
The Deep Places
A Memoir of Illness and Discovery
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Narrated by:
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Ross Douthat
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By:
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Ross Douthat
About this listen
New York Times Editors' Choice
In this vulnerable, insightful memoir, the New York Times columnist tells the story of his five-year struggle with a disease that officially doesn't exist, exploring the limits of modern medicine, the stories that we unexpectedly fall into, and the secrets that only suffering reveals.
“A powerful memoir about our fragile hopes in the face of chronic illness.” (Kate Bowler, best-selling author of Everything Happens for a Reason)
In the summer of 2015, Ross Douthat was moving his family, with two young daughters and a pregnant wife, from Washington, DC, to a sprawling farmhouse in a picturesque Connecticut town when he acquired a mysterious and devastating sickness. It left him sleepless, crippled, wracked with pain - a shell of himself. After months of seeing doctors and descending deeper into a physical inferno, he discovered that he had a disease which, according to CDC definitions, does not actually exist: the chronic form of Lyme disease, a hotly contested condition that devastates the lives of tens of thousands of people but has no official recognition - and no medically approved cure.
From a rural dream house that now felt like a prison, Douthat's search for help takes him off the map of official medicine, into territory where cranks and conspiracies abound and patients are forced to take control of their own treatment and experiment on themselves. Slowly, against his instincts and assumptions, he realizes that many of the cranks and weirdos are right, that many supposed "hypochondriacs" are victims of an indifferent medical establishment, and that all kinds of unexpected experiences and revelations lurk beneath the surface of normal existence, in the places underneath.
The Deep Places is a story about what happens when you are terribly sick and realize that even the doctors who are willing to treat you can only do so much. Along the way, Douthat describes his struggle back toward health with wit and candor, portraying sickness as the most terrible of gifts. It teaches you to appreciate the grace of ordinary life by taking that life away from you. It reveals the deep strangeness of the world, the possibility that the reasonable people might be wrong, and the necessity of figuring out things for yourself. And it proves, day by dreadful day, that you are stronger than you ever imagined, and that even in the depths, there is always hope.
©2021 Ross Douthat (P)2021 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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“A harrowing, and often profound, account of how one man’s life can be laid almost to waste by Fate.”—Wall Street Journal
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“This is a great book and it’s going to be important and it’s about a lot more than Lyme disease; to this nonsufferer it made Lyme disease fascinating.”—Peggy Noonan, columnist, The Wall Street Journal
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Story
In The Trip to Echo Spring, Olivia Laing examines the link between creativity and alcohol through the work and lives of six of America's finest writers: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, John Berryman, John Cheever, and Raymond Carver. All six of these men were alcoholics, and the subject of drinking surfaces in some of their finest work, from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof to A Moveable Feast.
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Great Narration!!!!!! Great story about 20 Century make writer who suffer with alcoholism. If you like this topic and want more
- By Pamela Abbey on 04-25-21
By: Olivia Laing
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Breaking Through
- My Life in Science
- By: Katalin Karikó
- Narrated by: Eva Magyar
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Katalin Karikó has had an unlikely journey. The daughter of a butcher in postwar communist Hungary, Karikó grew up in an adobe home that lacked running water, and her family grew their own vegetables. She saw the wonders of nature all around her and was determined to become a scientist. That determination eventually brought her to the United States, where she arrived as a postdoctoral fellow in 1985 with $1,200 sewn into her toddler’s teddy bear and a dream to remake medicine.
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The heartfelt story of a resilient scientist
- By Anonymous User on 04-01-25
By: Katalin Karikó
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To Change the Church
- By: Ross Douthat
- Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in 1936, today Pope Francis is the 266th pope of the Roman Catholic Church. Pope Francis' stewardship of the church, while perceived as a revelation by many, has provoked division throughout the world. "If a conclave were to be held today," one Roman source told The New Yorker, "Francis would be lucky to get 10 votes." In To Change the Church, Douthat explains why the particular debate Francis has opened - over communion for the divorced and the remarried - is so dangerous.
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Fine Book, Risible Narration
- By Superfluous Man on 04-01-18
By: Ross Douthat
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First
- Sandra Day O'Connor
- By: Evan Thomas
- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
- Length: 16 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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She was born in 1930 in El Paso and grew up on a cattle ranch in Arizona. At a time when women were expected to be homemakers, she set her sights on Stanford University. When she graduated near the top of her law school class in 1952, no firm would even interview her. But Sandra Day O’Connor’s story is that of a woman who repeatedly shattered glass ceilings - doing so with a blend of grace, wisdom, humor, understatement, and cowgirl toughness.
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Remarkable woman, well served in this book.
- By KathrynVB on 04-05-19
By: Evan Thomas
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The Ice at the End of the World
- An Epic Journey into Greenland's Buried Past and Our Perilous Future
- By: Jon Gertner
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders, Jon Gertner
- Length: 12 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Ice at the End of the World, Jon Gertner explains how Greenland has evolved from one of earth’s last frontiers to its largest scientific laboratory. The history of Greenland’s ice begins with the explorers who arrived here at the turn of the 20th century. Their original goal was to conquer Greenland’s seemingly infinite interior. Yet their efforts eventually gave way to scientists who built lonely encampments out on the ice and began drilling - one mile, two miles down.Their aim was to pull up ice cores that could reveal the deepest mysteries of earth’s past.
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Adventure, Science, Advocacy
- By EM Goodkind on 09-08-19
By: Jon Gertner
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Under the Big Black Sun
- A Personal History of L.A. Punk
- By: John Doe, Tom Desavia
- Narrated by: Exene Cervenka, Henry Rollins, full cast
- Length: 7 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Under the Big Black Sun explores the nascent Los Angeles punk rock movement and its evolution to hardcore punk as it's never been told before. Authors John Doe and Tom DeSavia have woven together an enthralling story of the legendary West Coast scene from 1977 to 1982 by enlisting the voices of people who were there. The book shares chapter-length tales from the authors along with personal essays from famous (and infamous) players in the scene.
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A love song to the early punk days in LA.
- By Brenda on 07-09-16
By: John Doe, and others
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Where Rivers Part
- A Story of My Mother's Life
- By: Kao Kalia Yang
- Narrated by: Pamela Xiong, Kao Kalia Yang
- Length: 12 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Born in 1961 in war-torn Laos, Tswb’s childhood was marked by the violence of America’s Secret War and the CIA recruitment of the Hmong and other ethnic minorities into the lost cause. By the time Tswb was a teenager, the US had completely vacated Laos, and the country erupted into genocidal attacks on the Hmong people, who were labeled as traitors. Fearing for their lives, Tswb and her family left everything they knew behind and fled their village for the jungle.
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Soul touching and deep
- By M on 04-22-24
By: Kao Kalia Yang
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A Terribly Serious Adventure
- Philosophy and War at Oxford, 1900-1960
- By: Nikhil Krishnan
- Narrated by: Kieran Hodgson
- Length: 11 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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These were among the questions that philosophers wrestled with in mid-twentieth-century Britain, a period shadowed by war and the rise of fascism. In response to these events, thinkers such as Philippa Foot (originator of the famous trolley problem), Isaiah Berlin, Iris Murdoch, Elizabeth Anscombe, Gilbert Ryle, and J. L. Austin aspired to a new level of watchfulness and self-awareness about language as a way of keeping philosophy true to everyday experience.
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Brilliant in every way!
- By Chuck Stark on 07-05-23
By: Nikhil Krishnan
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What You Have Heard Is True
- A Memoir of Witness and Resistance
- By: Carolyn Forché
- Narrated by: Carolyn Forché
- Length: 12 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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What You Have Heard is True is a devastating, lyrical, and visionary memoir about a young woman’s brave choice to engage with horror in order to help others. Written by one of the most gifted poets of her generation, this is the story of a woman’s radical act of empathy, and her fateful encounter with an intriguing man who changes the course of her life.
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Beautiful story
- By Norhilda on 05-09-19
By: Carolyn Forché
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Eat a Peach
- A Memoir
- By: David Chang, Gabe Ulla
- Narrated by: David Chang
- Length: 9 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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From the chef behind Momofuku and star of Netflix’s Ugly Delicious—an intimate account of the making of a chef, the story of the modern restaurant world that he helped shape, and how he discovered that success can be much harder to understand than failure. Full of grace, candor, grit, and humor, Eat a Peach chronicles David Chang’s switchback path. Along the way, Chang gives us a penetrating look at restaurant life, in which he balances his deep love for the kitchen with unflinching honesty about the industry’s history of brutishness and its uncertain future.
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So many threads coming into a wonderful tapstery.
- By Suzie on 09-12-20
By: David Chang, and others
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True Crime Addict
- How I Lost Myself in the Mysterious Disappearance of Maura Murray
- By: James Renner
- Narrated by: James Renner
- Length: 6 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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When 11-year-old James Renner fell in love with Amy Mihaljevic, the missing girl seen on posters all over his neighborhood, it was the beginning of a lifelong obsession with true crime. That obsession led James to a successful career as an investigative journalist. It also gave him PTSD. In 2011 James began researching the strange disappearance of Maura Murray, a UMass student who went missing after wrecking her car in rural New Hampshire in 2004.
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Honest. Surprising. Fascinating.
- By River Holmes-miller on 05-27-16
By: James Renner
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An Illuminated Life
- Belle da Costa Greene's Journey from Prejudice to Privilege
- By: Heidi Ardizzone
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 22 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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What would you give up to achieve your dream? When J. P. Morgan hired Belle da Costa Greene in 1905 to organize his rare book and manuscript collection, she had only her personality and a few years of experience to recommend her. Ten years later, she had shaped the famous Pierpont Morgan Library collection and was a proto-celebrity in New York and the art world, renowned for her self-made expertise, her acerbic wit, and her flirtatious relationships. Born to a family of free people of color, Greene changed her name and invented a Portuguese grandmother to enter White society.
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A Remarkable Woman
- By HistoryNerd on 01-25-22
By: Heidi Ardizzone
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I Want You to Know We're Still Here
- A Post-Holocaust Memoir
- By: Esther Safran Foer
- Narrated by: Ellen Archer, Esther Safran Foer
- Length: 6 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Esther Safran Foer grew up in a home where the past was too terrible to speak of. The child of parents who were each the sole survivors of their respective families, for Esther the Holocaust loomed in the backdrop of daily life, felt but never discussed. The result was a childhood marked by painful silences and continued tragedy. Even as she built a successful career, married, and raised three children, Esther always felt herself searching.
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Interesting but…
- By mk on 08-23-21
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The Distance Between Us
- A Memoir
- By: Reyna Grande
- Narrated by: Yareli Arizmendi
- Length: 11 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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In this inspirational and unflinchingly honest memoir, acclaimed author Reyna Grande describes her childhood torn between the United States and Mexico, and shines a light on the experiences, fears, and hopes of those who choose to make the harrowing journey across the border. Reyna Grande vividly brings to life her tumultuous early years in this “compelling...unvarnished, resonant” (BookPage) story of a childhood spent torn between two parents and two countries.
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opened my eyes to the beauty of our stories
- By Evelyn on 09-18-20
By: Reyna Grande
What listeners say about The Deep Places
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- D
- 11-09-21
Excellent!!
A must read for anyone suffering or having suffered a long term and primarily unaddressed illness. His experiences are, unfortunately, a tale so many survivors may intimately relate to.
Highly recommend to those who are loved ones of those in the midst of such sufferings...
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7 people found this helpful
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- DFW
- 01-30-23
Poor Guy!
This poor guy really went through it until he ended up diagnosing himself and doing everything that he could to help himself. Hopefully he will continue to improve and can help and encourage others.
