Short Takes
January 16, 2017
The story you won’t see in the film: “Ray & Joan: The Man Who Made the McDonald’s Fortune and the Woman Who Gave It All Away”
In the new movie “The Founder,” Ray Kroc (Michael Keaton) comes off as first cousin to a certain hard-charging, win-at-all-costs businessman who’s found a second career.
There’s much more to the Kroc story than that, and Lisa Napoli unearths it in “Ray & Joan: The Man Who Made the McDonald’s Fortune and the Woman Who Gave It All Away.” It turns out that when Ray met Joan, they were both married. That he was an alcoholic, prejudiced against pretty much everybody, and on the far side of the “obsessed” spectrum. And then he died, and something great happened — his wife started giving money away, often anonymously, to causes that Ray despised. The Salvation Army. NPR. Hospices. AIDS research. Alcoholism treatment. No wonder McDonalds expressed “absolutely zero willingness” in helping Napoli with his book — it’s got considerably more protein than a Big Mac. I gobbled the pages. [To buy the book from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here.]
January 5, 2017
“Climbing Back: A Family’s Journey through Brain Injury”
I haven’t seen most of my college friends in 47 years. When I think of them, I see them as they were — as we were — in 1968. Elise Rosenhaupt and her boyfriend Tom: off they go, bright and shining, headed for New Mexico. So when Elise sent me her book, “Climbing Back: A Family’s Journey through Brain Injury,” the title was like a blow to my brain. It begins like this: “The last time I saw our son before his injury, my husband and I were walking toward Harvard Square.” And you sink with her: getting the news that Martin, a Harvard sophomore, had been struck by a car that launched him 100 feet in the air. He’d landed on his head. He was in Neurological Intensive Care at Massachusetts General Hospital.
There are many books that chronicle disaster and recovery. This one’s not like them. There are doctors and nurses, of course, and friends in the waiting room, and Harvard faculty showing up unexpectedly, but Elise Rosenhaupt has worked as a poetry editor, and she knows when to weave in the story of her marriage, her family, her parents and their brain disorders. The prose is taut: “There is nothing in my world but wanting Martin to live.” And you think, this is how recovery is done when it’s done right, when you marvel at the frailty of our bodies and the resilience of our spirits. [To buy the paperback from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here. For the audio book, click here.]
January 5, 2017
I’m no seer. But Joan Pancoe just might be.
When two friends whose opinions you respect praise a movie, book or service, it’s actionable. That’s how I found myself in Joan Pancoe’s apartment for a Soul Reading. Joan has been a karmic astrologer, psychic therapist and spiritual teacher since 1976, and has written several books. (The most recent is “Cosmic Sugar, The Amorous Adventures of a Modern Mystic,” published with a pen name for good reason; it’s explicit in the extreme. I mean, it made me blush. To buy the Kindle edition, click here.) Joan’s seen everyone from believers in past lives to skeptics. I’m somewhere in the middle. So I only felt moderately silly showing up at her Lower East Side lair with my list of Big Questions and Important Names. Then Joan went into trance and rolled out the kind of Spiritual Truths that are generally applicable… and Specific Insights that make you wonder if she’d hacked your email. Was I glad I saw her? Yes. Will you? I’m no seer. More information here.
November 2, 2016
How Does That Make You Feel? True Confessions from Both Sides of the Therapy Couch
Sherry Amatenstein is a New York City-based licensed clinical social worker. She’s written 3 three books on relationships. Now she’s edited “How Does That Make You Feel? True Confessions from Both Sides of the Therapy Couch,” with essays by 13 therapists and 21 patients. “I wanted to humanize shrinks to the shrunks,” she says. “I wanted patients to see that therapists are neurotic as hell, too.”
Her contributors — they include a noted screenwriter and a writer for “Seinfeld” — are just as honest. “Has my drive been solely about proving to my narcissistic [Jewish] mother that I am indeed worth her sagging labia?” one writes. A woman whose parents sent her to a pedophile therapist, writes about her mother: “She never met a boundary she couldn’t or wouldn’t cross.”
Most of these essays are more heartfelt than shocking; they not only provide a valuable window into therapy, they give us an appreciation for the process. This includes Amatenstein’s reason for becoming a therapist: “My father was at Auschwitz and had to watch his parents and little sister walk away, knowing they were going to the ovens. My mother was sent to a work camp. I never knew my grandparents.” So she grew up hearing other people’s pain and wanted to ease their suffering. This book helps. [To buy the paperback from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here.]
October 24, 2016
A delicious new guide: “Shop Cook Eat New York: 200 of the City’s Best Food Shops”
I’ve scoured New York in search of exotic and esoteric food suppliers for 60 years, but a woman from France who’s lived here only a decade makes me feel like a first-time tourist. Nathalie Sann and photographer Susan Meisel set out to find 200 of the city’s best food stores, and in “Shop Cook Eat New York” they’ve done just that. Some were obvious: Katz’s Deli, Murray’s Cheese Shop, Magnolia Bakery, the shops on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx. But the majority of their favorites are real finds. Like Arcade Bakery (it’s hidden in the lobby of an office building), which makes the best ham-and-cheese sandwiches in town. And Harlem Shambles, my favorite butcher (the name is from Corinthians: “Whatever is sold in the shambles, eat, asking no question for conscience sake”). And Andrews Honey, which attracts bees on 50 rooftops, including the Waldorf-Astoria. And SOS Chefs, a favorite find of mine. The writing is brisk and stylish (“Lobel’s is the Fabergé of meat”), the photos are crisp, and Sann enriches the book with 27 field-tested recipes. A great resource for New Yorkers, an obvious gift for visiting foodies. [To buy the book from Amazon, click here.]