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Victories Never Last: Reading and Caregiving in a Time of Plague
A timely and nuanced book that sets the author’s experience as a nursing home volunteer during the pandemic alongside the wisdom of great thinkers who confronted their own plagues.
In any time of disruption or grief, many of us seek guidance in the work of great writers who endured similar circumstances. During the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, historian and biographer Robert Zaretsky did the same while also working as a volunteer in a nursing home in south Texas. In Victories Never Last Zaretsky weaves his reflections on the pandemic siege of his nursing home with the testimony of six writers on their own times of Thucydides, Marcus Aurelius, Michel de Montaigne, Daniel Defoe, Mary Shelley, and Albert Camus, whose novel The Plague provides the title of this book.
Zaretsky delves into these writers to uncover lessons that can provide deeper insight into our pandemic era. At the same time, he goes beyond the literature to invoke his own experience of the tragedy that enveloped his Texas nursing home, one which first took the form of chronic loneliness and then, inevitably, the deaths of many residents whom we come to know through Zaretsky’s stories. In doing so, Zaretsky shows the power of great literature to connect directly to one’s own life in a different moment and time.
For all of us still struggling to comprehend this pandemic and its toll, Zaretsky serves as a thoughtful and down-to-earth guide to the many ways we can come to know and make peace with human suffering.
In any time of disruption or grief, many of us seek guidance in the work of great writers who endured similar circumstances. During the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, historian and biographer Robert Zaretsky did the same while also working as a volunteer in a nursing home in south Texas. In Victories Never Last Zaretsky weaves his reflections on the pandemic siege of his nursing home with the testimony of six writers on their own times of Thucydides, Marcus Aurelius, Michel de Montaigne, Daniel Defoe, Mary Shelley, and Albert Camus, whose novel The Plague provides the title of this book.
Zaretsky delves into these writers to uncover lessons that can provide deeper insight into our pandemic era. At the same time, he goes beyond the literature to invoke his own experience of the tragedy that enveloped his Texas nursing home, one which first took the form of chronic loneliness and then, inevitably, the deaths of many residents whom we come to know through Zaretsky’s stories. In doing so, Zaretsky shows the power of great literature to connect directly to one’s own life in a different moment and time.
For all of us still struggling to comprehend this pandemic and its toll, Zaretsky serves as a thoughtful and down-to-earth guide to the many ways we can come to know and make peace with human suffering.
- GenresNonfictionHistory
208 pages, Hardcover
Published May 5, 2022
3 people are currently reading
87 people want to read
About the author
Robert Zaretsky
18 books46 followersRobert Zaretsky is a literary biographer and historian of France. He is Professor of Humanities at the Honors College, University of Houston, and the author of many books, including A Life Worth Living: Albert Camus and the Quest for Meaning and Boswell’s Enlightenment. Zaretsky is the history editor for the Los Angeles Review of Books, a regular columnist for The Forward, and a frequent contributor to The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and Foreign Policy.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
March 11, 2022
March 2020 the world changed. Robert Zaretsky’s university went to online classes. He volunteered at a nursing home, delivering and feeding meals to the elderly. For insight and clarity, Robert Zaretsky turned to writers who had written about the plagues they had lived through.
Victories Never Last looks to the past to understand our present. Pandemics have riddled human history; the result of the growth of cities and trade which fostered the spread of disease. The numbers of lives claimed by plagues is startling–until we consider that one of of four Americans have contracted Covid-19, and without the medical advancements and health care we enjoy, for our ancestors that meant one out of four died.
Fear and disorder were byproducts of disease, breaking down social, political, and religious order. Thucydides described the Athenian plague as stripping “society to its bones, baring a world of naked self-interest and preservation” Zaretsky shares.
Marcus Aurelius responded by writing his Meditations, his personal journal to aid his adherence to his Stoic philosophy.
Montaigne was still mayor of Bordeaux when the Bubonic Plague struck, taking nearly half the population. Retiring to a life of contemplation to write his essays, he concluded that “It is not what will be or what has been that counts, but our being at this moment that we should embrace.”
In his A Journal of the Plague Year, Daniel Defoe chronicled the Great Plague in 1665 London.
