Results by "Andy Lazris" in All categories

Set 25 years in the future, when a Committee of Medical Experts now rules the land, this interconnected series of stories takes us into the lives of people both living under and helping to protect the new power wrought by an unending state of emergency and a national focus on manufactured medical crises. The book is both funny and frightening, feeding off cracks that have begun to form in the Biostate and following a set of unrelated people who come together to budge the nation in a new direction.

This dystopian novel asks what may have occurred if we insert two very passionate and driven fictional characters into the national narrative after the January 6th Capitol attacks. Unwilling to tolerate the push back of “anti-lifers” and “anti-democrats” against the country’s struggle with COVID and Trumpism, Congressman Jim Depich and college student Mary Lou Kramer thrust America into a violent and retributive spiral that dismantles science and democracy in an effort to rescue them from perceived foes.

Three Brothers from Virginia tells the tale of Matt and his two enslaved brothers, Paul and Luke, who thrive upon their insulated Virginia farm until the Civil War forces them to stare into the face of a reality they so long eluded. As Paul flees to New York, Matt joins the Confederate army, and Luke remains a slave, the brothers are thrown into sweeping battles, riots, and a cloud of enmity, their values and lives tested by a festering intolerance that threatens the only truth they ever knew.

In part two of the trilogy, Yadel travels through Jewish history from the Middle Ages to the present as he and Yoshen struggle to market their new Hanukkah holiday and fight off Simon and his zealots in ancient Rome. With humor, love, and nail-biting drama, the adventures of Yadel, Yoshen, and Clausius continue where part one left off, bringing listeners into the origins of Judaism and Christianity little known to most, the wars and struggles that shaped both faiths, and the fictional flare of time travel.

The Great Stupidity is a witty work of fiction that offers a satirical look at an historic public health crisis. Author Andy Lazris transports listeners back in time as the Black Death strikes a small village in France. Village leaders send off a blacksmith's son on a ridiculous quest to cure the disease - and on his journey, he encounters many "experts" who "know" how to solve this crisis.

I thoroughly enjoyed the book because of its mix of humor, Jewish history, and pathos. The narrator of the audiobook has a wicked sense of humor but is also able to convey vast swathes of Jewish history with poignancy - the pogroms, the othering, and the sufferings and tribulations, as well as the rise of zealotry and how it destroyed the Jewish people and drove them out of their own land.

Andy Lazris, MD, is a practicing primary care physician who experiences the effects of Medicare policy on a daily basis. As a result, he believes that the way we care for our elderly has taken a wrong turn and that Medicare is complicit in creating the very problems it seeks to solve. Aging is not a disease to be cured; it is a life stage to be lived. Lazris argues that aggressive treatments cannot change that fact but only get in the way and decrease quality of life.