The eldest of Dr. Jack SS: It's never been very difficult for me to write what and Mickey Shapiro's I want. My parents, originally New Yorkers (and still four children and the living in West Bloomfield), are very cool and open- only girl, she analyzes her minded. They raised four independent thinkers. They place in the family, one never cared if we disagreed with them, as long as we mostly made up of men could intelligently articulate our view. and medicine, and close- My first piece in Cosmopolitan, when I was in my ly examines her relation- early 20s, was a funny essay about my complex rela- ship with her mother. tionship with my mother. She left a message on my Shapiro quotes other writers, culls machine that said, "You her friendships and relies on the steady made me sound like a presence of her husband and her own bimbo, and I'm writing a questioning, mostly through the help rebuttal on a daughter who of Dr. G., her therapist, whose voice is lies about her mother all heard in her head as she progresses. the time. " Any woman struggling to become Luckily everyone in my more actualized can relate to Shapiro's family has a great sense of quest, which often is punctuated with humor. They can be very advice — as well as libidinous proud of the accomplish- accounts of her romantic life. ment of my book without Her present voice reflects back into loving every word. her past, finally at peace with not having a child, and full of the knowledge that she's happy with the life she's created: a JN: Did writing humor cozy Greenwich Village apartment, good come naturally? Or are In her book, Susan Shapiro offers work and a loving spouse who is clearly there certain things you thanks to "my warm, wonderful the right man for her (she calls him do to help facilitate it? parents, who said, "Go ahead, "Aaron" — not his real name — in the , SS: I was a fan of the con- tell the whole world you're in therapy' book to protect his privacy). fessional poets — Sylvia The men who broke Shapiro's heart Plath, Anne Sexton, Robert ultimately led her to the love of her life, a fitting les- Lowell, Ted Hughes — so maybe they gave me per- son for a book released in time for Valentine's Day. mission to spill my gut s. In college and grad school at N.Y.U., I wrote JN: Was it difficult for you to write about events gut-wrenching poetry. As I got older, the same sto- that you knew your family would disapprove,..of? ries came out funnier. I guess I lightened up, Affairs Of The Heart Former Detroiter writes memoir about former loves — and finds out what really went wrong. CINDY FRENKEL Special to the Jewish News S usan Shapiro's Five Men Who Broke My . Heart (Delacorte Press; $21.95) is a wise, funny and moving memoir that gives birth to a new, original voice. The New York-based author, on the brink of turning 40, was going through her "no-book-no-baby summer" when an ex-beau — who wasn't even a writer — called her for help in promoting his new book. After asking him the questions she'd always longed to about their failed relationship, she embarks on a search to track down other past loves in an effort to understand what really happened from a more mature perspective. Shapiro packs it all in with a punch as she traces her life and loves from age 13 to 35, from her West Bloomfield upbringing to her life in Manhattan. The book is sprinkled with many local references, from the Roeper School and Camp Tamarack to the University of Michigan. Cindy Frenkel, a Huntington Woods-based freelance writer, worked with Susan Shapiro at the New Yorker during the l980s. Heart Smart New book suggests that heart attacks — like polio — can become a thing of the past. SUZANNE CHESSLER Special to the Jewish News 1p eter Salgo doesn't wait until Valentine's Day to think about matters of the heart. He does it every day throughout the year — in a literal sense — as he treats cardiac patients and follows a' personal regimen newly thought to prevent heart attacks. Salgo; associate director of the Open Heart Intensive Care Unit at New York Presbyterian Hospital in New York City, would like to see the gener- al public giving daily attention to their own hearts — also in a literal sense — and heed the routine he describes in The Heart of the Matter: The Three Key Breakthroughs to Preventing Heart 2/13 2004 40 Attacks (William Morrow Publishers; $24.95), written with Joe Layden. Salgo actually considers himself a doctor with a mission — telling the public about a routine he's learned many heart specialists and their fami- lies already are following. Salgo's recommendations, based on recent medical findings suggesting that the bacteria chlamydia pneumonia is the root cause of heart attacks, include having people tested and treated for the pathogen using any one of many antibiotics and taking daily doses of a statin medication to control choles- terol and baby aspirin to combat inflammation in the blood vessels that feed the heart. The routine and the reasons behind his recommendations are fully . explored in. the book, which also explains why he believes diet and exer- cise alone will not prevent an attack. "We are on the cusp of a change in our ability to turn back the clock on death," insists Salgo, also an Emmy Award-winning medical journalist who teaches at Columbia University School of Medicine. "We are at the edge of saying that people died of pre- mature heart attacks before this time but didn't afterwards. It is that power- ful, dramatic and important. "Heart attack research is at a point comparable to where we were with infectious disease just before penicillin came into use, where we were with polio just before the Salk vaccine became widespread and where we were with cavities just before the fluorida- tion of water." Salgo begins his book by explaining research done by Steven Nissen and others into ways the heart works and describes how soft plaque develops from cholesterol, becomes a breeding ground for bacteria, leads to inflam- mation and ultimately damages the heart. He then goes on to explore the components of medical approaches with which he agrees and disagrees. "The book synthesizes a lot of what has been brewing for a very long time in medicine and puts all that in one place where everybody can get at it in language that everyone can under- stand," says Salgo, who recently addressed a medical group in Saginaw about the issues he raises. "If you take a survey of does in America, a substantial number are tak- ing a statin a day and an aspirin a day without telling the American public because of costs, and that's not fair. There's a tidal wave of literature corn- ing out now, and I've never seen any- thing other than support for the pro- gram in the book." Salgo reports that researchers are not sure at what age this regimen should begin, but they assert that sooner is better than later, especially if diseases such as diabetes are involved. Although women tend to have heart