Albert Camus responded to the ‘brown plague’ of the Nazis; he noted that the plague in his novel has both “a social and metaphysical sense.”
Zaretsky compares Mary Wollstonecraft’s’ novel of plague The Last Man and Camus’ last, unfinished novel The First Man.
Throughout the book, Zaretsky relates his experiences in the nursing home and his own struggles with mortality. We are all frail and flawed human beings, he ends, all both the first and last of women and men.
Over these last years, many have turned to the past to help understand the present. These histories sadly show that the divisiveness which has upended our social welfare under Covid-19 is not new. These writers offer philosophies that can help us cope with our awareness of mortality.
I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.
Victories Never Last looks to the past to understand our present. Pandemics have riddled human history; the result of the growth of cities and trade which fostered the spread of disease. The numbers of lives claimed by plagues is startling–until we consider that one of of four Americans have contracted Covid-19, and without the medical advancements and health care we enjoy, for our ancestors that meant one out of four died.
Fear and disorder were byproducts of disease, breaking down social, political, and religious order. Thucydides described the Athenian plague as stripping “society to its bones, baring a world of naked self-interest and preservation” Zaretsky shares.
Marcus Aurelius responded by writing his Meditations, his personal journal to aid his adherence to his Stoic philosophy.
Montaigne was still mayor of Bordeaux when the Bubonic Plague struck, taking nearly half the population. Retiring to a life of contemplation to write his essays, he concluded that “It is not what will be or what has been that counts, but our being at this moment that we should embrace.”
In his A Journal of the Plague Year, Daniel Defoe chronicled the Great Plague in 1665 London.
Albert Camus responded to the ‘brown plague’ of the Nazis; he noted that the plague in his novel has both “a social and metaphysical sense.”
Zaretsky compares Mary Wollstonecraft’s’ novel of plague The Last Man and Camus’ last, unfinished novel The First Man.
Throughout the book, Zaretsky relates his experiences in the nursing home and his own struggles with mortality. We are all frail and flawed human beings, he ends, all both the first and last of women and men.
Over these last years, many have turned to the past to help understand the present. These histories sadly show that the divisiveness which has upended our social welfare under Covid-19 is not new. These writers offer philosophies that can help us cope with our awareness of mortality.
I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.
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January 7, 2022I think the description of this book is a little misleading. I expected Zaretsky to discuss how the writers and historians featured in this book viewed the pandemics that they witnessed and make connections to his experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic.
I think that was the idea, but unfortunately I don't think that Zaretsky executed it the way he imagined it. In the sections examining the various writers, the author goes on tangents that have very little to do with the supposed subject of the book: pandemics throughout history. I often found myself in the middle of a passage about something entirely unrelated, asking myself what this had to do with anything.
Amongst the sections of history are excerpts of the author's own experience volunteering in a nursing home during the pandemic. I found the transitions between the history and the present day to be nearly nonexistent and, moreover, Zaretsky didn't try to relate the two at all. Even though I highlighted quite a few parallels that I saw between the accounts of pandemics past and our experiences now, Zaretsky does not point these out to the reader.
I think this book had potential and the premise was very interesting, but in the end I found it to be disorganized and lacking in structure.
I think that was the idea, but unfortunately I don't think that Zaretsky executed it the way he imagined it. In the sections examining the various writers, the author goes on tangents that have very little to do with the supposed subject of the book: pandemics throughout history. I often found myself in the middle of a passage about something entirely unrelated, asking myself what this had to do with anything.
Amongst the sections of history are excerpts of the author's own experience volunteering in a nursing home during the pandemic. I found the transitions between the history and the present day to be nearly nonexistent and, moreover, Zaretsky didn't try to relate the two at all. Even though I highlighted quite a few parallels that I saw between the accounts of pandemics past and our experiences now, Zaretsky does not point these out to the reader.
I think this book had potential and the premise was very interesting, but in the end I found it to be disorganized and lacking in structure.
December 1, 2021
As the subheader states: a work exploring reading and caregiving through the COVID-19 epidemic.
The author intersperses discussions of Thucydides, Defore, Camus, and others with his own experiences of helping to care for the elderly in a nursing home facility.
