Nonfiction

But then Martha allegedly dumped some stock she was holding from her friend's company, because she allegedly found out that it was about to tank. The SEC, which spent an entire decade turning a blind eye to this sort of thing, decided to make a big show of prosecuting Martha Stewart and sending her to jail (at the exact point when they might've exerted a little more energy on, say, regulating credit default swaps or one of the other absurdities that led to the world economy imploding before our eyes).

So Martha did some hard time, we felt sorry for her, and then she made a comeback, which is by now a crucial part of any enduring brand's narrative arc. Sadly, though, the fortunes and reputations of a few other individuals were harmed in the storm of Martha's trial, and for mere mortals who don't happen to be internationally known branded entities, making a comeback isn't quite as easy as it is for Martha.

And so, we become witness to yet another tell-all book, this one by Martha's former best friend and confidante, Mariana Pasternak. If, at this late date, you still wonder what Martha Stewart is really like, the 395-page tome "The Best of Friends" will cure you of that affliction henceforth. In it, Pasternak paints an excruciatingly detailed portrait of the countless magical moments that she and Martha shared as close friends, moments inevitably sullied in one way or another by Martha's insensitivity or insecure maneuvering or controlling behaviors. None of this is at all surprising since Martha's alleged flaws were painstakingly detailed in Christopher Byron's unauthorized biography "Martha Inc.: The Incredible Story of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia" (and elsewhere). We know how Martha allegedly belittled her husband, or how she allegedly demanded way too much of everyone around her. Yes, writers and gossip hounds have knocked themselves out to demonstrate to us, time and again, that far from the glossy, Cheshire-cat-smiling image of domestic perfection, Martha is a domineering macho woman who tramples willy-nilly over the soft underbellies of every last colleague and friend she knows with her big old hobnailed gardening boots. Always on her way to some TV taping or big-named cocktail party, according to these accounts, Martha is preoccupied and careless and she hurts people using words.

Pasternak is made "uncomfortable" or hurt by Martha again and again over the course of their friendship, but missing from her tome are the carefully reconstructed moments where she actually confronts Martha about her insensitivity, and demands better treatment. No, instead Pasternak focuses the full force of her steel-trap mind to conjure up this or that glorious night spent wining and dining with Martha, the "antique English porcelain plates" they ate from, the "deep, linen-upholstered" chairs they sunk into, the marvelous paintings that hung on the walls, the views of the sound or the ocean they enjoyed, the wonderful petunias or the bamboo that was blossoming fragrantly that afternoon. Day after day, night after night, we're treated to the wonder of Marthaland, only to have Martha herself come in and spoil everything. Pasternak confides in Martha that her marriage is falling apart, and Martha announces it triumphantly to a whole roomful of people, saying "Brava for Mariana!" Pasternak is "flushed and flustered" and "baffled" that Martha would turn her "agony into a stage-worthy scene from the theater of the absurd." Another time, Martha makes a speech and "for the first time in our friendship, she publicly acknowledged my role in her life" by thanking Pasternak, by then a realtor, for helping her find her latest property. "Martha did not say I never took a commission, but the simple thank you, for me, was more than enough, and it brought tears to my eyes."

See how our intrepid author rises above petty grievances? A simple thank you was more than enough. But these moments of teary-eyed gratitude mixed with resentment are only the tip of the iceberg, once we come to the long list of fabulous trips that Martha and the author take together, trips with the author's two daughters whom Martha has come to refer to as her goddaughters. (They aren't her goddaughters, mind you, but Pasternak quite graciously allows Martha to bask in the illusion that they are – just one of many, many tender mercies Pasternak bestows on poor, pathetic, needy Martha out of the pureness of her heart.) Yes, Martha and the author and the girls travel to the Galapagos Islands and to Egypt and to Peru and to other places, and each trip is laid out in detail, the glamour and luxury but also the moments when Martha became overbearing or reckless, suggesting some dangerous excursion (taking a little boat down the Nile, horseback riding in Peru without helmets, arguing with a taxi driver so vehemently that he lets them off in the middle of the desert). Adding insult to injury, Martha covers all expenses and sends a bill to Pasternak after each trip (as agreed upon, but the various methods for splitting the bill and adding interest are questionable as far as the author is concerned). Couldn’t she simply tell Martha she'd like to split the bill differently – or better yet, couldn't she simply say no to the next lavish trip? No, because Pasternak would never, ever deny her two daughters such a wonderful opportunity to see Egypt or the Galapagos. So "I paid Martha the amount I was told, grateful for the opportunity to have given my family such an unforgettable voyage." Here we are once again: Angry, but immensely grateful. Who is the mixed-up woman in this picture?

