Incurable ─ A Life After Diagnosis

In March 2009, during what he hopes is a routine medical exam, Charles Harris learns that he has incurable cancer. A colleague suggests that he write a blog, to keep family and friends current on his treatment. From that is born Incurable, an account of a man's struggle to live vibrantly in the face of his diagnosis.

After treatments of chemotherapy, Charles Harris is told that radical surgery might save or prolong his life. He embarks on several months of painful medical procedures, which he recounts stoically, only to find some weeks later that the cancer has returned.

Rather than submit to the cruel judgment of fate, he accepts the news by traveling to Florida, Paris, Australia, and New Zealand, by eating in New York's best restaurants, by engaging with his friends, and, always, by writing reflectively about his condition---in a style that evokes the spareness of Anne Frank.

An entrepreneur and investor by profession, Charles Harris writes about life and death, friendships and fellowships, sports and wine, racehorses and recessions. His style is optimistic, direct, humorous, and companionable.

His view is that every day counts, and that, like all of us, he wants to make the most of those he has remaining. Readers will find his voice brave, inspirational, and human. This is a book that you may not think you want to read, but will find difficult to put down.

Charles Harris (1943-2010) was born in Greensboro, North Carolina, and grew up in Jacksonville, Florida. He graduated from the Hill School, Princeton University (English, 1964), and Columbia University (Finance, 1967). From 1966 to 1983, he worked on Wall Street. In 1983, he became an entrepreneur, later founding Harris & Harris Group, a venture capital firm that invests in nanotechnology, from which he retired in 2008 as chairman and chief executive officer. His charitable interests included support for research universities. He bred and raced thoroughbred horses for thirty-six years. He lived in New York City, where he and his wife, Susan, raised their two children, Elizabeth and David.