August 3, 2015
Brokaw's cushy, busy retirement, bolstered by the popularity of his Greatest Generation books about WWII and his long tenure as a highly respected NBC newsman, was derailed in 2013 by a dreaded diagnosis of cancer. The former anchorman, now 75, went to the famed Mayo Clinic for a second opinion on a nagging back problem, with the verdict of incurable myeloma, a cancer of the blood. Brokaw writes that the cancer transforms everything it touches. Some readers will be saddened by the distracting remembrances of D-Day events, Nelson Mandela's waning moments, the crumbling of the Twin Towers, and the constant name-dropping; those who expect the book to center on the rigors of the disease and chemotherapy will instead find that Brokaw focuses on the joys of his blessed life: "I've had a life rich in personal and professional rewards beyond what should be anyone's even exaggerated expectations." Unlike some influential narratives on life and maladies, such as Audre Lorde's Cancer Journals and Susan Sontag's Illness as Metaphor, Brokaw's observations and opinions are frank only up to a point, without too much grim analysis, sobering reflection on morality, or despair.
Starred review from June 1, 2015
Brokaw has indeed had a lucky lifea great marriage of more than 50 years, a well-regarded career of 22 years as a news anchor, and scores of friends. But his active life as news correspondent and sportsman was abruptly halted in 2013, when chronic back pain led him to the Mayo Clinic and an eventual diagnosis of multiple myeloma, an incurable blood cancer. He faced the fatigue and chemo-brain of cancer patients and the enormous desire to maintain control while frustrated not to have a more active role than just as an intake system for drugs morning, noon, and night. Falling back on the reporter's habit of taking notes, Brokaw started a journal to record medical research and his own physical, mental, and emotional ups and downs through the stages of treatment. Brokaw intersperses memories of his active life and career with the slow realization and acceptance of his own mortality. Despite the advantages that come with being a high-profile patient and having a daughter who is a doctor, Brokaw worried that his team of doctors, though highly qualified, were not communicating enough to coordinate his treatment. Through the prism of his own illness, Brokaw looks at the larger picture of aging in America and rising health-care costs that bankrupt so many families even as they suffer the heartache of incurable diseases. Brokaw chronicles the devotion of family, friends, and colleagues who offered support and prayers and the mighty research capabilities of the press as he struggled through his treatment. This is a powerful memoir of battling cancer and facing mortality. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Highly respected news anchor Brokaw, the author of six best-sellers, writes about his treatment for cancer in a memoir that is sure to garner plenty of interest beyond the book-review page.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)
April 1, 2015
Veteran news anchor and Greatest Generation chronicler Brokaw (The Time of Our Lives, 2011, etc.) turns inward to report on his battle with cancer. It began with a constantly aching back-nothing out of the ordinary for a hard-riding septuagenarian who "attributed it to long plane rides and an active lifestyle." Not only that, writes the author in this wryly good-natured memoir, but he also had a kind of baseless confidence that, even entering his mid-70s, he was untouchable, full of "the false sense of assurance of someone who'd had a long, uninterrupted run of personal and professional good fortune." All that comes crashing down early on in his book, when his doctor reads aloud a column of numbers, remarks on a spike in the protein cells, and then calmly announces that he has a malignancy-and worse, multiple myeloma, which can be treated but, so far, not cured. Given a prognosis of five or more years before the Grim Reaper comes knocking, Brokaw looks back on a long career in the news, with a name-dropped cast of characters, a surprising number of whom suffered or have suffered from terrible illness. In that light, the author does not incline to self-pity, taking instead an almost scholarly interest in his disease and approvingly quoting his friend and contemporary Jim Harrison, who remarks, "As I aged, I expected to think about death far more than I do." Death is a reality here, to be sure, and Brokaw is fascinated by all its trappings, writing of MRIs and blood tests and insufferable doctors ("The Sloan specialist in charge of structural issues was a forty-three-year-old with a big resume, a brusque style, and apparently not much interest in face-to-face consultation") and all the rest. Brokaw's account lacks the depth and fire of Christopher Hitchens' Mortality (2013), but it belongs on the same shelf as a wise and oddly comforting look at the toughest news of all.