Even in the wake of Martha's unexpectedly getting left by her husband, Andy, for a younger woman, Pasternak is less than forgiving. In tears, Martha confides that Andy once had an affair with Erica Jong, a confession that makes Pasternak "profoundly uncomfortable": "I had the queasy feeling that Martha was telling me this to manipulate my feelings for a man she knew I had loved." Indeed, how insensitive of Martha, not to respect Pasternak's feelings for Martha's ex-husband! Yes, it seems that Martha's most vulnerable admonition yet "had a sort of surgical precision to it" and was less a reflection of Martha's considerable grief than a method of manipulating Pasternak.

As if that weren't enough, Martha ruins Pasternak's hopes for true love with a suitor, who wants to sleep with Pasternak under Martha's roof, but Pasternak says no, reasoning that it would be a rude way for Martha to find out about their interest in each other, considering that Martha used to be interested in the man herself. Even though Martha never knows about it or says a word to Pasternak, Pasternak's choice not to go for it is all Martha's fault. "By the time I realized I was permitting her to bully me yet again into surrendering my chance at personal happiness, the man I wished to be with was on his way out of my life."

Not surprisingly, Martha also had a major hand in unraveling the author's marriage. "Sometimes I wondered if, had he been less critical of Martha, I would have felt better about our marriage. At first I thought yes, but then, as time wore on, the answer came: No, I would not. By belittling Martha, my husband had unwrapped a new part of himself, and I didn't like what I saw."

We don't like what we're seeing either. By belittling Martha, Pasternak unwraps a new part of herself on every few pages. While Martha herself comes across as the same sharp-minded, ambitious, self-serving woman with a good sense of humor and a very bad sense of other people's emotional experiences, Pasternak, on the other hand, is the ultimate Nightmare Lady Friend: She passively plays along with anything Martha wants, admitting that she's flattered that Martha Stewart, "one of the Western world's biggest stars," is "crying on my shoulder." She accepts invitations to fabulous parties and goes on more great trips and sips champagne and savors big bowls of Ossetra caviar and then, when Martha is brought to trial and Pasternak is investigated and asked to testify, she distances herself from Martha but her life still crumbles around her. Most of Pasternak's real estate clients abandon her, people whisper about her on the street, and she forecloses on her house.

Unfortunately, by the time we get to the big trial, Martha isn't exactly smelling like a climbing tea rose, but Pasternak has proven herself so exasperatingly passive and so disloyal to her old friend by laying out the humiliating details of Martha's impulsive flings and "stalker" behavior, using each incidence to paint Martha as weak, weak, weak – you know, in the ways that pretty much every single, slightly neurotic, emotional woman on the entire planet is weak at one point or another – that we're ready for Martha to not just betray Pasternak, but leave her in the dust, taking all of those powerful friends and big names and luxury trips and roasted quail that Pasternak loves so dearly along with her.

Ultimately, it's the chaos surrounding Martha's trial and the damage it does to Pasternak's reputation that brings Pasternak down, not Martha herself, and Pasternak is the one who stops returning calls before the trial even begins, thereby finally signaling all of the anger and resentment that was welling up over the years, but that was so terribly inconvenient to confront or address as long as the big names were mingling and the Cristal was flowing.

One can imagine that it was Martha's comeback and return to glory as a more humble, more self-deprecating version of her old brand that finally sent Pasternak over the edge and into the arms of a drooling book publisher. Sadly for Pasternak, her tales of Martha's cheapness, manipulations and naive mooning over men are liable to flesh out a character study of a woman whom the public long ago judged as lovable in spite of great flaws. Her brand revived, her Cheshire smile employed while joking about baking "green" brownies with Snoop Dogg, Martha Stewart the woman and Martha Stewart the brand may just be unsinkable.

In the end, then, it's Pasternak who elicits our sympathy the most. If she'd never befriended Martha and been drawn into a world that ultimately revealed itself to be Martha's world, not hers, she might never have stooped to this, writing a book filled with arrows that bounce off Martha's steely branded exterior and careen back toward the author, who is, after all, not a brand, just a vulnerable (and apparently very angry) human being. 

Even in the age of Lolcats and Sugar Bush Squirrel, taxidermy, the subject of Melissa Milgrom's riveting new book, "Still Life: Adventures in Taxidermy," remains an esoteric and divisive field. But Milgrom proves there's little reason for the latter. Most taxidermists, after all, are animal lovers, humbly striving to glorify the majestic animal form. As part of her research into how taxidermy is practiced today, Milgrom attends the World Taxidermy Championship, and even enters her own stuffed squirrel into a novice competition at the Smithsonian.

Salon reached Melissa Milgrom by phone to talk about the woman behind Damien Hirst's famous shark, the controversy over museum dioramas, and what it's like to stuff a squirrel.

