Our guest on Wednesday is Alida Brill, the co-author of, Dancing at the River’s Edge- A Patient and her Doctor Negotiate Life with Chronic Illness. Our subject will be “How one copes with chronic pain and the importance of a strong doctor/patient relationship.”
Alida Brill is a writer and a social critic whose interests span diverse topics. She has published books, essays and monographs on such issues as the debate between freedom and control in democratic society, privacy rights, the ethics surrounding decisions about dying and death, the policy and politics of reproductive technologies, intolerance and prejudice, community transition and economic dislocation, the changing meaning of patriotism, censorship, pornography and popular culture, women’s equality, girls at risk and the coded journals of Beatrix Potter.

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She is the co-author (with Herbert McClosky) of Dimensions of Tolerance: What Americans Believe about Civil Liberties, Basic Books, 1983 (second revised edition 1985.) She is the author of Nobody’s Business: The Paradoxes of Privacy, Addison-Wesley, 1990 (second revised edition 1991.) A Rising Public Voice: Women in Politics Worldwide, which was published in the spring of 1995 in collaboration with the United Nations. This book was distributed to every delegate of the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women, in Beijing, China, as well as being featured at the NGO forum that accompanied the Conference.

Dimensions of Tolerance won the Choice Award as outstanding political science book of the year. Ms. Brill is the author of many articles, book reviews and essays, published in both popular and professional periodicals and journals as well as appearing on webzines. She has been a featured speaker at a variety of conferences for more than twenty-five years, and a guest lecturer at many universities and colleges.  She is a frequent contributor to anthologies and her longer essays and monographs have appeared in numerous volumes, including, Freedom, Fantasy, Foes and Feminism: The Debate Around Pornography, in Women, Politics and Change; Tomorrowland at 40: Lakewood, California, in Rethinking Los Angeles; From the Shards, in To Mend the World: Women Reflect on 9/11.

Besides her work as an author, for more than a decade, Ms. Brill was the director of a national research program on the lives of women and men entitled, The Changing Role of Gender in American Institutions at the Russell Sage Foundation in New York. She was co-director of the Women’s Dialogue US/USSR, one of the first programs which opened up a personal dialogue between American and Soviet women on issues relating to women’s lives and domestic policies. She has served as a program consultant for the YWCA of the USA, Rockefeller Foundation, The Girls’ Clubs, The American Jewish Congress as well as other non-profit organizations. At the Feminist Press of the City University of New York, she served as a board member as well as creating a national and international publishing imprint. She has served on numerous boards, including Save Venice, Inc. and The Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience as well as serving on committees of the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Council for Research on Women. Prior to moving to New York, Alida Brill was a research director at the Survey Research Center of the University of California, Berkeley, where, with the late Professor Herbert McClosky, she conducted large-scale national surveys on American attitudes and opinions, as well as co-directing a research program on Citizenship, which was sponsored by the Russell Sage Foundation. Alida lives in New York City, and her website is www.alidabrill.com

Her latest book, Dancing at the River's Edge: A Patient and Her Doctor Negotiate a Life With Chronic Illness, was released January 8, 2009 (Schaffner Press, Inc.) It is a personal dual memoir, written in collaboration with her physician Dr. Michael Lockshin. It can be accessed at http://dancingattheriversedge.com .