The Forgetting: Understanding Alzheimer's: A Biography of a Disease

With a Foreword by ADAM PHILLIPS – A haunting literary and scientific examination of Alzheimer’s disease and the race to find a cure. Similar in tone to the AIDS classic And The Band Plays On.

‘A truly remarkable book – the definitive work on Alzheimer's, it seems to me, both in social and medical terms. The Forgetting is incisive, humane, never ponderous, full of dry humor, brilliantly written with quiet, unpretentious authority. As a layman with personal experience of 'caring' for an Alzheimer's sufferer I am well aware of the stages of the disease and its prognosis and ending. Shenk is excellent on all these, and in his reflections on memory and the individual, and the individual's response to the progress of the disease. I can't imagine a book on Alzheimer's being better researched and understood, or presented with greater sympathy.’ John Bayley

In 1906 Alois Alzheimer dissected and examined the cerebral cortex of Auguste D’s brain and became the first scientist in medical history to link a specific brain pathology to behavioural changes. The disease named after him, turns otherwise active and healthy people into living ghosts. It is a rare condition for those in their 40s and 50s but 10% of the 65+ population suffers from it and 50% of the 85+. It is longevity’s revenge and as the baby boom generation drifts into its elderly years the number of Alzheimer’s victims is expected to quadruple, making it the fastest-growing disease in developed countries.

As Adam Phillips writes in his forword ‘'This remarkable book will radically change our notions of looking after people and our assumptions about independence. Out of fear of mortality we have idealised health and youth and competence. The Forgetting reminds us among many other things that there is more to life than that.”

Shenk’s history of Alzheimer’s is both poignant and scientific, grounded by the fundamental belief that memory forms the basis of our selves, our souls, and the meaning in our lives.