What gave you the idea that you should write a book about taxidermy?

I grew up in suburban New Jersey, so I was pretty far removed from wildlife of any kind. Then I found out that David Schwendeman, who was the last chief taxidermist for the American Museum of Natural History, lived a mile from where I grew up. Everybody knew about his shop. So one day I wandered in, expecting everybody to be elbow deep in macerating carcasses, since that's what movies like "Psycho" and pop culture in general taught me to expect.

But it was such a special place. It was like falling into Victorian-era England, with all these skeletons, butterflies, birds and strange tools. I knew right away there was a book here, because of the contradiction. Here was this gentle birder who’d been branded an animal killer. At the time, though, nobody would consider taxidermy as a book idea, or even an article idea. It was just too creepy and obscure. But times have changed. Taxidermy is en vogue now.

Taxidermy is en vogue?

Yes, in a way. I think that as a culture we’re all responding to the mass extinction being brought on by climate change, even if we don’t know it. The Victorians, in a similar if opposite way, were collecting in excess because they were so excited by these new specimens being brought over from Africa and South America. The current popularity may have something to do with impending scarcity and preserving the exotic. Anyway, what's Build-a-Bear Workshop but taxidermy for kids? Or the Rainforest Cafe, or "Fantastic Mr. Fox"? The Victorians were interested in the same kind of anthropomorphic tableau. It may just come down to an amateur, non-scientific love for animals.

Do you consider taxidermy an art form?

The taxidermists that I respect the most call taxidermy a highly skilled craft. Some taxidermists will actually remove every whisker and reinsert them individually to create the right mood. But it really is an art, I think. It has to be perfect. If there’s any distortion, it’s immediately recognizable. You don’t need to know much about a squirrel to know that it’s off. When they do it right, it’s like good writing -- you just glide over it. So in that sense, taxidermists don’t get any credit as artists, because they're restricted to an absolute imitation of nature.

There are no abstract taxidermists, then?

Not that I'm aware of. And yet Emily Mayer, Damien Hirst's taxidermist, has done this cow that’s split down the center, spilling its guts. Its power comes from how unbelievably realistic it is. Although she works in the arts, Emily is still a respected taxidermist. She’s been doing it since she was 12. She pushed taxidermy to the nth degree, until she got bored with it and went to art school. She felt she couldn’t express herself through taxidermy. She sometimes calls herself an anti-taxidermist.

Emily's a sculptor in her own right, but she does a lot for Damien. She articulates skeletons for him, makes little blood puddles with flies. The famous shark in formaldehyde is a real cadaver, but she repairs it, and keeps it looking real. When I visit her in England, I have to poke her taxidermy dog to see if it's alive, because she poses it with its eyes closed, like it's asleep. The dog’s snout looks wet. The Times review of the "Still Life" called her a Tim Burtonesque perfectionist, and I thought that was accurate.

Most of us associate taxidermy with museum dioramas, but, as you write in the book, museums weren't always keen on the idea.

After Darwin, museums became consumed with taxonomy. They didn't want any artistic taxidermy -- things like dioramas, or a portrayal of a tiger about to maul someone. In England, there were actually wars between the people who prepared specimens for the museum. Certain people, like the naturalist Charles Waterton, couldn’t stand the [laboratory-style] taxidermy that was practiced in museums; they felt it took the life out of these creatures that they loved, who were best represented in action. Taxidermists in the U.S. began holding competitions to show that it could be an art form. And eventually, museums decided that dioramas could educate the public about conservation.

What are taxidermists like? Are they obsessed with death?

This took a long time to understand, but the common thread seemed to be a love of animals, and the resulting desire to get their models right. Taxidermists see beauty in dead animals. If they see a dead bird on the ground, they’ll have feelings for it. I'd include Damien Hirst in this category. I’m not an art critic, but I look at Damien’s work through the eyes of British natural history, which he’s fascinated by. He tried to buy Mr. Potter’s Museum of Curiosities, this giant collection of anthropomorphic dioramas, for a million pounds, partly so that the collection would remain together, and not be dispersed.

Has taxidermy ever been applied to humans?

Well, there’s the famous case of Jeremy Bentham, a British economist and philosopher, who donated his body to University College London, where he can be seen today. He added a clause in his will requesting that his real head, which is usually replaced by a wax head, be brought out during dinner parties. And then there’s El Negro. French taxidermists had stuffed an actual African man and put him in a museum in Spain, until he was finally repatriated to Botswana and buried in 2002.

Aren't the human body exhibitions, like Body Worlds, taxidermy?

