Includes bibliographical references and index.

Beacon Rock -- Forewarned and Forearmed -- The Smell of Baking Bread -- Sneak Preview -- Stubborn Puzzle -- The Locked Box and the Family Tree -- The Measure of Memory -- Orcas, Nonetheless -- My Brain, My Self -- The Reveal -- Cognitive Reserve : Brain Cells in the Bank -- My Experimental Life -- When ARIA is More Than an Operatic Solo -- My Experiential Life : Living with Early-Stage Alzheimer's Disease -- Madeleines, Music and African Doves -- It's Only Scary if You Look Down -- Beyond DNA : Family History Reconsidered -- NEWS AT 5 : Retired Neurologist Battles Alzheimer's -- The Forest, the Trees and the Ground Beneath My Feet -- What's in a Name? Alzheimer's Reimagined.

"A towering stump of basalt second only to the Rock of Gibraltar, Beacon Rock rises 848 feet from the Washington shore of the Columbia River, about forty miles east of my home on the Oregon side, up a dead-end street in a woodsy hilltop neighborhood in Portland. The river feels like my second home, carrying years of memories and the promise of more good times spent on the water, first with my kids when they were kids, and now with my grandchildren. This is where they learned some lessons in resourcefulness and practical skills for life and where I learned some of the ropes myself. Those days are numbered now, though the timeline is imprecise. Ordinarily, this would be maddening for me as a former research scientist and neurologist for whom precision is second-nature. But I'm officially retired now, leaving me free to pursue any research I wish, and the whole point of my current project is to exploit this imprecise timeline confronting me and discover how to tweak it in my favor-turn the uncertainty of it to my advantage"--