A group of young doctors from the Clinical Excellence Research Center at the Stanford School of Medicine are looking for new models to make health care better and more affordable: “Patel was second up in the presentation, a little nervous and barely tall enough to be seen behind the podium. She stated the problem in […]
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The Glorious Plight of the Buffalo Bills
Undying hope from a city’s football fans—and a fear that their team will soon disappear: “For Bills partisans, white, black, or anything else, the greatest fear is not that the team will lose a game or suffer another demoralizing season. A far more distressing concern is that the team will follow industry and investment and […]
This Land Is My Land
The story of a property-line feud between two families in North Georgia: “The main bridge between the families was the fast friendship of Jewell Crane’s father and Lewis Dempsey’s father. The old men agreed that neighbors should talk and cooperate. Thus, when it came time in the early 1980s to fence off the southern part […]
When A Daughter Dies
A physician relates his experience of watching his daughter die of cancer: “A Greek aphorism warns, ‘Call no man happy until he is dead.’ A calamity that I hoped/presumed never would occur now seems likely – I am going to outlive one of my children. I am very unhappy, and my wife asks if we […]
Andres’ Story
A man terminally ill with cancer and his friendship with a hospice worker: “Andres was in his brother’s living room on the Northside last August as he told his story. A small group of family and friends was his audience. No one flinched as he covered the tougher parts – everyone there knew the story. […]
The Birth of Bond
The complicated birth of the big-screen 007. After several false starts, author Ian Fleming handed his character to two relatively small-time film producers: “It is 1959, and Sean Connery is putting in time in a cornball live-action Disney feature called Darby O’Gill and the Little People. He’s the second male lead, billed beneath not only […]
An Epilogue to the Unread
A son attempts to get an unpublished manuscript of Christopher Paolini’s Inheritance Cycle for his dying mother, an avid science fiction and fantasy reader: “Mom is completely nonplussed. I am a little hurt, but then I realize I haven’t seen Mom once the past several weeks with her hands on a paperback or her Kindle. […]
David Rakoff’s ‘Half Empty’ Worldview Is Full Of Wit
An interview with the humorist and essayist about his book, Half Empty, his Academy Award-winning short film, and his recurrence of cancer: “GROSS: You were diagnosed with cancer in your 20s. Now you’re in your 40s and have a cancer diagnosis again. Are you dealing with it emotionally differently now in your 40s than you […]
Roger Loves Chaz
A love letter: “Wednesday, July 18, is the 20th anniversary of our marriage. How can I begin to tell you about Chaz? She fills my horizon, she is the great fact of my life, she has my love, she saved me from the fate of living out my life alone, which is where I seemed […]
In Treatment for Leukemia, Glimpses of the Future
[Part One of “Genetic Gamble: New Approaches to Fighting Cancer.”] After a Leukemia doctor and researcher develops the disease himself, he finds an effective treatment when his colleagues sequence his cancer genome: “Dr. Wartman’s doctors realized then that their last best hope for saving him was to use all the genetic know-how and technology at […]