No, those are just specimens preserved through plastination. Weirdly, I have no desire to go to it. Maybe it’s just too close. By contrast, taxidermy, at its best, allows you to interact with it; it’s emotional and transporting. There’s a nice quote from Baudelaire, in which he compares what he calls the "brutal and enormous magic of dioramas" to theater. He says, "These things, because they are false, are infinitely closer to the truth." I love that line.

In the book, you describe your attempt to stuff a squirrel. What was the biggest challenge?

I couldn’t pull the bone out of the tail, for one. But the whole thing was really hard. It’s very intricate, and the fact that they're skinny is kind of gross. I accidentally put the thigh bone in place of the arm, and had to redo it. A real taxidermist would know the anatomy of that squirrel; they would have studied it in the wild, out of a desire to understand nature on its own terms. I didn’t do any of that.

How has seven years of researching taxidermy changed your outlook on the profession?

Nothing grosses me out anymore. [Laughter] But mainly, it's given me an extreme respect for taxidermists. They are portrayed very poorly in the media, but those I wrote about were really fun to hang out with. As tradespeople they're very real and unpretentious. It’s an insular world, and very tightly knit, just as any group with a lot of prejudice against it will be. The scientific bird guy and the backwoods deer-head guy have a certain camaraderie.

Abraham's noteworthy book chronicles a year in the life of Coché's group, and follows the five couples as they undergo financial crises, struggles with impotence, accusations over porn use, and, in one case, a bisexual past. The result is a fascinating -- and at times infuriating -- book that captures the ways marriage, monogamy and psychotherapy can be both affirming and destructive.

Salon spoke to Abraham over the phone from her office in New York, about America's obsession with monogamy, the science behind marriage ruts, and what straight couples can learn from radical gay culture.

It seems like the stigma attached to therapy is waning. Do you think the same thing is true for couples therapy?

Therapy has become more acceptable to many people, and couples therapy has followed in that wake. But I still think it's more stigmatized. You probably won't talk about it at a party, but you'll do it if you’re married and have two kids and you don’t want to get a divorce.

A failed relationship still has a lot of stigma to it, and people say, "If you have to go to couples therapy you might as well get divorced." In the public's mind, going to couples therapy is admitting that you screwed up monumentally and that you’re only there to save face or make a last feeble effort. It's not considered a socially acceptable way of bettering yourself. If you ask people in my set, they would never admit they go to couples therapy.

What's the difference between a couples therapy group and normal couples therapy?

I didn’t go into this thinking people get any special benefit from being in a group. I thought it would be an opportunity to see more couples interact with each other and the therapist [for the purposes of my writing]. But by the end, I realized that it made it more acceptable to have a not so great marriage, because other people were working on theirs. It's easy to feel like a failure and a loser and even kind of dirty if you need help with your marriage.

The standard theory about the effect of social connection would say that group therapy encourages people by shaming them into improving in a certain way, or giving them examples of what, in the end, is possible. It sounds kind of hokey, but I think it's true: When you feel connected to other people, it’s uplifting.

At this point, it's a cliché to say all New Yorkers are in therapy. Why do you think people on the East Coast are more likely to talk through their problems with a therapist?

It’s more acceptable to be angst-ridden [on the East Coast]. Personal intellectual inquiry is just more part of the air here. And stoicism just isn’t as valued in New York, as it was where I grew up [in the Midwest]. That said, in some ways this whole victim psychology is probably a national culture.

More and more unmarried people seem to be going to couples therapy. Why do you think that is?

I see that as a positive development. It seems silly to go to couples therapy if you’re dating and you just want to get along better, but these days people date forever, so you might as well get along better. If you are in a relationship that seems to be headed toward some sort of commitment -- you’re having kids, getting married -- it may be a good idea to hit some stuff head-on early. It is hard, cognitively, to get out of marital ruts.

As you write in the book, there's a neurological reason why people get stuck in these marital ruts.

The brain tries to put things in the same patterns it already knows. Every time you experience something, your brain lays down what they call a neural network and then when you get new sensory information you tend to shunt what you are getting into the old neural networks. You make them fit what’s there. It makes it harder to see things or people anew. That means it’s harder to get out of that misery.

When you have a distressed couple that's already unhappy and, for example, the husband comes home and brings the wife some flowers, instead of thinking, "How lovely," and giving him a kiss, the unhappy wife will think, "Oh, this is so atypical," or "What's he trying to hide? Is he cheating on me?"

There was research where couples were videotaped in an apartment-like setting and scientists watched them and marked down every time the couple had a pleasurable interaction. Then they asked the couple to do the same, and unhappy couples marked down less than half of what the neutral coders did. They’re seeing things through different eyes.

It seems very American -- in the sense that it's very idealistic -- that these couples believe so firmly in the idea of marriage that they're willing to go to such lengths to maintain it.

