In Progress

Emerson: Life Repair  takes America’s first and best philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1883), and applies his lessons to contemporary life.  In spite of the grandeur of his writing, many people find him hard to understand much less to apply to their own lives. This is ironic, because all Emerson was trying to do is to give self-reliance and inspiration to the weary, disillusioned or timid. This pragmatic and rousing book seeks to elucidate Emerson—and pinpoint all he has to teach us today.

A Propos d’Anne: Une Lettre au Generale de Gaulle (in French) is an open letter to France’s most famous president. Unbeknownst to his admirers, France’s near-legendary strongman was also the father of a preternaturally frail girl. Anne de Gaulle was born with Down Syndrome in 1928 and died in her father’s arms only two decades later. During her lifetime she accompanied the president on his meditation walks, attended his lullabies and shared his moments of greatest tenderness. Her portrait deflected a bullet and saved his life in an assassination attempt. Her body now lies next to his in the presidential tomb. Those who understood Charles de Gaulle’s intimacy with his daughter say it was a secret source of his strength and a major element in his fierce resistance during World War II to the Nazis, who were, as he knew, actively exterminating children like his beloved Anne.

This is an indiscreet personal letter to a discreet public man from a woman who would neither have met nor sympathized with him in his lifetime–were it not for the daughters they shared.