title: The Best of the Bellevue Literary Review
author:  Danielle Ofri 
description: <div>Danielle Ofri, MD, PhD, DLitt (Hon), is an attending physician in the medical clinic at Bellevue Hospital, and Assistant Professor of Medicine at New York University School of Medicine. She divides her time between seeing patients, teaching medical students and residents, editing and writing. Dr. Ofri is the Editor-in-Chief and co-founder of the Bellevue Literary Review. Sherwin B. Nuland is Clinical Professor of Surgery at the Yale University School of Medicine and a Fellow at Yale's Institute for Social and Policy Studies. He is the author of a number of books, among them HOW WE LIVE, and HOW WE DIE, which won the National Book Award for Nonfiction.</div>
zlib_text: Table of Contents
  
  [ _Title Page_](Shap_9780307425850_epub_tp_r1.htm)
  
   _Dedication_
  
   _Epigraph_
  
   _Praise_
  
  Chapter 1
  
  Chapter 2
  
  Chapter 3
  
  Chapter 4
  
  Chapter 5
  
  Chapter 6
  
  Chapter 7
  
  Chapter 8
  
  Chapter 9
  
  Chapter 10
  
  Chapter 11
  
  Chapter 12
  
   _Acknowledgments_
  
   _About the Author_
  
   _BOOKS BY DANI SHAPIRO_
  
   _Copyright Page_
  
   _For Michael_
  
  > > >  _I shall never know why_  
  >  _our lives took a turn for the worse, nor will you._  
  >  _Clouds sank into my arms and my arms rose._  
  >  _They are rising now._
  
   _—Mark Strand, “The Man in the Tree”_
  
   _Acclaim for Dani Shapiro’s_
  
  FAMILY HISTORY
  
  “Shapiro’s small observations of motherhood are keen and astute; they demand
  empathy. . . . Realistic and heartbreaking.”
  
  — _The San Diego Union-Tribune_
  
  “A brutal firecracker of a novel that chronicles the dissolution of a
  cinematically perfect New England family.”
  
  — _Newsday_
  
  “Shapiro has both a bestselling writer’s instinct for plot and pacing and a
  fine literary sensibility. . . . A pow