Villa Air-Bel: World War II, Escape, and a House in Marseille (Rosemary Sullivan)

I just barely finished this 400-page historical wonder before the library reminded me that my renewal is up again. Whew! This was one of those page-turners that I'd be darned to return until I completed the last page. This book recounts a terrifying period of history, focusing on a group of writers, poets, playwrights, artists, and political activists that were literally stuck in Nazi-occupied France, hiding out in Marseille as the Vichy government played puppet to Hitler. The government rounded up Jews, anti-Nazi writers, and any other "elements" that could be considered dangerous. What they feared? Being imprisoned and sent off to the internment camps, with little water, food, or shelter to survive. Little did they know--or anyone really at that time--that those internment camps were extermination centers.The clandestine group included such famous folks as André Breton, Max Ernst, Victor Serge, Marc Chagall, Consuelo de Saint-Exupéry, Remedios Varo, Benjamin Péret, and scores of others. Led by stiff and staid Varian Fry, a US activist turned international diplomat for refugees, and helped by Miriam Davenport, heiress Mary Jayne Gold, Danny Bénédite and his British wife, Theo, they began a program financed privately by the Emergency Rescue Committee to get endangered writers and artists out of France and to the US. These people went to extraordinary, even harrowing lengths to survive and to escape, despite the many threats and obstacles.Sullivan draws their stories so vividly, detailing how the events of WWII brought these people together and radically changed their lives. The book ends with a synopsis of what happens to each of these individuals following the war. What we hope for--the blessing of peace and safety for each of these people after the war--is not what we get. A sad reminder that memory is never left behind.

Cheating Destiny (James Hirsch)

"America's biggest epidemic," according to James Hirsch, author of Cheating Destiny, is diabetes.  Hirsch, who is a Washington-Post journalist, has juvenile diabetes himself, as does his famous brother, Irl Hirsch, who works at the University of Washington as diabetes researcher and clinician. And during the course of writing the book, James Hirsch's three-year old son is diagnosed with diabetes as well. Family genetics play an awfully sure role in developing diabetes.

A little over 50 years ago, there wasn't yet insulin. Now there is plenty of insulin but also still plenty of blame. I live with a man who is diabetic, and am familiar with how much responsibility we place on those with diabetes. If they would only be more careful, monitor their diet more, exercise more or in moderation, then they wouldn't have such highs. They wouldn't have such lows.

Hirsch argues that key figures in the history of diabetic care have created our current attitude, to place the "burden" on the diabetic. To shift some of that responsibility to the health care industry would be more accurate and more helpful. Insulin--which is key to control--has seen sky-rocketing costs. Preventative care not profitable enough. Ironic indeed, since diabetic supplies are hugely profitable to pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, health care clinics, and manufacturers. Bigger bucks are made when the diabetic is ill, has heart disease (as many will), loses a limb or goes on kidney dialysis. The list of maladies caused by living with diabetes is long, the bill statement longer.

Hirsch tells this story as his story, making those of us who know little of the disease cognizant of the daily struggle a person with diabetes lives with, that day-by-day recognition that what is done today prevents what might happen tomorrow, or in other words: how to cheat destiny.