I assume the French don’t really do a lot of couples therapy. I think that there are aspects of our culture that make it seem like marriage is the only way to find emotional sustenance in life. Our culture affirms marriage and monogamy. We haven’t found better ways to have a sustained emotional connection. You can find it through friends and family, but maybe because our culture pushes it so hard, people often end up feeling there's a hole in their life if they don’t have some close partner as they get older. Of course, if you have kids, that feeling is magnified even further.

For whatever bourgeois reason, I wanted a man in my life. I wanted long-term relationships. If I were more evolved maybe I'd fill the need in another way.

I'm a 20-something gay man in New York, and I probably know more people in open relationships than in monogamous ones. To me, many of the marriages in the book sounded like torture, and as I was reading, my reaction was that they should either get a divorce, or figure out something more fluid that works.

I think it might be easier to do that in gay culture, because there is cultural support for that. Who knows if it's ideal to be in a closed marriage or an open relationship? Neither sounds ideal. There's a lot of misery among married couples, but don't open relationships eventually become another form of misery?

I think at its best, monogamy is the wish to find someone to side with, someone to die with. At its worst, monogamy is a cure for the terror of aliveness, of not knowing what's going to happen tomorrow, of living a life that's not rigid and set. Those are easily confused.

I think a lot of people could learn something from thinking about alternatives to sexual monogamy -- I've thought about it -- but I think, for the couples in the book, it may not be the kind of marriage they'd want.

What was the most moving moment that you witnessed over the course of the therapy?

I think one of the most moving moments was when one woman in the group, who was known as an alienating person, moved her chair, reached over and held someone’s hand. That may sound sappy, but it was really genuine. Despite what people may think about group therapy there was not a lot of touchy-feely action. There wasn’t a lot of crying, there wasn’t a lot of "Ooh, I feel for you." Then this person, who had been harsh and awful, did that, and it was transfixing. In therapy, as in life, it’s often the very small moments that are the most powerful.

The most disturbing part of the book for me was when the therapist makes one of the husbands put on a T-shirt that says, "Anger is my friend." It seemed like a parody of bad therapy.

I felt embarrassed. It was like when you watched a TV show as a kid, and Laura Ingalls Wilder put apples in her dress to have boobs, and you’re like, "Oh god, don’t do that, they’re going to fall out the bottom!" I felt a little of that cringey feeling.

But one thing I learned to do in the group is not to immediately treat my embarrassment as a sign that something was bad. There's the idea that if you’re not embarrassed, you’re not risking enough. There was a moment where Marie, one of the therapy clients, says, "This is soppy crap," and I was thinking the same thing. And then the therapist turns it around and talks about the importance of saying hello and goodbye to your spouse, and that sounded as banal as anything, but I started thinking about how my husband and I will walk into a room and not acknowledge each other at all and over time how that really hurts me, and so I applied that to my own marriage.

In the end, do you think the group therapy was helpful for the couples involved?

I think those couples were helped. Did I expect that to work out that way? Not necessarily. When it comes to therapy, they've never been able to show there's any method that's more effective than another -- and they've tried. The effectiveness of therapy is really therapist dependent, but there's something about being with someone listening to you, focused on you, that is obviously helpful. You could say, "Well, I can get that from a friend," but the truth is, many of us don't. Having a conversation with somebody who is really focused on you is something really restorative.

Iyengar, who grew up in Sikh enclaves in New York and New Jersey, is now a professor of business at Columbia University and one of the country's leading researchers on decision making. In "The Art of Choosing," a broad and fascinating survey of current research on the subject, Iyengar stitches together personal anecdotes, examples from popular culture, and scientific evidence to explain the complex calculus that goes into our everyday choices, from picking our favorite soda to choosing our medical insurance. She also writes about the ways in which her blindness -- Iyengar lost her sight as a teenager -- has given her a unique perspective on the subject.

Salon spoke to Iyengar over the phone about how ballot order cost Al Gore the 2000 election and how a blind researcher learns about color.

Why did you become so interested in researching the way people make choices?

When I was very young, my background as a Sikh-American made me aware of the tensions that underlie choice. Being a Sikh meant having to do what Mom and Dad said, and going to temple, and Mom and Dad choosing who I would marry. But going to an American school taught me that I was the one who’s supposed to make those choices. There was the constant tension between following my duties and giving in to my preferences. I was becoming aware of the fact that different cultures provide different scripts about choice.

What expectations people bring to choice is one of the dominant themes of my research, along with the idea that choice has its limitations: When I was going blind, questions were constantly being thrown at me. Will she be able to go to school by herself? How is she going to survive? What can she do and not do? It constantly reminded me that there are limits to what choice can offer.

In the book, you write that Americans are more attached to choice than people in many other countries. Why is that?