The discussions on the books are well historically informed and well nuanced. The choice of The Plague as opposed to finding something more related to H1N1 in 1918 is interesting but understandable in light of the veil of silence which covered that H1N1 outbreak.
The author makes good reflections. A history of pandemics, however, this is not.
**--galley received as part of early review program
The author intersperses discussions of Thucydides, Defore, Camus, and others with his own experiences of helping to care for the elderly in a nursing home facility.
The discussions on the books are well historically informed and well nuanced. The choice of The Plague as opposed to finding something more related to H1N1 in 1918 is interesting but understandable in light of the veil of silence which covered that H1N1 outbreak.
The author makes good reflections. A history of pandemics, however, this is not.
**--galley received as part of early review program
April 3, 2022
This was an interesting combination of philosophy and history by Robert Zaretsky, with accounts of how famous writers and emperors handled other plagues. The section on Marcus Aurelius and his belief in Stoicism is probably the most moving and useful today, I thought. Zaratesky intersperses these with stories about his time volunteering in a nursing home during Covid.
I found this rather hard to read as an ebook because it is quite heavy-going and it really needs time and attention. My advice is to buy the paperback. Be prepared, though. It can be depressing and harrowing.
I received this ebook from NetGalley in return for an honest review.
I found this rather hard to read as an ebook because it is quite heavy-going and it really needs time and attention. My advice is to buy the paperback. Be prepared, though. It can be depressing and harrowing.
I received this ebook from NetGalley in return for an honest review.
November 15, 2022
Pandemic has shaped our though and society in ways of which we are only partially aware. This book shows the thoughts of others in history when plagues came through, from Rome to London to Texas.
Now I’m ready to read the texts to see what they saw when plagues struck society.
Now I’m ready to read the texts to see what they saw when plagues struck society.
November 27, 2021
Really interesting, well written, I learned a heck of a lot in a short time. Very interesting to see covid from inside the American care system
December 24, 2023
My rating is actually a 3.5, but bumped up to a 4 because I know the book will need more than one reading--and the fact that I'm willing to return, tells me that it's worth the bump up. It's not exactly an academic book, but it is written by an academic, tying his experiences volunteering at an un-named elder care facility somewhere in Texas during the COVID pandemic and tying those experiences or at least attempting to, with his favorite epi/pandemic or plague-related reads. Those include Thucydides's "Plague of Athens" chapter from his History of the Peloponnesian War; Marcus Aurelius & his Meditations, which while not about disease was written in a time of an epidemic now referred to as the "Antonine Plague"; Montaigne's essays which were written or composed while in isolation during the great bubonic plague epidemics sweeping across Europe (and the only pandemic that has a confirmed association with the actual plague disease); Defoe naturally.. I won't say more; and last but not least, Camus's The Plague which ised disease as a stand-in for fascist/Nazi occupation. I too listened to this last book while in semi-isolation in Leeds during the first several months of the pandemic.
Victories Never Last is the type of book I might well have written, or wish I had, minus the volunteer experiences, since I did not have any. My reading list would include Camus--whose descriptions of the social fallout felt shockingly familiar; Boccacio's Decameron and Geraldine Brook's fiction set in plague-ridden England. .. I'm sure there were others but I won't write that book here! Besides, first I need to go back to another page on this site and look over my reading challenges for 2020 & 21. Okay. .enough of being so self-referential. Bottom line, I liked both the conceit and the content of this book.
June 21 '23 addendum
I re-read the book a--or at least skimmed over a large part, because I finally got my review of finished. The turnaround for it's publication has been the fastest ever--literally just a couple of days! Here's my published review.
Victories Never Last is the type of book I might well have written, or wish I had, minus the volunteer experiences, since I did not have any. My reading list would include Camus--whose descriptions of the social fallout felt shockingly familiar; Boccacio's Decameron and Geraldine Brook's fiction set in plague-ridden England. .. I'm sure there were others but I won't write that book here! Besides, first I need to go back to another page on this site and look over my reading challenges for 2020 & 21. Okay. .enough of being so self-referential. Bottom line, I liked both the conceit and the content of this book.
June 21 '23 addendum
I re-read the book a--or at least skimmed over a large part, because I finally got my review of finished. The turnaround for it's publication has been the fastest ever--literally just a couple of days! Here's my published review.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews