Paul Rega

Droppings of an Optimistic Fatalist Paul Rega

The Man-with-the-Ass-Hand. A mysterious phone call from a Capote-like Milquetoast about a toe trapped in a bath tub. An encounter between future President John Adams and the discoverer of Uranus - or so he thought. Rampaging Cossacks wreaking havoc in Toledo, Ohio. An intimate eye-witness report of O. Henry's honeymoon night. The Mafia and the magic mozzarella mystique. Death and dying in the hospital: An homage to Alfred Hitchcock. These are but samples of the twisted, odd-ball, tongue-in-cheek, black comedy that comprise the musings ("droppings") contained in this book. It's a brief glimpse into the parallel-universe mind of the author, a product of his youthful innocence from an Italian-Catholic, Bronx upbringing coupled with a subsequent career as a doctor contending with the madness and mayhem of emergency medicine.