Half-Life - Reflections from Jerusalem on a Broken Neck

"Am I paralyzed? Am I going to die?" Those were the questions Joshua Prager asked a paramedic on May 16, 1990, after the minibus he'd been traveling in during a visit to Israel was blindsided by a runaway truck. He had been an exuberant, athletic nineteen-year-old, an aspiring doctor and an all-star baseball player who loved the Yankees. The accident, in which Prager suffered a broken neck, instantly turned his life from "before" to "after."

In "Half-Life: Reflections from Jerusalem on a Broken Neck," Prager delivers an often agonizing, frequently comic, and always soulful account of a young man's attempt to survive a near fatal injury and recover his formerly carefree existence, only to discover that it is gone forever. Prager's determination to make a new life for himself fully bears comparison with Jean-Dominique Bauby's "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," in which a man trapped in his own motionless body overcomes his limitations with a mind and heart free to travel anywhere.

But Prager is no meek paragon of sickroom virtue. He spares no one in his account--not insensitive doctors, not irritable nurses, and not himself. On a trip from back to his childhood home, he struggles to crawl up the steps, despite doctors' orders to stay away from stairs. He threatens to sue Columbia University to make it more accessible to the disabled. Eager to date, he must find a way to fend off the pity of potential girlfriends. And yet he is not too proud to make use of the disabled section in order to attend a sold-out Bruce Springsteen concert. To celebrate his "half-life," he wants nothing more than to play a game of catch with his father.

The columnist George Will has lauded Prager for his "exemplary journalistic sleuthing," skills that the now forty-one-year-old writer has applied to recording the highs and lows of his life so far. Rich in literary allusion and bursting with heart, "Half-Life" is, in the end, less about the loss of physical powers and more about the growth of a mind and an indomitable will.

PRAISE FOR “HALF-LIFE”

"In his eloquent, beautiful, and insightful memoir, Joshua Prager bravely journeys across the globe to the place where, half his life ago, his world changed in one terrible instant. Rendered with exquisite prose and told without pity or blame, this book is about what it means to be fully alive and whole, despite disability, trauma and loss. Trust me--this story will linger with you for a long, long time." --Mira Bartók, author of the New York Times bestseller and 2012 National Book Critics Circle Awardwinning memoir "The Memory Palace"

" 'Half-Life' is a stunning account of a terrible accident and the lifelong transformations it set in motion. Prager is relentless in his quest for truth--the truth of what happened the day of the accident, and the truth of what has happened to him and to the others with him since. This book breaks the heart and helps mend it, but the whole time while reading, I still remembered where the break is, a testament to Prager's extraordinary ability to offer insights that matter.” --Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, author of "Jewish Literacy and A Code of Jewish Ethics"

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Journalist Joshua Prager is the author of "The Echoing Green: The Untold Story of Bobby Thomson, Ralph Branca, and the Shot Heard Round the World," which was named a Washington Post Best Book of the Year. He spent eight years as a senior writer at "The Wall Street Journal," where he was nominated for four Pulitzer Prizes in Feature Writing, and his work has also appeared in "The New York Times," "The Washington Post," and "The New Republic." He was a 2011 Nieman Fellow at Harvard and in 2011 traveled to Jerusalem as a Fulbright Distinguished Chair. He lives in New York.