The Inheritance: A Family on the Front Lines of the Battle Against Alzheimer's Disease Hardcover – March 7, 2017

Enthralling book. This is both a compelling narrative of a regular American family and also insightful delve into medical progress made regarding Alzheimer's disease in the West. It's almost impossible to set down, and, unfortunately once you finish, you are acutely aware of another growing medical crisis currently unfolding in America. For all of our sake, I hope progress continues to be made! I am grateful to families like those chronicled in this book who have offered medical researchers and practitioners such intimate access into their lives, bodies, and very DNA.I am an avid reader, and I typically relying on checking out books from the library because otherwise I would have an incredibly expensive hobby! However, after reading a review of this in the NYTimes, I knew that this was one book I would eagerly pay the cover price to get my hands on. I am so happy that I did, and highly and widely recommend this book to anyone with even a passing interest in any of the topics covered under the book. Once I finished, I found myself googling names of the family members and other actors chronicled in the book to learn about any subsequent developments (even though the book almost takes you right up until present day!). Especially in an age of increasingly accessible and acceptable DNA testing, this book is more timely than ever.

For me – for many people – few things are as frightening as the loss of self that Alzheimer’s inflicts on its victims. Writing with clarity, compassion, and insight, Kapsambelis brings us into the DeMoe family, cursed with early-onset Alzheimer’s, and shows us the damage wrought by the disease, the burden it places on everyone in its orbit, and the courage and strength of the family to give whatever they can to the greater fight against the disease. This powerful book also spells out the history of science’s understanding of the disease, the determined (and seemingly ever more hopeful) efforts of a handful of researchers to find a cure, and how the DeMoes’ have helped advance their efforts. That said, the book is no hagiography – we see the family’s flaws, their idiosyncrasies, and their fears and hesitations too – but, by showing us their humanity, the author helps us feel their hardships and their hopes more deeply.By the end, I had to fight back tears over the accumulated losses the DeMoes (and others) had suffered, but I was heartened by how far the science of this disease has come, and how important that progress is. Perhaps the author’s greatest achievement is making the reader understand, on a visceral level, the human, financial, and societal toll that this disease will take on our society if no cure is found.

I don't intend to diminish the importance or seriousness of this book, nor to gainsay the tragedies it conveys. To read about the impact of Alzheimer's Disease on families is beyond disturbing. The book also does a good if somewhat tedious job of recounting the failure or inability of science to find meaningful treatments of or cures for Alzheimer's.My problem with this book is that, due to my own experience with the disease and the previous reading I had done about it, "The Inheritance" didn't tell me anything I didn't know or hadn't experienced. I watched for 12 years as my mother-in-law changed from the sweet, warm, loving and funny woman she was into a withdrawn, silent and even occasionally angry shell of a human being. I also know about the treatments that were administered to her, all without success -- and even without any meaningful results. I spent a few years on the board of my local chapter of the Alzheimer's Association, gaining knowledge but ultimately being dissatisfied with the drive to raise funds rather than deal with the disease on a human level.So while I think it's important for people to read this book (or one of the many others that deal with the disease and the related failure of science), for me, on an entirely personal basis, it didn't do anything other than remind me of what I already knew.

Adm Nimitz said Iwo Jima was where uncommon valor was a common virtue . . . that is the same for the DeMoe family. A family that willingly enlisted as soldiers to fight against a disease, Alzheimer’s, which robs us of our most cherished possession - memories.For those that have fought or have family fighting this condition, the book will reconfirm many of the gut wrenching choices one makes helping a loved one through the disease progression. For those wanting a cure, the book reads like a crime novel with brilliant detectives scouring the globe searching and finding cures for the coming cataclysmic personal as well as economic tragedy.At the end, it is a love story told of one family (also carried out in communities across the globe) sacrificing and caring for those they love.Buy the book you will not be disappointed.

As a fellow North Dakotan, I really wanted to give this book 5 stars but I just couldn't. Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed the detailed history of Alzheimer's Disease's affect on the family but felt a little overwhelmed during the chapters detailing the Alzheimer's research. With that being said, I did learn a significant amount of information about Alzheimer's that I wouldn't have otherwised sought out. A good book but prepare yourself for an in depth look into the progression of the research pertaining to Alzheimer's.