This week, two new memoirs.

First, what do you do when you wake up one morning, blind and one eye?

Frank Brunay joins us to talk about his new memoir, The Beauty of Dusk.

Why are so many chronic illnesses misunderstood and misdiagnosed?

Megan O'Rourke will be here to talk about her book, The Invisible Kingdom.

Liz Harris will be here to talk about what's going on in the publishing world.

Plus, our critics will join us to talk about the books they've been reading and reviewing.

This is the Bookerview Podcast for the New York Times.

It's March 4th. I'm Pamela Paul.

Frank Brunay joins us now from Chapel Hill, where he is currently a professor of public policy at Duke University.

He's the author of several books, including most recently, The Beauty of Dusk, On Vision, Lost and Found.

Frank, such a pleasure to have you here.

It's great to be with you.

Of course, what I didn't mention in that long introduction is that you are a former colleague of mine here at The New York Times.

And kind of a semi-still colleague, and so far as you currently write a newsletter for the opinion section where you were until recently an opinion columnist, you've also held, I think, probably, the most fun and glamorous jobs at the time.

You were the dining critic, you were the Rome bureau chief, you've done all kinds of other things here.

What was the best job you had at the Times looking back on it now from afar?

I would say probably the one I enjoyed most was being Rome bureau chief. The bureau chief part of that is a little bit of an inflated misnomer, but it was so much fun as an Italian American as someone who loves the country of Italy.

It was so much fun to be based in Rome, to get to see Italy as a matter through the course of doing work and stories.

And if you are a kind of generalist and something of a delitant like me, those geographic beats mean you do a little culture, a little politics, I covered the Vatican.

It was an extremely stimulating mix. But it was also not just the Vatican and Rome, right? You covered a larger Mediterranean region?

Yeah, I was in charge of Greece, for example, and that was in the run-up to the Athens Olympics. So every month pretty much, I would fly to Athens and do yet another story saying, oh gosh, the Greeks are not ready for the Olympics.

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