It’s a legacy we were given by the forefathers of this country. Thomas Jefferson and our other forefathers were influenced by the Greeks, the Romans and the Enlightenment period in terms of their ideas about political freedom, along with the Magna Carta, and the recently published "Wealth of Nations."

Political freedom and the free marketplace came together under one nation for the first time in history and then, to that you add the freedom of self-expression, which came about through the transcendental movement of Emerson. In this country, self-expression is primarily exercised through personal choice.

But this isn't the case in places like Japan, where, as you write in the book, children often prefer to follow directions rather than make their own choices.

The way we raise our children is very different, starting from the moment they’re infants. In America we tell our parents to bring their child home and put him or her in a crib; as they get older, children sleep in they own room not in Mom and Dad’s room. What are we training them for? It’s independence, because that’s what being empowered is all about. We give this script verbally and non-verbally.

When they’re learning to speak, we train them to answer questions like, "What kind of cereal do you want to eat?" By the time they’re 5 we ask them, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" We’re telling them that they need to learn to choose. Most children's first word in America isn’t "Mama" or "Papa" like in other countries, it’s "not." My son’s first word when he was two years old was "more."

By contrast, in Japan, you don’t sleep alone until maybe 8 or 9 or 10. You often take a bath with your mom until elementary school, and, as for asking a child what they want to be when they grow up, you wouldn’t think a child would be equipped to answer that question.

Can having too much choice be a bad thing?

There are times when the presence of more choices can make us choose things that are not good for us. For me the clearest example is that the more retirement fund options a person has, the less likely they are to save for their old age. It’s the same thing with Medicare and Part D [the federal program to subsidize medication costs], where the more options people had, the less likely they were to take advantage of the government’s offer. That’s where it becomes clear that this can actually be detrimental.

One significant cultural difference, with regard to choice, is the way people find their spouses. You looked at non-arranged and arranged marriages in the book, and came away surprisingly positive about the latter.

The model is so different that it makes it very tough to compare them. The arranged marriage will lead in theory to less quarrels because you know, for example, what religion you’re going raise your child in. In the case of a love marriage, love is supposed to conquer all, but what do you do when you have different opinions about how to feed your child or save money? What we can learn from the arranged marriage is the importance and value of compatibility. I think what the love marriage can teach is the importance of shared understanding.

When I first moved to the United States from Canada, one of the things that struck me about American medicine was the surprising amount of choice I was given to decide my own treatment. As you write in the book, this is a fairly recent development. Is this a good thing?

You need to give patients some feeling of control during the medical process. They at least have to feel they’re cared for and that their best interests are being accommodated and considered, but I think the file recommendation has to come from that doctor because when you’re sick it’s very difficult for a patient to truly figure out what is the best treatment. To have the person who doesn’t know anything about cancer make the decision about treatment raises a lot of potential problems.

I think that goes to the core of the current American healthcare debate. A lot of people are worried that with public healthcare, they’ll lose the ability to make those choices.

It’s a big part of it -- and it’s something that constantly separates the Republicans and Democrats: Are we going to create healthcare which provides equal outcomes for all, giving everybody the same helping hand, or are we going to provide equal opportunity for all, by removing both barriers and aid? Those are two entirely different scripts about what a fair choice is and we hold to them very passionately. We’re convinced the other side either doesn’t see the truth or is naive. When Obama says we have differences of opinion that run deep, this is the difference of opinion: what constitutes a fair choice or a fair distribution of choice.

We seem to be in an era where everybody is showing off their personal choices -- favorite movies, quotes, photos of themselves -- on Facebook. Are these self-defining choices more important than they used to be?

You should watch these videos on YouTube by this 17-year old Asian-Canadian girl named beautycakez. She shows you all the things she bought -- from Armani exchange, for example, or a maroon sweater from French connection -- and you can send her e-mails and ask her questions. Her identity is a compilation of her consumer choices. She’s trying to create an image based on her purchases. That’s what she wants you to know her by and she’s hoping that that's an expression of her identity. It’s a self-validating exercise, and it’s kind of boring to watch it, but people do.

I think we’re definitely more conspicuous about these kinds of choices. I think we believe they play a bigger role than they did before, but I’m not sure if they do. Either way, the link between the person we want to be and the choices we make are now more clearly linked in our mind.

At one point in the book, you write about the ways names shape color preference. How did your blindness affect your ability to research color?

Because I’m blind, I’m not emotionally invested in a particular color or color combination. I’m much more able to discern how invested sighted people are in what looks good and how enormously subjective it is. It was my struggle with color that made me pay so much attention to it. Names of shades of particular colors kept changing -- along with the idea of what color should go with what others.

