Editorial Review:Product Description:What has become known as the Schiavo affair-the death of a brain-damaged woman in Florida in 2005, and the controversy that surrounded it-was a revelatory moment in American society. For the first time, the nation got a clear view of both the fanaticism gripping the religious right and the political power it could bring to bear even when the vast majority of the country disagreed with it. But it was also a turning point: a moment when America seemed to glimpse a dangerous radicalism, and began to pull back. Eleanor Clift witnessed this event from a unique vantage point. At the same time that Schiavo was dying in her Florida hospice, Clift’s husband, Tom Brazaitis, was dying of cancer at home; the two passed away within a day of each other. Two Weeks of Life alternates between these two stories to provide a moving commentary on how we deal, or fail to deal, with dying in modern America.
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Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
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Well done, very insightful
The other reviewers will speak better to the great qualities of this book, so I'll echo the best of them - a wonderful read that personalizes a national story with such heartbreaking and informative reporting that truly illuminates the theme that we are a country founded on questions in search of answers. A must read for any student of our political system as well as an enlightening introduction into the culture of hospice care. One of the most important memoirs published this year.
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Eleanor Clift's excellent justaposition on end-of-life experiences
I read excerpts of Eleanor Clift's "Two Weeks of Like" in Newsweek, where she's been a contributor for a number of years. Those selected well-written passages about a very sensitive event - the death from kidney cancer of her husband, Cleveland Plains Dealer Washington correspondent, Tom Brazaitis - made me seek out her book in hardcover. The work as a whole stands up to the strength of the Newsweek excerpts. The operative word in Clift's work is "juxtaposition" - the dignity with which Brazaitis spends his final days vs. how Terry Schiavo spends hers. Clift never comes out and editorializes about Schiavo's treatment, but by contrasting that experience vs. her huband's, she makes her point passively but no less passionately.
At the very least, anyone reading this book will surely react by wanting to have living wills and medical powers of attorney in proper legal order.
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Engaging and enlightening
Eleanor Clift weaves personal revelations, interesting sidebars and her keen political insight from beginning to end in this engrossing memoir--it is a valuable tool for anyone dealing with the loss of a love.
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Two Weeks of Life provokes thoughts about how we die.
Eleanor Clift has written a very thought-provoking book about her husband's death from cancer and its contrast with the very public controversy about Terri Schiavo's life and death at the same time. Questions about how we die and the right to choose that option in the face of terminal disease or being in a vegatative state are addressed. The courage shown by the terminally ill person and his or her spouse and loved ones is impressive. Eleanor Clift has always impressed me as a very caring and intelligent person and this book confirms that impression. A difficult subject treated very compassionately.
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Disappointed
I wanted very much to like this book, and I did--but only somewhat.
The Terri Schiavo material began to seem like filler to me and made me lose interest in the rest of the book. I followed the Schiavo case rather closely when it was in the news, and I didn't buy this book expecting more re-hash of it--but that's what I got.
