"A History of the Sweetness of the World" compels us to consider the world we live in. Michael Lieberman is a physician-poet who, from the vantage of middle age, has given us a book that celebrates and savors even as it documents loss and judges.
The pace of American life in the nineties has left us frayed. We live in a divided and divisive world with little time to heal it or ourselves. This book challenges us to heal by locating the sweet and the bitter-sweet even as we recognize the bitter. The poet "would get down on his hands and knees and thank God for color vision," even as he...