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I'm Rufus Griskin, and this is the next big idea.

Today, number 16 in our countdown of the top 22 books of last year,

as chosen by users of our next big idea app.

After Suleka Jua graduated from college, she moved to Paris,

found a tiny apartment with a giant pink bathtub,

and set out to become a foreign correspondent.

Then, she got an itch, not a metaphorical itch, but a literal one.

A maddening claw at your skin, keep you up at night itch,

as she calls it in her memoir Between Two Kingdoms.

It spread across her body, quote, like a thousand invisible mosquito bites.

The itching was followed by fatigue, the fatigue by blinding pain,

and the blinding pain by a gut-wrenching diagnosis, leukemia.

Instead of covering conflicts overseas,

she started writing a column for the New York Times called Life Interrupted,

documenting her grueling medical treatments.

She then set out on a 15,000 mile road trip across the United States,

meeting with strangers who'd been touched by her column.

...