Melanie Thernstrom's Books

The Dead Girl

By: Melanie Thernstrom

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Berkeley student Roberta Lee went running with her lover Bradley Page in 1984. Page came back alone and Roberta's battered body was found five weeks later. Within hours, Page confessed to Roberta's murder--and then recanted. Written by Roberta's closest friend, this haunting, multi-layered work is a superb collage of memory, loss, and redemption. Illustrated throughout.

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452

Published Date

ISBN 10

067166333X

ISBN 13

9780671663339

Halfway Heaven

Diary of a Harvard Murder

By: Melanie Thernstrom

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Halfway Heaven

Diary of a Harvard Murder

By: Melanie Thernstrom

In May, 1995, a photograph and an anonymous note arrived at The Harvard Crimson: "Keep this picture. There will soon be a very juicy story involving this woman." Soon afterwards, Sinedu Tadesse stabbed her roommate, Trang Phuong Ho, to death, and then hanged herself. This riveting book recounts the stories of these women, whose admission to Harvard was "halfway heaven," a bridge to the American dream after lives of hardship. Sinedu grew up under communist tyranny in Ethiopia, while Trang was born in a Vietnamese forced labor camp, and fled the country with her father and sister to end up on welfare in Boston. Despite their similarities, the two were never friends; Trang was friendly and outgoing, while Sinedu, awkward and shy, had trouble adjusting to a culture vastly different from her own. Drawing upon her astonishing diaries, New York Times bestselling author Thernstrom, a Harvard graduate herself, reconstructs Sinedu's inner life to reveal a girl struggling against isolation and depression. The book reveals Harvard as an institution ill-equipped to deal with mental illness on campus that apparently cared more for its reputation than for its student body. A brilliant synthesis of cultural analysis, psychological study, and first-rate investigative journalism, Halfway Heaven is a haunting exploration of the power of profound loneliness and an expose of one of America's most distinguished universities.

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Page Count

241

Publisher

Penguin

Published Date

ISBN 10

0452280079

ISBN 13

9780452280076

The Pain Chronicles

Cures, Myths, Mysteries, Prayers, Diaries, Brain Scans, Healing, and the Science of Suffering

By: Melanie Thernstrom

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The Pain Chronicles

Cures, Myths, Mysteries, Prayers, Diaries, Brain Scans, Healing, and the Science of Suffering

By: Melanie Thernstrom

Each of us will know physical pain in our lives, but none of us knows when it will come or how long it will stay. Today as much as 10 percent of the population of the United States suffers from chronic pain. It is more widespread, misdiagnosed, and undertreated than any major disease. While recent research has shown that pain produces pathological changes to the brain and spinal cord, many doctors and patients still labor under misguided cultural notions and outdated scientific dogmas that prevent proper treatment, to devastating effect. In The Pain Chronicles, a singular and deeply humane work, Melanie Thernstrom traces conceptions of pain throughout the ages—from ancient Babylonian pain-banishing spells to modern brain imaging—to reveal the elusive, mysterious nature of pain itself. Interweaving first-person reflections on her own battle with chronic pain, incisive reportage from leading-edge pain clinics and medical research, and insights from a wide range of disciplines—science, history, religion, philosophy, anthropology, literature, and art—Thernstrom shows that when dealing with pain we are neither as advanced as we imagine nor as helpless as we may fear. Both a personal meditation and an intellectual exploration, The Pain Chronicles illuminates and makes sense of the all-too-human experience of pain—and confronts with extraordinary grace and empathy its peculiar traits, its harrowing effects, and its various antidotes.

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Page Count

378

Publisher

Macmillan + ORM

Published Date

ISBN 10

1429979453

ISBN 13

9781429979450

The Pain Chronicles

Cures, Myths, Mysteries, Prayers, Diaries, Brain Scans, Healing, and the Science of Suffering

By: Melanie Thernstrom

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The Pain Chronicles

Cures, Myths, Mysteries, Prayers, Diaries, Brain Scans, Healing, and the Science of Suffering

By: Melanie Thernstrom

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378

Publisher

Macmillan + ORM

Published Date

ISBN 10

1429979453

ISBN 13

9781429979450

Halfway Heaven

Diary of a Harvard Murder

By: Melanie Thernstrom

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Halfway Heaven

Diary of a Harvard Murder

By: Melanie Thernstrom

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241

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Penguin

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ISBN 10

0452280079

ISBN 13

9780452280076

Disturbing Calculations

The Economics of Identity in Postcolonial Southern Literature, 1912-2002

By: Melanie Benson Taylor

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Disturbing Calculations

The Economics of Identity in Postcolonial Southern Literature, 1912-2002

By: Melanie Benson Taylor

In Thomas Wolfe’sLook Homeward, Angel, Margaret Leonard says, “Never mind about algebra here. That’s for poor folks. There’s no need for algebra where two and two make five.” Moments of mathematical reckoning like this pervade twentieth-century southern literature, says Melanie R. Benson. In fiction by a large, diverse group of authors, including William Faulkner, Anita Loos, William Attaway, Dorothy Allison, and Lan Cao, Benson identifies a calculation-obsessed, anxiety-ridden discourse in which numbers are employed to determine social and racial hierarchies and establish individual worth and identity. This “narcissistic fetish of number” speaks to a tangle of desires and denials rooted in the history of the South, capitalism, and colonialism. No one evades participation in these “disturbing equations,” says Benson, wherein longing for increase, accumulation, and superiority collides with repudiation of the means by which material wealth is attained. Writers from marginalized groups--including African Americans, Native Americans, women, immigrants, and the poor--have deeply internalized and co-opted methods and tropes of the master narrative even as they have struggled to wield new voices unmarked by the discourse of the colonizer. Having nominally emerged from slavery’s legacy, the South is now situated in the agonized space between free market capitalism and social progressivism. Elite southerners work to distance themselves from capitalism’s dehumanizing mechanisms, while the marginalized yearn to realize the uniquely American narrative of accumulation and ascent. The fetish of numbers emerges to signify the futility of both.

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Page Count

280

Publisher

University of Georgia Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0820336726

ISBN 13

9780820336725

The Dead Girl

By: Melanie Thernstrom

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The Dead Girl

By: Melanie Thernstrom

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452

Published Date

ISBN 10

067166333X

ISBN 13

9780671663339

Envy and Gratitude

And Other Works, 1946-1963

By: Melanie Klein

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Envy and Gratitude

And Other Works, 1946-1963

By: Melanie Klein

This text collects Melaine Klein's writings from 1946 until her death in 1960, including two papers published posthumously. This was her last major work which introduces her theory of primary envy.

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Page Count

382

Publisher

Random House

Published Date

ISBN 10

0099752018

ISBN 13

9780099752011

Book's by Melanie Thernstrom

The Dead Girl

The Dead Girl

Halfway Heaven

Halfway Heaven

The Pain Chronicles

The Pain Chronicles

The Pain Chronicles

The Pain Chronicles

Halfway Heaven

Halfway Heaven

Disturbing Calculations

Disturbing Calculations

The Dead Girl

The Dead Girl

Envy and Gratitude

Envy and Gratitude

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