Based on the "field notes" she keeps in her journal, Memory's Last Breath is Saunders' astonishing window into a life distorted by dementia. She writes about shopping trips cut short by unintentional shoplifting, car journeys derailed when she loses her bearings, and the embarrassment of forgetting what she has just said to a room of colleagues. Coping with the complications of losing short-term memory, Saunders nonetheless embarks on a personal investigation...

A family memoir about the author's race to document her father's story as a World War II paratrooper before his mind succumbed to dementia relates how he overcame formidable obstacles and maverick impulses to join an elite special ops unit that was a first collaboration between the American and British Secret Services.

Just past seventy, Alex Witchel's smart, adoring, ultracapable mother began to exhibit signs of dementia. Her smart, adoring, ultracapable daughter reacted as she'd been raised: If something was broken, they would fix it. But medical reality undid that hope, and her mother continued to disappear in plain sight. So Witchel retreated to the kitchen, trying to reclaim her mother by cooking the comforting foods of her childhood.

Based on the "field notes" she keeps in her journal, Memory's Last Breath is Gerda Saunders' astonishing window into a life distorted by dementia.

After suffering concussions in high school and college, Dick struggled unknowingly with the onset of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) dementia. For decades, he fought the demons trapping him in an ever-shrinking world: diminished short-term memory, limited executive functioning, interpersonal shortcomings, paranoia, and failed physical capabilities. As an athlete, he was revered, yet success turned traitor as getting his "'bell rung"' in football...