Alice Wexler is a research scholar at the UCLA Center for the Study of Women and the author of Mapping Fate: A Memoir of Family, Risk, and Genetic Research.
"[A] detailed and evocative portrait. . . . Using a range of
sources including diaries, letters, business ledgers, whaling logs
and local newspapers Ms. Wexler re-creates a picture of a long-ago
place where doctors lived next-door to their patients and where
generation after generation of a community's most prominent members
struggled with a crippling disease." Amy Dockser Marcus, Wall
Street Journal--Amy Dockser Marcus"Wall Street Journal"
(12/18/2008)"
A brave and pioneering work. Daniel Kevles, author of In the Name
of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity
--Daniel Kevles"
Alice Wexler has once again accomplished the near impossible by
writing a fascinating academic page-turner. Filled with truth and
brilliance throughout, The Woman Who Walked into the Sea is an
amazing book that leaves the reader not only better informed, but
materially enriched, moved by the experience, and not wanting it to
end. Carole Browner, University of California, Los Angeles
--Carole Browner"
This book is an engaging chronicle of how the lived experience of
illness in a family and community transforms over centuries into an
intensely monitored and medicalized hereditary disease. Wexler does
what historians do best: she folds what we take now to be a
straightforward phenomenon, Huntington s disease, back into the
story of its making. By doing so, she tells us something profound
about how we imagine ourselves and how we are connected to one
another. Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, author of Extraordinary Bodies:
Figuring Physical Disability in American Literature and Culture
--Rosemarie Garland-Thomson"
This is a remarkable story of St. Vitus' Dance (Huntington's
Chorea) from many perspectives: personal, historical and social.
Its meticulous history, drawn from archives and personal experience
details how this late-onset hereditary disease was viewed not only
medically but personally and socially by family members, neighbors
and friends of afflicted individuals. This is a must read for
anyone interested in the social history and policy surrounding
hereditary disease. Garland Allen, Washington University in St.
Louis
--Garland Allen"
This isat once a riveting history of a deadly genetic disease and a
sensitive rendering of how fear of the affliction shaped the lives
of people at risk and affected their families and community. Wexler
discerningly exposes the hereditarian values that made the victims
outcasts yet unflinchingly makes clear that in its grim physical
reality Huntington s disease is independent of any social
construction. In all, a brave and pioneering work. Daniel Kevles,
author of In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human
Heredity--Daniel Kevles"
Wexler provides an accessible account of a disease in history. A
richness of context gives her study its strength and character.
Charles E. Rosenberg, Harvard University
--Charles E. Rosenberg"
"This is a remarkable story of 'St. Vitus' Dance' (Huntington's
Chorea) from many perspectives: personal, historical and social.
Its meticulous history, drawn from archives and personal experience
details how this late-onset hereditary disease was viewed not only
medically but personally and socially by family members, neighbors
and friends of afflicted individuals. This is a must read for
anyone interested in the social history and policy surrounding
hereditary disease."--Garland Allen, Washington University in St.
Louis
--Garland Allen
"A brave and pioneering work."--Daniel Kevles, author of "In the
Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity"
--Daniel Kevles
"Alice Wexler has once again accomplished the near impossible by
writing a fascinating academic page-turner. Filled with truth and
brilliance throughout, "The Woman Who Walked into the Sea" is an
amazing book that leaves the reader not only better informed, but
materially enriched, moved by the experience, and not wanting it to
end."--Carole Browner, University of California, Los Angeles
--Carole Browner
"This book is an engaging chronicle of how the lived experience of
illness in a family and community transforms over centuries into an
intensely monitored and medicalized hereditary disease. Wexler does
what historians do best: she folds what we take now to be a
straightforward phenomenon, Huntington's disease, back into the
story of its making. By doing so, she tells us something profound
about how we imagine ourselves and how we are connected to one
another."--Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, author of "Extraordinary
Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Literature and
Culture"
--Rosemarie Garland-Thomson
"This is a remarkable story of 'St. Vitus'' Dance' (Huntington''s
Chorea) from many perspectives: personal, historical and social.
Its meticulous history, drawn from archives and personal experience
details how this late-onset hereditary disease was viewed not only
medically but personally and socially by family members, neighbors
and friends of afflicted individuals. This is a must read for
anyone interested in the social history and policy surrounding
hereditary disease."--Garland Allen, Washington University in St.
Louis
--Garland Allen
"Wexler provides an accessible account of a disease in history. A
richness of context gives her study its strength and
character."--Charles E. Rosenberg, Harvard University
--Charles E. Rosenberg
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