A Desperate Passion

"She showed me what one set-on-fire human being can do to shift the consciousness of the world." —Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking

"Dr. Helen Caldicott," the Sunday San Francisco Chronicle declares, "is back on the scene." A Desperate Passion is Caldicott's engaging, inspiring memoir, chronicling her life both on and off the scene. Raised in Australia and trained as a physician, she first found her voice protesting French nuclear tests in the Pacific. Years later she rose to international prominence, founding Physicians for Social Responsibility, "which did perhaps more than any other group to thrust the nuclear issue under the public eye" ( New York Times).

"Driven by intense passions, she seems to have adopted the world's population as her children. And all of us are probably better off as a result" ( East Bay Express Books)—but Caldicott, wife and mother of three, found that her success did not come without cost. This is a personal story too, a candid, revealing self-portrait of a woman who has not relinquished her remarkable efforts to save the world.

"Our contaminated air and our fractured earth demand a doctor's attention in the nuclear age, and the doctor on this case is a master." — Bloomsbury Review

"Helen Caldicott was the First Lady of the Nuclear Freeze Movement in the 1980s. This story, by an extraordinary woman, is a compelling memoir of those extraordinary times." —Edward M. Kennedy