Hard to Forget: An Alzheimer's Story

by Charles P. Pierce

In this remarkable book, Charles P. Pierce intertwines two dramatic stories-the scientific race to discover the causes of Alzheimer's and the moving experiences of the Pierce family as they struggle with the disease.
        
More than four million Americans develop Alzheimer's every year, just as Charles Pierce's father did-horrifically and genetically-and in Hard to Forget, Pierce takes us deep into the country of this disease, to explore how it affects both the body and a family. When his father is diagnosed with Alzheimer's, the author goes on a quest to discover everything he can about the disease. He discusses here Dr. Alois Alzheimer's work early in the twentieth century, then shows how Watson and Crick's announcement of the double-helix structure of DNA opened up the field of Alzheimer's research and led to discoveries by the "genome cowboys"-Dr. Allen Roses, Dr. Peter Hyslop, and others-of the genetic components of the disease. At the heart of this book, too, is the powerful, emotional story of how the Pierce family coped with Alzheimer's and with the threat that the author-and his children-might also inherit it.
        
Elegant and richly informative, Hard to Forget is a unique and provocative book.

Genres: Nonfiction, Medicine, Biography, Memoir

256 pages, Hardcover

First published April 25, 2000

About the author

Charles P. ("Charlie") Pierce is a nationally known American sportswriter, author, and game show panelist. His best known work is Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free.

Reviews

[Katharine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been reading some books on Alzheimer's and dementia this summer, and I found this one fit the perfect spot between too memoir-y & romanticized, and too scientific and difficult to wade through. Poetic language. Really enjoyed it.

[Maggie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finally scored a used copy of this book, which for some reason wasn't available in my library or through ILA.

Charles Pierce is currently one of my daily go-to journalists, writing an Esquire blog. He's brilliant. He also has a harrowing family history of Alzheimer's disease. His father and his father's three brothers all died of Alzheimer's. He wrote the book in 2000, and at that time, he had chosen not to undergo genetic testing for himself, but I'm grateful to surmise from his writing that he remains healthy.

This excellent book traces the history of the identification of Alzheimer's as a distinct, terminal, devastating disease, and not some kind of senile dementia that "inevitably" happens to everyone who lives long enough, and adds the details of his personal family history and his own difficult journey with the onset of his father's disease.

Highly recommended.

[Craig Gooding · Rating 5 out of 5]

My father passed of complications of Alzheimer's several years ago, so I started and stopped a couple of times before I was able to get all the way through the book. It's very powerful, not just in the story about Charlie's father and the work to identify the source of the disease, but in the impact on those around the victim and their different ways of dealing with it - denial, withdrawal, or engagement. There is a poignancy to the telling of the story, too, as his father and all his father's brothers were taken by the disease. As Charlie likes to put it, he himself has an ugly dog in this particular fight.

Highly recommended, if you can find it.

[Reverenddave · Rating 4 out of 5]

I cried a lot.

[John Cerasuolo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Possibly a bit dated but an emotionally gutting read. Charlie pulls you into this complicated world by telling the story of his dad and family who were wrecked by this disease.

[Gray · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an honest book about one family's experience with Alzheimer's Disease---mostly, and that was what I liked about the book. Pierce does not paint heroic portraits of his family, although I'd say his wife Margaret comes close to it. His mother denies her husband's decrepitude to a criminal degree, yet Pierce does not demonize her; he just states the facts. The book also contains many pages about the researchers into the disease. The author tried to make it interesting by making much of the rivalry among them but I was unimpressed and even skipped a few of those pages.

[Darilyn DeMaria · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very informative and interesting that it was so young a disease!!!!! Can't believe it takes an autopsy to figure it out. Just read in the paper that there is a link to help identify the plaque. Read this along with fiction from my shelf and it makes alzheimers much LESS daunting. Just to know what is coming, or what could come.

[Jean · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this book, anchored by the author’s experience with his father’s Alzheimer’s disease, to be just “okay.” Though the subject is similar, it has none of the good insights I found in “The Caregiver”, or “Dancing with Rose” or “The House on Beartown Road.”

[Jayne · Rating 1 out of 5]

Tried to read it, couldn't get into it

[Taro Yamashita · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this a while ago, when it was available in hard cover. Very well researched, very well written. An "in the trenches" account of dealing with family with a history with Alzheimer's disease.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such a sad disease for the whole family. This book does a good job of telling it like it is and some up to date science.

[Samantha · Rating 4 out of 5]

A history of Alzheimer's intertwined with the author's family's story. It gave me good information as well as inspiration.

[Catherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author weaves his own story in with the story of the scientific work on Alzheimer's. Fascinating.

[Kyle Putman · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author wonderfully melds personal anecdotes of his family's tragic history of Alzheimer's with factual and scientific studies into the world of this terrible disease.