Sighted people’s emotions are tied not just to what they’re seeing but what they’re feeling while they’re seeing. If you walk up to a sighted person and say that outfit just doesn’t go, or that their makeup is cakey, they'll say, "How can you be so cruel?" It's because you’re commenting on the person's judgment. Now imagine if you're blind, and you don’t have an emotional investment in that. If somebody tells me my makeup is caked, I'll go, "Oh, I'll fix it."

Is it really true that Al Gore would have won the 2000 election if his name had been first on the ballot?

Oh yeah. This is research done by John Krosnick at Stanford. It's estimated that Bush coming first on the ballot cost Gore 2 percent of the vote, which in that election was critical. Why do we vote for the first person? When you open up a menu in a restaurant the first dish serves as your reference point, when you interview people for a job the first person serves as a reference point; it’s just human nature.

"It is with deep regret that Henry Holt and Company announces that we will not print, correct or ship copies of Charles Pellegrino's 'The Last Train from Hiroshima,'" the publisher said in a statement issued to the AP.

Doubts were first raised about the book a week ago after Pellegrino acknowledged that one of his interview subjects had falsely claimed to be on one of the planes accompanying the Enola Gay, from which an atom bomb was dropped by the United States on Hiroshima in 1945. Holt had initially promised to send a corrected edition.

But further doubts about the book emerged. The publisher was unable to determine the existence of a Father Mattias (the first name is not given) who supposedly lived in Hiroshima at the time of the bombing, and John MacQuitty, identified as a Jesuit scholar presiding over Mattias' funeral

"I read a number of books on this period of time and none of them mentioned Mattias or MacQuitty. I knew there was no way those people could have been omitted if they were real," said history professor Barton Bernstein of Stanford University.

Pellegrino's own background was also questioned. He sometimes refers to himself as Dr. Pellegrino, and his Web site lists him as receiving a Ph.D. in 1982 from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. But in response to a query from the AP, the school said it had no proof that Pellegrino had such a degree.

"It is easy to understand how even the most diligent author could be duped by a source, but we also understand that opens that book to very detailed scrutiny," according to the statement from Holt.

"The author of any work of nonfiction must stand behind its content. We must rely on our authors to answer questions that may arise as to the accuracy of their work and reliability of their sources. Unfortunately, Mr. Pellegrino was not able to answer the additional questions that have arisen about his book to our satisfaction."

E-mail to Pellegrino was not immediately answered. Cameron's office had no immediate comment.

Holt publicist Nicole Dewey said 18,000 copies of the book, published in January, were in print. The publisher "will issue full credit to wholesalers and retailers who wish to return the book. Consumers who seek a refund should return to the retailer from whom they purchased the book," Monday's statement said.

As of Monday afternoon, "Last Train" was ranked at 244 on the Amazon.com best-seller list. According to Nielsen BookScan, which tracks around 75 percent of industry sales, the book has sold 7,000 copies.

The book's fate not only means the likely demise of the film deal with Cameron, who provided a blurb for "Last Train," but complicates the long history of collaboration between the director and Pellegrino, who served as an adviser for "Avatar," the box-office champ that has been nominated for nine Academy Awards.

Cameron wrote introductions for Pellegrino's "Ghosts of the Titanic," published in 2000, and for the controversial 2007 release "The Jesus Family Tomb," co-authored by Pellegrino and strongly questioned by scholars for its assertion that a tomb discovered in Jerusalem contained the remains of Jesus and possible family members.

"The Last Train from Hiroshima" had received strong reviews, including a rave from The New York Times' Dwight Garner, who called it a "sober and authoritative new book" and a "gleaming, popular wartime history." Pellegrino first acknowledged flaws in the book when he told the Times last month that he had been misled by Joseph Fuoco, who had claimed he was a last-minute replacement for flight engineer James R. Corliss.

In the wake of her mother’s request, Carter found herself caught between respecting her mother’s desire for a good death and wanting to keep her alive, between supporting the right to die and feeling terrified about the legal ramifications, and between taking care of her mother on the East Coast and tending to her husband and two young children on the West Coast. (Full disclosure: Carter is a friend and member of my writing group.)

Salon spoke to Carter over the phone about her support for assisted suicide, about finding humor in a dark subject, and what it’s like to plan the death of a loved one.

What compelled you to write this memoir?

The experience of having my mother take her life was enormously difficult and raised a lot of questions about what it meant to be a good daughter; I wasn’t sure if that meant trying to talk my mother out of killing herself, or helping her do it. I wrote the book in part to better understand that dilemma.

I also knew that lots of people were going through some version of my story. There are 75 million baby boomers and many have parents who are getting old or sick. I felt that telling my story, warts and all, might offer some solace to others who are facing these difficult, often heartbreaking end-of-life decisions.

But not that many have parents who kill themselves.

