OUT OF JOINT: A Private and Public Story of Arthritis (American Lives) - Hardcover

"In her brilliant, poetic memoir Mary Felstiner blends her personal story with the larger and often hidden story of millions of Americans who suffer chronic pain and arthritic disabilities. A major achievement and a great read."--Gerda Lerner, author of The Creation of Patriarchy, Why History Matters, and Fireweed "A startling, poignant depiction of the progression of arthritis and of the person who is afflicted. Written from the heart with great lucidity and power, this book will alter forever the way you think about chronic illness."--Irvin Yalom, MD, author of The Schopenhauer Cure: A Novel "Has there ever been a disease that is so widespread, about which there has previously been so little thoughtful writing? Mary Felstiner has created a landmark in the literature, as Susan Sontag did with her book about cancer."--Adam Hochschild, prize-winning author of Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves "Although this memoir is a mediation on illness, pain, suffering, loss, history and mortality, it does all these things charmingly and effortlessly. It is a quirky, brave, heartening book that is easy to curl up at night with, yet cannot be forgotten in the morning."--Melanie Thernstrom, author of The Dead Girl "Out of Joint remins us how the words we use as health professionals can have a profound negative effect on the recipient's appraisal of the stiuation... THis book is inspiring and easy to read."--Nursing Standard, November 1, 2006

She begins, in the morning, by casing her joints: Can her ankles take the stairs? Will her fingers open a jar? Peel an orange? But it did not begin this way for Mary Felstiner, who went to bed one night an active professional and healthy young mother, and woke the next morning literally out of joint. With wrists and elbows no longer working right, she'd discovered one of the first signs of rheumatoid arthritis, the most virulent form of a common disease. Out of Joint is her account of living through arthritis, a distinction she shares with seventy million Americans. While arthritis pain affects one out of three Americans, this book is the first to tell the personal story of the nation's most common yet neglected disease. Part memoir, part medical and social history, Out of Joint folds the author's private experience into far-reaching investigations of a socially hidden ailment and of any chronic condition - how to handle love, work, sexuality, fatigue, betrayal, pain, time, mortality, rights, myths, and memory. Moving from the 1940s to the present, this story of one life with arthritis exposes little-known medical research and provocative social issues: alarming controversies over arthritis miracle drugs, intense demands concerning disability, and the surprising and disproportionate number of women affected by chronic illness. From this prize-winning historian comes a call for healing through history, a moving meditation on the way chronic conditions can be treated by enlisting the past. Mary Felstiner is a professor of history at San Francisco State University and the author of To Paint Her Life: Charlotte Salomon in the Nazi Era.