Before I Forget ─ Love, Hope, Help, and Acceptance in Our Fight Against Alzheimer's

I know where I’m going. I’m still myself. I just can’t remember things as well as I once did. So on short trips, I work hard not to be confused. I’ll say to myself, “What are we going to do? How long are we staying?” It’s like I’m talking to my other self—the self I used to be. She tells me, “This is what we need to buy—not that.” I’m conscious of that other self guiding me now.”

Restaurateur, magazine publisher, celebrity chef, and nationally known lifestyle maven, B. Smith is struggling at 64 with a tag she never expected to add to that string: Alzheimer's patient. She’s not alone. Every 67 seconds someone newly develops it, and millions of lives are affected by its aftershocks.

B. and her husband, Dan, working with Vanity Fair contributing editor Michael Shnayerson, unstintingly share their unfolding story. Crafted in short chapters that interweave their narrative with practical and helpful advice, readers learn about dealing with Alzheimer's day-to-day challenges: the family realities and tensions, ways of coping, coming research that may tip the scale, as well lessons learned along the way. At its heart, though,Before I Forget is a love story: illuminating a love of family, life, and hope.

B. SMITH is a true American success story. Born in rural western Pennsylvania and faced with what would be for most insurmountable obstacles, Barbara "B." Smith was one of the first supermodels. She wrote three highly acclaimed cookbooks and over a 28-year period founded three successful restaurants, while also launching a nationally syndicated television show and a magazine. She is still the only African-American woman with home products distributed exclusively at Bed Bath & Beyond. She is also a recipient of numerous national and local awards for helping those in need.

DAN GASBY has been a television media sales executive and a televison producer for both network & syndicated programs. He helped publish and launch B.'s eponymous magazine and helped cofound her lifestyle retail brand.

MICHAEL SHNAYERSON is a long-time contributing editor to Vanity Fair. He is also the author or co-author of six books, among them entertainer and civil rights activist Harry Belafonte's My Song: A Memoir of Art, Race and Defiance, published in 2011. He has just published an unauthorized biography of New York governor Andrew Cuomo, The Contender.