce has appeared in Best American Sportswriting more times than any other writer, or has tied with Roger Angell for most appearances in Best American Sportswriting, or is sulking in second place and plotting to regain the top spot soon, or has fallen plumb off the court. Charlie's sportswriting has been anthologized in Sports Guy: In Search of Corkball, Warroad Hockey, Hooters Golf, Tiger Woods, and the Big, Big Game. He was awarded third place in the PBWAA Dan S. Blumenthal Memorial Writing Contest. When he won Phone Jeopardy, Alex Trebek sent him a plaque.

Charles Pierce lives in metro Boston with at least some of his three children all of the time, the rusted remains of a malfunctioning Toro lawnmower and his extremely long-suffering wife.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Forgetting is Hard, May 9, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Hard to Forget: An Alzheimer's Story (Hardcover)

My mother in law is in the early stages of a progressive dementia (vascular dementia) whose symptoms are the same as Alzheimers. Alzheimers is the most well known of the forms of dementia but all are equally devastating to the individuals and their families.

I found Pierce's book hard to put down. Since I live with a person afflicted with symptoms so similar to those he describes, the reading of his narrative became completely absorbing. His strategy of combining historical perspective and scientific background with personal stories and experiences seemed to me to fill in, in a very useful way, where some of the more clinical, or the more purely personal, accounts leave one still wondering and curious about the impact of KNOWING about the disease on family members and on sufferers. Not all family members want to know as much as others about the disease and its implications. And, of course, those afflicted with dementia may or may not ever have a true moment of realization of the fact of their affliction.

The account Pierce gives of how his family member is able, at an early stage, to recognize what is happening to him, and way Pierce describes the last interaction in which they communicated and meaningful messages got through is especially affecting.

I have also found helpful, for day to day living with dementia, The 36-Hour Day, which is out in a newer edition now. But Pierce's book has something else to offer, and truly evokes the tragic mysteriousness of how we actually lose people before our eyes, while they, unaware, become increasingly hard to care for.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A book for anyone who knows anyone with Alzheimer's, May 8, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Hard to Forget: An Alzheimer's Story (Hardcover)

Who should buy this book:

-- Those who have a family member with Alzheimer's Disease. -- Friends of those families. -- Health-care providers. -- Fans of the nationally-known sportswriter Charles Pierce, because the prose in his first book (his work has been included in many sportswriting anthologies) is just as wonderful as it is on the sports pages.

Hard To Forget is the story of a young family -- Charles Pierce, his wife Margaret Doris,their new baby Brendan, and Margaret's son Abraham -- how they came to grips with the family denial of Pierce's father's Alzheimer's Disease. In 1985, Pierce's father John went to place flowers on the family graves in Worcester, Massachusetts, and vanished. He was found three days later in Vermont. When Charles and Margaret went to fetch him, John didn't recognize his son: "I think I'm going to give him that car," he told Margaret.

Charles Pierce's mother denied that anything was particularly the matter with her husband. Margaret, his wife, assumed the role of caretaker for her in-laws, trying to deal with the day-to-day issues and to convince her mother-in-law of the reality of the situation. Abraham, her son, found something new to dread in childhood: Sunday visits to Grandma and Grampa Pierce, and the fight in the car on the way home. Charles noticed not only his father's symptoms, but his uncles' and aunt's, and began researching the disease and its tendency to run in families. Would he get Alzheimer's? Would his new baby boy? Should he be tested? What did it mean when he couldn't find his parked car?

Pierce weaves together his family's story with a readable history of Alzheimer's Disease and the current, and sometimes conflicting, research. He reports on the studies done on the Amish and on a group of nuns. He retrieves horseshoes for the Friday Group, a gathering of Alzheimer's paitents in North Carolina. He recites to himself the trivia he hasn't forgotten, to prove to himself that everything is all right.

Fans of Pierce's sportswriting (he currently writes for Esquire; when he was writing for GQ, he published a much-talked-about story that ripped the facade of sainthood off Tiger Woods) will find Pierce's humor intact, along with an unflinching look at the tragedy that invaded his family's life. NPR fans who have heard him on the radio, in "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me" and "It's Only a Game," will value having Pierce in print. Caretakers will want to refer this book to families who are being torn apart by Alzheimer's Disease, because the Pierces have been there and back again.

17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Much more than an Alzheimer's story..., July 17, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Hard to Forget: An Alzheimer's Story (Hardcover)

I had to search hard to find this book, because other "Charles Pierces" kept coming up online and it was hidden in "aging" or "disease, listed alphabetically" in the bookstores, but I recommend you persevere -- it was worth it. Somehow the author manages to combine a poignant memoir, exploring the way we're taught in our families of origin to deal (or not deal, in the case of the Pierces) with serious issues, with a highly readable account of what doctors know and are racing to find out about this cruel disease. On Saturdays, I often listen to Pierce on the NPR shows "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me" and "Only a Game," and he is very funny. Some of that humor, although darker, leavens this book, which also gives an amazingly understandable summary of what scientists know about Alzheimer's and possible treatments. I hope people will read the excerpt here (or in Yankee magazine) and give this book a chance, even if they don't personally know someone with Alzheimer's. With all of us Baby Boomers aging faster than we care to admit, there are expected (according to last week's cover story in Time magazine) to be many, many new cases that eventually will touch most of us. Alzheimer's disease is depressing, but this beautifully written book is not. Highly recommended.