SKU: 2145297309

Damage Control: A Memoir of Outlandish Privilege, Loss and Redemption

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Damage Control: A Memoir of Outlandish Privilege, Loss and RedemptionA powerful blazingly honest memoir told with humor and panache about a mother and son finding each other again after years of estrangement. A coming of age story of outrageous excess, glamour, entitlement and grand delusion, lived above the fray and over the top. A gay man's journey through the joys and perils of his generation, coming out in the early eighties in the shadow of a terrifying of disease that would devastate so many, surviving tremendous

A powerful blazingly honest memoir told with humor and panache about a mother and son finding each other again after years of estrangement. A coming-of-age story of outrageous excess, glamour, entitlement and grand delusion, lived above the fray and over the top. A gay man's journey through the joys and perils of his generation, coming out in the early eighties in the shadow of a terrifying of disease that would devastate so many, surviving tremendous loss and culminating in his decision to adopt a child as a single parent.

When Sergei, a psychotherapist who has been living in Paris for the past decade, discovers that his mother is terminally ill, he decides to leave his practice and his life to be by her side, in the hope of healing the bitterness and discord before it is too late. Alternating between a narrative of Dollsie's last months as she battles cancer, interwoven with poignant and hilarious and at times shocking scenes from their outlandishly privileged lives, DAMAGE CONTROL is a story about exile and loss, searching and escape. From the mountain villages of Gstaad, Switzerland, to New York and Miami and Cuba, the narrator revisits the chateaux and chalets of his childhood, exploring the emotional and geographical landscapes of a mother and son whose lives are revealed to be poignant parallels of each other. After avoiding his mother for a lifetime, seeking shelter from her destructiveness and her drinking and her rage, Sergei comes face-to-face with this narcissistic woman confronting mortality for the first time, and through his own experiences as an activist and a therapist and a man who has faced his own mortality at young age, he helps her to come to terms with all her guilt and regrets and fear of dying.

This memoir offers a fascinating and disturbing portrayal of a glamorous woman whose life has been one of great elegance and luxury, along with disillusionment, grandiosity, seduction and self-destruction: her childhood in pre-Castro Cuba, a mythical island paradise; her marriage at the age of eighteen to a dashing young Swiss man and their subsequent exile; her frantic and desperate resolve to create a mythical life of her own and pass on the traditions of aristocracy to her children, all the while leading a double life and suffering feelings of intense longing and frustration and guilt which eventually cause her to destroy and walk away from everything that she has been raised to want and expect out of life.

DAMAGE CONTROL is ultimately a rendering of the cycle of life, saying goodbye to a parent so you can say hello to a child, and finding grace and redemption through a mother's love.


Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Carol Mann Agency
Published: 04/08/2014
ISBN: 9780786755844
Pages: 296
Weight: 0.88lbs
Size: 8.90h x 5.90w x 0.80d
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SKU: 2145297309

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Heather R. hayton
Port Orchard, US
★★★★★ 5
Reads like your favorite succession episodes
Format: Hardcover
Great book—thoroughly researched and delightfully written! Highly recommend to all my gamers and friends from that era.
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Reviewed in the United States on December 12, 2025
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Felipe
Phoenix, US
★★★★★ 4
Great insight into an otherwise obscure world
Format: Hardcover
As someone who grew up playing blizzard's games for an unfathomable amount of hours I've always been interested into their inner workings, especially considering their downfall in recent years. This book holds a ton of information and knowledge, is well sourced, and is the work of someone with obvious deep familiarity with the industry and its particularities. Besides the information itself, the book it written in fun and interesting prose, and it keeps the rhythm fast and entertaining, so it reads more like a novel than a journalistic article. Overall, an entertaining piece of insight into a world that is normally quite unknown, even to long time gamers like myself.
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Reviewed in the United States on April 15, 2026
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alex schopf
Waukegan, US
★★★★★ 5
Great read
Format: Hardcover
Extremely interesting book
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Reviewed in the United States on March 3, 2026
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Nazih Fares
Draper, US
★★★★★ 3
Great insight on what happened at Blizzard but...
Format: Kindle
My main issue with the book is the lack of non-american stories that explained the bigger picture. As a former Blizzard dev, there's much more than what happened in Irvine and Korea, with Europe's office mentioned almost as a footnote, and nothing else from the other regional stories. Shame but I guess the book would've been double the size.
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Reviewed in the United States on May 12, 2025
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KW
Pawtucket, US
★★★★★ 5
Insightful inside scoop of Blizzard
Format: Audiobook
An intriguing, well-written exploration of Blizzard’s history and its staff, from inception to modern day, and their design decisions, successes and failures along the way. I loved the many quoted insights, and learning more than just the surface level story that might be found on typical gaming news outlets.
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Reviewed in the United States on November 25, 2025

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