Author: perbinder

The Perfect Salad Women and Cooking at the Turn of the Century. Written by Laura Shapiro. Illustrated. 280 pages. New York: Farrar, Strauss, Giroux. $16.95. Laura Shapiro’s delightful new book sheds light on one of the strangest mysteries of my adolescence. This is Goldenrod Eggs, the first lesson in my 8th grade home economics class, where I hard-boil the eggs, separate the whites and yolks, mix the chopped whites into freshly made white sauce, and pour the white mixture onto toast. Brush on top and artistically top everything with crushed egg yolk. As far as I know, no one has…

My relationships with my patients have been sharpened and deepened by my writing. They are happy to see us healthcare workers as human beings. However, my writing has polarized my relationships with colleagues. Almost without exception, people will take sides, as if they were on one side or the other. Some people want us to create an image of them as saints. Some people want to present us as the bad guys wreaking havoc on the world while lining our pockets with money in the name of Hippocrates and Flo Nightingale. And some of us are tired of trying to…

The Three Pound Universe By Judith Hooper and Dick Teresi. Illustrated. 410 pages. New York, Macmillan Press. $25. Mind is a strange situation indeed for matter. I often wonder how something like hydrogen, the simplest atom created in the early chaos of the universe, led to us and the wonderful frenzy we call consciousness. If the brain is made of only three pounds of blood, dreams, and electricity, how can we contemplate ourselves, worry about our souls, study time and motion, admire the bashful hooves of a goat, know that we will die, and enjoy all the fuss and fuss…