Abraham Verghese recommended in yesterday’s Five Best in The Wall Street Journal five of his favorite books by physicians, including two memoirs. Adventures in Two Worlds is A. J. Cronin’s memoir about being a young physician in a Welsh mining town. The Puzzle People by Thomas E. Starzl is the memoir of the pioneer transplantation surgeon.

Memoirs come in all shapes and sizes. Danny Gregory’s Everyday Matters: A Memoir is a graphic memoir (a memoir told in pictures and words). Danny and his wife, Patti, were happily married and had a 10-month-old son when Patti fell under a subway train and was paralyzed from the waist down.

Everday Matters is a picture-chronicle of Danny’s transformation after Patti’s accident. He realizes he needs to slow down. He teaches himself to draw, and in doing so finds himself looking at the world anew. “You sit and stare at something long enough, and it starts to come to life.” Most people draw badly, he says, because they draw symbols, not what they really see. How could he have missed so much of what was all around him?

Who among us has not had that feeling?

This memoir is a lifetime of eye-opening in just 120 pages. If you’ve ever felt sorry for yourself, if you know someone who is handicapped, if you’ve ever tried to draw or paint, or even if you just love New York City, you must buy this book.

Wake up. What do you really see?

Let me know.

Danny Gregory is the author of several books, including The Creative License. His illustrated journal is read daily by thousands on Dannygregory.com. He lives in New York City with his wife and son.

Even though my parents and grandparents were born and raised in Kansas, they never mentioned the Orphan Trains. In the years between 1854 and 1929, The Children’s Aid Society and the New York Foundling Hospital developed a program whereby up to an estimated 200,000 orphaned, abandoned, or homeless children—mainly in New York City and Boston—traveled by train to adoptive homes in 47 of the 48 states then comprising the United States. The children came to be known as “Orphan Train Riders.”

In Fly Little Bird, Fly! Donna Nordmark Aviles tells the true story of her grandfather Oliver’s early life as an orphan in New York City.  Fly Little Bird, Fly! won the National Best Books 2009 Award.

In Beyond the Orphan Train, Donna Nordmark Aviles describes her grandfather’s life as an Orphan Train Rider. Beyond the Orphan Train won the National Best Books 2009 Award.

Aviles’ third book, Peanut Butter for Cupcakes, focuses on Oliver as an adult. The story describes how he survived with his six children during the 1930s, after the sudden and tragic death of his young wife, Estella. Peanut Butter for Cupcakes was a 2009 Next Generation Indie Book Award Finalist and National Best Books 2009 Award Finalist.

Orphan Train Riders were told not to talk about their past lives. Their collective experiences disappeared from consciousness. Gradually, however, their descendants began to unearth and honor their past.  There is now a museum dedicated to the Orphan Train children, The National Orphan Train Complex, Inc., located in Concordia, Kansas.

Was someone in your family a part of history? Have you asked questions about what happened? Friday, November 27, 2009, is StoryCorps’ National Day of Listening. Its goal is to encourage you to take an hour and record a conversation with someone who is important to you. Why not set aside some time over Thanksgiving to ask, first, whether your loved one played a part in history? If so, what was it like? Were they in a war? Were they dislocated in a natural disaster? Did they take part in protests? Did they witness a famous event?

Let me know how it goes. What questions did you ask?

Happy Thanksgiving!

I liked this official, political autobiography more than I thought I would. I had expected something staid, so I was disarmed by the book’s openness. It is far from the whole truth and it reads like it. But the book has a lyrical charm that is full of heartache and blessing. Perhaps that’s the Irish in Ted Kennedy.

There is a loving, nostalgic quality to the first half of the book, where Kennedy details growing up in the Kennedy clan. True Compass is as close as we will ever come to having memoirs by his three older brothers:  Joe (who was killed in action in 1944), Jack (who was assassinated in 1963), and Bobby (who was assassinated in 1968). Ted looked up to them from the viewpoint of a much-younger brother. Jack (who was 15 years older) was his godfather, mentor, and guide to Washington politics. The book is full of examples of Jack’s thoughtful tutelage and care. Ted Kennedy doesn’t seem to have been as close to Bobby. As the caboose in a long line of overachievers, Ted felt he couldn’t live up. “As I think back to my three brothers, and about what they had accomplished before I was even out of childhood,” he writes, “it sometimes has occurred to me that my entire life has been a constant state of catching up.”

Kennedy had his share of childhood hardship. I was surprised that Kennedy attended 10 schools between 1937 (age 5) to 1950 (age 18). He was a mediocre student who never stayed at any school long enough to form friendships. At one point, he was sent to a Catholic boarding school in Riverdale,  New York, where he witnessed nightly sexual abuse of boys by an abusive housemaster, which he says he luckily missed.

The second half of the book is a more traditional political autobiography, except that Ted Kennedy comes across as a man who got lost along the way. He says he could not cope after Jack and Bobby were murdered. It never occurred to him he was being overwhelmed by grief and could get help. He says he kept it all inside and tried to keep going. He drank too much. His life spun out of control. Although he admits to his weaknesses and foibles generally, when he comes up to the brink of the serious scandals, such as Chappaquiddick, he stops at the edge and sticks to the script. I’m not sure it’s reasonable to have expected more, but I was still disappointed.  By the time he finally found himself, Kennedy had figured out how to deepen his love of country, family and friends, and work. He had also figured out that he needed to be married to a buddy, not a trophy wife.  He devotes a chapter to Victoria Reggie Kennedy, making it clear that without her, he would never have been the man he became.

I was recently contacted by Shawn Nicholls, the on-line publicist at William Morrow. William Morrow is the publisher of The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope, by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer. Because I had reviewed Three Cups of Tea, Shawn asked me if I would review The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind.

I’m glad I said yes.

William Kamkwamba grew up in Masitala village, a small village near the city of Kasungu, in Malawi. Poverty, lack of resources, back-breaking work, and a corrupt government were the everyday realities in William’s life. On their own, they would have been enough to break anyone, but on top of them, William also faced drought, famine, and starvation. His dog starved to death, as did at least one of his classmates. There so little to eat, villagers ate maize husks left in the dirt.

And yet, William pursued his dream of building a windmill to create electricity. He was a self-taught tinkerer who repaired radios, and an avid reader. He devoured Explaining Physics, which he borrowed from a small local lending library. With an insatiable drive and an avid desire to learn, but with very little help from anyone else, he eventually built the windmill, which supplies electricity to his family and village. Thist accomplishment may not sound like much, but in Malawi, only 2% of the population has electricity. And William was born in 1988, so he’s only in his 20s.

An old philosophical debate asks the question: are we living in the best of all possible worlds or the worst of all possible worlds? I like to think, as Adin Steinsaltz has said, that we are living in the worst of all possible worlds in which there is still hope. This book is about being inventive in nearly impossible circumstances. It will inspire you. I highly recommend it.