Frank Bruni

Frank Bruni has spent more than three decades in journalism and now teaches at Duke University. His career has included work as a White House correspondent, Rome bureau chief, restaurant critic, and opinion columnist. The Beauty of Dusk is his memoir about impaired vision, uncertainty, aging, and resilience. Avid Reader Press first published the book in 2022, and a trade paperback followed in February 2023. Bruni begins with the sudden loss of sight in one eye after an optic-nerve stroke and the possibility that the other eye could also be affected. He then broadens the narrative through conversations with people living with physical limitations, grief, and other forms of change. That structure keeps the book from being only a medical chronology. Its subtitle, On Vision Lost and Found, points to Bruni’s larger concern with perspective and attention. Drawing on decades of interviewing and essay writing, he combines personal recollection with reported encounters to consider how vulnerability can alter ambition, friendship, gratitude, and the meaning of independence.