Felstiner brings a feminist's eye and a historian's tool kit to this narrative of her decades-long struggle with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), a crippling autoimmune disease that afflicts more than two million Americans. Felstiner (To Paint Her Life: Charlotte Salomon in the Nazi Era
), a professor of history at San Francisco State University, traces the growing scientific understanding of RA, from the earliest accounts in medical antiquity to the latest theories of how pregnancy might trigger the disorder. She touches on treatments, from antimalarial drugs through cortisone and the now-blackballed painkiller Vioxx. Part of the American Lives Series, edited by Tobias Wolff, Felstiner's memoir suffers at times from self-indulgent prose and tiresome metaphors. Yet the book's total effect is powerful, and her major chords strike true: RA is a devastatingly disabling condition with steep private and public costs; its disproportionate effects on women have not been adequately addressed; its social, political and interpersonal implications are significant. In the end, Felstiner's story is as much about the complexities of belonging—as a woman, a feminist, a Jew, an intellectual—as it is about her illness. So it has something to discover for any reader, pained joints or otherwise. 10 b&w photos. Agent, Gail Hochman.
(Oct.)
