The Genesis of Book of Books

James Mathew is a cardiologist who lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He has presented papers at the Annual Gatherings of the Thoreau Society in Concord and the Annual Conference of the American Literature Association in Boston, Massachusetts.

- DR. JAMES MATHEW

Dr. James Mathew, co-author of Book of Books: Pearls from the Stream of Time.

"Strange, that the mere identity of paper and ink should be so powerful. In truth, the original manuscript has always something which print itself must inevitably lose. An erasure, even a blot, a casual irregularity of hand, and all such little imperfections of mechanical execution, bring us close to the writer, and perhaps convey some of those subtle intimations for which language has no shape.” —Nathaniel Hawthorne, A Book of Autographs, 1844

1995, my daughter Shanti presented a copy of the Holy Bible to me. In a cursive hand in green ink, she wrote: “Presented to James Mathew by Shanti.” Even now, looking at the words on the front page of that holy book takes me back, as Hawthorne notes above, to the days when my daughter was a little girl. Little did 1 foresee that this gift from the small hands of my daughter would mark the beginning of a book that I now offer to the world as a tribute to my late father, T. G. Mathai: Book of Books: Pearls from the Stream of Time.