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- Sophia
- 01-23-22
This was heartbreaking
My baby brother has been suffering from chronic Lyme and bartonella for 6 years now. I never really understood how he feels until I read this. It was eye opening and crushing. He’s been diagnosed with fibromyalgia and depression and all the doctors dismissed him like a frustrating patient. He is only 24 and is in a state of hopelessness. Thank you for being his voice and expressing so perfectly all that he feels but struggles to say. We are at a very difficult point where we don’t know what else to do to help him. We are contemplating stem cell therapy now. The words you used were as if he was speaking directly to me. It pierced through me. I felt mixed emotions. Hope because you got better but despair because it requires a willingness to battle that I’m not sure he has in him. The first thing I did was call him and say, “ it’s not in your head. Everything you feel I finally get it. It’s not in your head. I’m so sorry we ever thought it was.” Mr. Douthat, I speak directly to you now. If there’s any way you can have a conversation with my brother and give him hope and guidance please reach out to me. Thank you again. I’m so glad you made it through.
Sophia Ahmad
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6 people found this helpful
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- TAK
- 11-07-21
Everyone should listen to this book
I am so glad.I heard Ross Douthat on a podcast and decided to listen to his book on having and attempting to cure his chronic Lymes Disease. Not just a description of the hell of this misunderstood and oft misdiagnosed illness, but also a deep explanation of the lengths we will go to heal ourselves. Douthat explains the spiritual, medical, and mental aspects of illness in a compelling and clear way. Thank you, Audible, for having him read his own story so effectively.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Classical Music Lover
- 12-20-21
A Must Read
Ross Douthat recounts a captivating, excruciating, and seemingly never-ending bout with Lyme Disease. I have a dear friend whose painful story is very similar, so it had special meaning for me. However, I believe it is appropriate for ANY reader, especially during this pandemic. The book captures his journey in a very personal manner. I want to thank him for including all of the personal details of his experience. It helped me to understand his unfortunate sojourn through this very misunderstood illness. It will be salve to the soul of fellow sufferers of this horrible ailment. I listened to it in a day. Thank you for sharing your story, Ross Douthat!
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- Julie19
- 01-02-22
Eye opening & a joy to read
This book is essential for anyone suffering from a long chronic illness, or anyone who has a close relative who is. It distills the experience so accurately.
The writing is also excellent, which keeps the experience lighter than the topic might lend. I feel more hopeful having read it.
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- Bryce Woodfield
- 01-02-23
Must read for chronic illness sufferers
The author really puts into words, my own journey. This book really changed my point of you on what I am going through. Appreciate the candid honesty of the author!
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- Francesca
- 10-08-22
Great book
Audible equivalent of a page turner. Absolutely compulsive listening. Beautifully written and not too dark.
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2 people found this helpful
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- ScottHC
- 03-17-22
Must reading for both chronic sufferers and attending doctors
Ross tells an interesting and compelling story in which he discovers much about Lyme disease and its many relatives. As important, he discovers some wisdom. His ordeal makes my own seem easy by comparison. There are lessons for everyone in the medical field, as well as those suffering from chronic health problems, especially those mysterious and poorly understood.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Tim
- 10-28-21
Fascinating and informative
I truly enjoyed listening to this title.
The book is beautifully written and performed. It touches on all aspects of the author’s experience of illness - physical, professional, interpersonal, spiritual - and his gradual descent into a world of unconventional treatments.
I found myself listening to the parts of the book that describe his experimental treatments somewhat incredulously. But I appreciated that he acknowledged that these things are unproven (from a clinical standard) and that the “evidence” came from online crowdsourcing of Lyme patients. I think, for scientists/medical professionals like myself, it has to be read as the narrative of one individual patient, whose struggles, though unique, could certainly have much in common with many others. The author asks questions about the current standards for treating Lyme disease which seem to deserve consideration by experts, but as I am not an expert in this field, I largely ponder his discussion of the science as interesting and walk away.
As a Catholic, I appreciated hearing about the spiritual aspects of his experience.
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