About this item
For twenty-two years, Katherine Bouton had a secret that grew harder to keep every day: she had gone profoundly deaf in her left ear; her right was getting worse. Audiologists agree that we're experiencing a national epidemic of hearing impairment. At present, 50 million Americans suffer some degree of hearing loss. Using her own experience as a guide, Bouton examines the problem personally, psychologically, and physiologically, illuminating the startling effects of this invisible disability.
About the Author
Katherine Bouton was an editor at The New York Times for 22 years before her progressive hearing loss made it too difficult to continue to work in a newsroom. Confronted with involuntary early retirement, she returned to her first love and earlier career, writing. The result was her book "Shouting Won't Help: Why I -- and 50 Million Other Americans -- Can't Hear You," published to critical acclaim and a great deal of media interest in February 2013. Hearing loss is a hidden disability and one that people are reluctant to acknowledge. Her book prompted many to open up about their own hearing loss. She is a frequent speaker at hearing loss organizations, talking about the arc of her own hearing loss experience: from despair and anger to acceptance. The journey was not an easy one, but her eventual success allowed her to begin a whole new phase of life as a writer as well as an advocate for those with hearing loss and other hidden disabilities. She has also been invited to talk to university neurobiology departments about her first person experience of learning to hear again with a cochlear implant. She speaks from a consumer perspective about the hearing loss industry and her experiences with hearing aids and cochlear implants. She has been invited to several international conferences on hearing loss, which is a global problem costing billions of dollars in unemployment and health care costs. Katherine's early writing appeared in The New Yorker (where she was a staff member) , in The New York Times Magazine (where she was later deputy editor for 10 years) , the New York Times Book review, and many other publications. She is a graduate of Vassar College and has taught in various writing and journalism programs. She is married to the writer Daniel Menaker and they have two grown children: William Menaker, an assistant editor at Liverwright Publishers, and Elizabeth Menaker, a clinical social worker. She is at work on a practical guide to living with hearing loss, to be published by Workman in the summer of 2015. She continues to contribute reviews and essays to The New York Times.
