title: The End of the Twins: A Memoir of Losing a Brother
author:  Saul Diskin 
description: There has been no dearth of well-wrought books tracing the years and days leading to the inevitable death of a loved one. Diskin enters the field with a memoir of his brother's two-decade battle with leukemia that's both stylistically solid and, on occasion, emotionally gripping. There's also a twist: the brother whose passing inspired this story, Martin, is Saul's identical twin. Woven through the account of the one's decline and death is the other's attempt to grapple with the looming loss of half his being an intellectual and spiritual exercise that feeds into society's fascination with the mystery of what it means to be a body double, a "superior freak." The book's first third covers the boys' ragamuffin upbringing in Jewish-immigrant Brooklyn before, during and after the Second World War; their precocious early years as voracious readers; the determined (and sometimes ferocious) development of distinct personalities; and their eventual estrangement as they enter adulthood and move into marriage, parenthood and quite separate careers (Martin as a leftist specialist in Latin American studies, Saul as a businessman with moderate to conservative politics). But when "Marty" reveals his illness to "Sauly" in 1971, the near-mystical bond of their boyhood years is renewed even more so by the early 1990s, when it becomes obvious that the one brother's best hope for survival is through receiving the freely given bone marrow of the other, a harrowingly painful procedure for both men that gives one just a couple more years of life.
zlib_text:  
   
  BROTHER
  IN ARMS
   
  A.J. Downey
   
   
   
   
  
  Second Circle Press
  
  Contents
  Title Page
  Book Summary
  Author's Note
  Dedication
  The Sacred Brotherhood
  Publishing Info
  Prologue
  Chapter 1
  Chapter 2
  Chapter 3
  Chapter 4
  Chapter 5
  Chapter 6
  Chapter 7
  Chapter 8
  Chapter 9
  Chapter 10
  Chapter 11
  Chapter 12
  Chapter 13
  Chapter 14
  Chapter 15
  Chapter 16
  Chapter 17
  
  Chapter 18
  Chapter 19
  Chapter 20
  Chapter 21
  Chapter 22
  Chapter 23
  Chapter 24
  Chapter 25
  Chapter 26
  Chapter 27
  Chapter 28
  Chapter 29
  Chapter 30
  Chapter 31
  Chapter 32
  Chapter 33
  Chapter 34
  Chapter 35
  Epilogue
  Other books by A.J. Downey
  About the Author
  
  Rush had always been the brother that was the most up for adventure. Then
  Grinder died and he realized that it was time to slow down. Fast-forward by
  a year and more and his older brother Archer had found Mel. Hell, his own
  twin was with a woman of his own! Rush is starting to get restless again,
  which was just perfect. Cue a string of anonymous hook-ups and one night
  stands. It was enough to fee