Dr. Beisser was stricken with polio and paralyzed when he was 24 years old. Warm, humorous and devoid of self-pity, his story is a metaphor for the human condition. We all come up against limitations, but we must--and can--learn to accept and work within them.
This is an excellent book. It is both a personal narrative of the experience of having polio and receiving health care for this condition as well as an analysis of living with a disability and what gives life meaning and what makes it worth living by the author who is a psychiatrist.
This book is not for sissies. You have to have guts to read it, as did the man who lived it before he wrote it. Author Arnold Beisser was an active young man and a medical school grad when he became paralyzed from the neck down when he was 25. He couldn't even breath outside an iron lung, and yet this amazing man managed to find peace and joy in his life. A must read for every living soul.
An eye opening book that pushes you to think outside the box, to see things from your own perspective as well as others, it pushes the envelope of what a life is to live from the perspective of Arnold Beisser on his life and how his disability affects the way he sees the world. A book I believe everyone should read at least once.