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The youngest of nine children, Michael Downing was three when his father died — suddenly and inexplicably. No autopsy was performed. The family diagnosis was God’s will.
As a boy, Downing rigorously trained as a spiritual athlete, preparing to vault into heaven. But eventually he escaped the religious dogma, and the family arena — until one of his brothers died in 2003, suddenly and inexplicably. No autopsy was performed.
Alarmed, Downing pursued a diagnosis: Drawn into a world of researchers, clinicians, and manufacturers with their own arcane ethics and faith, Downing discovered he had inherited a mutant protein from his father, and the first symptom would be his sudden death.
To save his life, a defibrillator was hard-wired to his heart. Within weeks, he needed emergency surgery to remove the device and the life-threatening infection he got with it. Two months later, he was re-implanted — only to read in his morning newspaper that the new wires anchored to his heart were prone to failure. His device might be powerless, or it might deliver a series of unwarranted, possibly fatal, shocks.
From a bedeviled boyhood in the Berkshires to a grim comedy of errors in one of Boston’s best hospitals, Life with Sudden Death is a wild ride. ...
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Sam and Ed live the high life, and see no reason to add to their happy twosome. Then 11-year-old Scot’s mother dies, and a wine-soaked promise pushes the couple into parenthood. They dutifully make all the usual arrangements, but Scot is far from usual, sporting makeup and enduring bullying at school. Soon Sam and Ed begin to question their parenting, their commitment to each other, and the compromises they’ve made to live in a straight society. Breakfast with Scot is a humorous, heartwarming novel about the true meaning of family. ...
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Michael Downing is obsessed with Daylight Saving, the loopy idea that became the most persistent political controversy in American history. Almost one hundred years after Congressmen and lawmakers in every state first debated, ridiculed, and then passionately embraced the possibility of saving an hour of daylight, no one can say for sure why we are required by law to change our clocks twice a year. Who first proposed the scheme? The most authoritative sources agree it was a Pittsburgh industrialist, Woodrow Wilson, a man on a horse in London, a Manhattan socialite, Benjamin Franklin, one of the Caesars, or the anonymous makers of ancient Chinese and Japanese water clocks. Spring Forward is a portrait of public policy in the 20th century, a perennially boiling cauldron of unsubstantiated science, profiteering masked as piety, and mysteriously shifting time-zone boundaries. It is a true-to-life social comedy with Congress in the leading role, surrounded by a supporting cast of opportunistic ministers, movie moguls, stockbrokers, labor leaders, sports fanatics, and railroad execs....
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Michael Downing is obsessed with Daylight Saving, the loopy idea that became the most persistent political controversy in American history. Almost one hundred years after Congressmen and lawmakers in every state first debated, ridiculed, and then passionately embraced the possibility of saving an hour of daylight, no one can say for sure why we are required by law to change our clocks twice a year. Who first proposed the scheme? The most authoritative sources agree it was a Pittsburgh industrialist, Woodrow Wilson, a man on a horse in London, a Manhattan socialite, Benjamin Franklin, one of the Caesars, or the anonymous makers of ancient Chinese and Japanese water clocks. Spring Forward is a portrait of public policy in the 20th century, a perennially boiling cauldron of unsubstantiated science, profiteering masked as piety, and mysteriously shifting time-zone boundaries. It is a true-to-life social comedy with Congress in the leading role, surrounded by a supporting cast of opportunistic ministers, movie moguls, stockbrokers, labor leaders, sports fanatics, and railroad execs....
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