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REVIEW: ‘The Dressmaker’s Mirror’

JL;DR SUMMARY In The Dressmakers Mirror, Susan Weiss Liebman, a former biology professor and geneticist, explores her Jewish family's history plagued by sudden deaths, ultimately tracing it to a specific genetic mutation. A way out west there was a fella, fella I want to tell you about, fella by the name of Jeff Lebowski. At least, that was the handle his lovin' parents gave him, but he never had much use for it himself. This Lebowski, he called himself the Dude. Now, Dude, that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from. But then, there was a lot about the Dude that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. And a lot about where he lived, likewise. But then again, maybe that's why I found the place s'durned innarestin'.

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Tags

Ashkenazi JewsFamily HistoryJewish GenealogyGenetic MutationGenetic ScreeningGeneticsHealth AdvocacyDilated CardiomyopathyMedical InvestigationSudden Death

Places mentioned

Chicago, Illinois, United States
"Susan Weiss Liebman, a geneticist and former biology professor at the University of Illinois Chicago, recounts the discovery that gave her the key to unraveling a genetic mystery within her own family."
Carbondale, Pennsylvania, United States
"Liebman also found out that her family had lived in Carbondale, Pa., at the time of Eugenes death, and that his hospitalization was widely reported in the local news."
Scranton, Pennsylvania, United States
"Indeed, her grandparents, insistent on hiding their sons death, decided to move to Scranton, about 20 miles southwest of Carbondale, after Eugene died."
Kharkiv, Kharkivshchyna, Ukraine
"In 1906, her paternal great grandfather fled a wave of pogroms in Kharkiv, today the second-largest city in Ukraine, and brought his family to Pennsylvania, where they shortened their last name from Weissman to Weiss."
New York City, New York, United States
"Meanwhile, her maternal grandfather had left the hardships and antisemitism of Czarist Russia for New York City, where he became a successful dentist."

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Retrieved 2026-01-10 05:31:11 UTC
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