Bøker av Thomas J. Cottle

This is the story of one woman's decision to forfeit a brilliant career for the sake of mother-hood. Once a child prodigy, Gitta Gradova traveled the world as an internationally acclaimed concert pianist, performing recitals as well as appearing with prominent orchestras of her era. Her son Thomas J. Cottle uses written records, interviews, and personal reminiscence to reconstruct her life, as well as their own mother-son relationship. He is at times a storyteller, at times a psychologist, at times a son seeking to uncover those aspects of his mother's life he could never know, or perhaps, chose not to know until it was too late.

This book examines the experiences of eight men and their families, after periods of six months or more without work. Cottle (education, Boston University) describes long term unemployment as a traumatic event that creates in those who experience it symptoms like those associated with loss and post-

Cottle examines the ways people interpret their life experiences and construct meanings for the events they have encountered. In reading the sixteen life studies in Drawing Life, we encounter both inner reflections as well the power of culture to shape the meanings people give to the events that befall them.