Memory Lessons
By Jerald Winakur
304 pages; Hyperion

"We all need a safe place to come home to. Even doctors. Maybe especially doctors," writes Jerald Winakur, a geriatrician who saw his own father plummet into the no-man's-land of Alzheimer's. Memory Lessons is hardly the first probing memoir by a physician, but the book is unusual for the author's honesty about the anxiety and guilt that can afflict a specialist trying to make quality of life decisions for a patient ("What is 'quality of life' when one is demented?") or a child making crucial choices for an elderly parent. A brave, achingly tender look at the end of life.