True, although some version of "hastened death" may be more common than we think. And whether a death is "natural" or "assisted," going through this process with a parent can be isolating. Whenever I talked to people about the book, I was amazed at the outpouring of stories and emotions. It made me think that there's a hunger to have these conversations, maybe because death is so hidden away and even shameful in our culture. Often people disappear into hospitals instead of dying at home with their families.

And many people end up having to make difficult choices for their parents because everyone was too uncomfortable to discuss death ahead of time. I was fortunate that in the last year of her life my mother talked about nothing else! Planning her death was her last great project.

Do you think the debate about legalizing assisted suicide has been a productive one?

In my experience, people fall into three basic camps on the issue: First, those who say, "Assisted suicide should be legal! I should have the right to die however and whenever I want!" Second are the people who believe suicide under any circumstances is a sin. And the third group worries that making assisted suicide legal would somehow condone it and even put pressure on people with disabilities or illnesses to take their own lives.

All of these perspectives are valid. I’m just not sure that any of them is going to help you if your parent is in terrible pain or suffering. Especially if they are explicitly asking for help ending their life. At this point, families are left to negotiate a "Sophie’s Choice" of either watching their loved ones suffer or entering the murky, guilt-producing world of "hastened death." And unless they live in Oregon, Washington or Montana, they also have to worry about breaking the law.

How did you react when your mother raised the issue of assisted suicide?

I had thought it was a personal right and should be legal, but suddenly I wasn’t nearly as clear about it. I loved my mother and wanted her around and I believed that her life still held meaning and pleasure. She lived in her own home, she had wonderful round-the-clock care, and she had friends and family.

I also wasn’t sure how seriously to take her. More than once, she changed her "death date," which made me think talking about suicide was a ploy for attention. But when she joined the Hemlock Society (now called Compassion and Choices), met with a volunteer who was willing to help her kill herself, and got a suicide-friendly psychiatrist to prescribe her a lethal dose of Seconal, I began to understand how determined she was. And so, after months of trying to talk her out of it, I accepted her decision and even admired her for being so strong and unblinking in the face of death.

Do you still support assisted suicide?

I support people’s legal right to die, but I don’t consider myself the poster child for it. I worry about the toll it takes on family members as well as on doctors, nurses and hospice workers. While it might be the compassionate and even moral thing to do in some circumstances, we shouldn’t underestimate the burden it places on people.

I’ll never forget how haunted one of my friends was after he helped his father to die. His father was in the advanced stages of ALS -- a terrible, debilitating, progressive disease -- and had made his desire to die very clear, but months later, my friend still felt agonized by it.

How would things have been different if assisted suicide had been legal where your mother lived?

I think she might have stayed alive longer if she’d known she could call a trusted doctor and die in a quick and painless manner at a time of her choosing.

It also would have been easier for her three daughters if we hadn’t had to worry about the legal ramifications, which left us feeling secretive and afraid. It would have made it easier to focus on what her death meant emotionally, and to feel our grief and loss. The way it finally unfolded avoided legal issues, but it was protracted and difficult for all of us.

It’s funny. I had to put my dog to sleep last summer and I was struck by how quick and painless it was. Most people feel fine about offering this option to animals, but not to people -- even mentally competent people who are determined to end their lives. Start talking about helping people die, and we immediately worry that someone else is going to make the decision for us – remember "death panels"? But in places where it has been legalized, there are very strict guidelines to prevent this and, in fact, relatively few people end up taking this option.

Despite the serious subject matter, your book is surprisingly funny.

One thing about my family, we’re all incredibly blunt and outspoken, but there is humor mixed in. So I could say to my mother, "Stop worrying about pruning the trees in your backyard. You’re going to be dead soon. Relax." And far from offending her, she delighted in that.

There were also bizarrely funny moments. The volunteer from the Hemlock Society -- a good old boy named "Bud" -- came to my mother’s house to demonstrate what they called "death with dignity." It involved a helium canister, some tubing and a dirty white headband.

What was it like to spend so much time with someone you love, knowing that they were going to die soon?

I think the time you spend with someone who is dying is extraordinary. I was with both my parents when they died and witnessing that profound event in their lives was incredibly moving. There is a way that you love someone when they are dying that is very pure, very uncomplicated and incredibly healing. All the old resentments and difficulties disappear. For many of us, it’s the first time since childhood that we unabashedly tell our parent how much we love them. It has the simplicity of the instinctive bond you have with an infant. You just want to protect and love them.

What advice would you give to someone who has an elderly parent who wants to die?

I don’t feel like I’m an expert who can give advice. I’m just telling my personal story. That said, I would encourage really listening to what your parent is saying. Take their wishes seriously and then figure out what you can and cannot offer them. If you do what feels right, you will feel at peace after they’re gone.