An outstanding primer that readers should put into the hands of their doctors.
A professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania delivers a lucid, opinionated history of the science, politics, and care involved in the fight against this century’s most problematic disease.
The first symptom of Alzheimer’s is usually difficulty with memory, often recognized by a spouse, friend, or caregiver. Over years, memory deteriorates, and victims can no longer perform simple tasks such as paying bills or taking medicine. As the disease worsens, they become apathetic or delusional; lose the ability to dress, feed, and clean themselves; become bedridden and depressed; and often die from complications. Caring for an affected spouse or parent is a crushing experience, often bankrupting all but the wealthy because medical insurance and Medicare pay for medicine and doctor visits but not “custodial care,” which is estimated at as many as 170 hours per month. As Karlawish shows, Alzheimer’s usually causes more suffering for the caregiver than the patient. Until the 1970s, most doctors explained that this was “senility,” a consequence of aging beyond the scope of medical science. Eventually, researchers realized they were dealing with an epidemic of brain disease. At the same time, patient advocacy groups formed to lobby Congress, which was amenable to providing funding. Formerly, doctors diagnosed Alzheimer’s by examining the brain after death. Observing and testing living patients was a major advance. In 2012, the FDA approved an ingenious brain scan that illuminates the areas damaged by Alzheimer’s. Sadly, Medicare won’t pay for the $3,000 test, which doesn’t directly help patients because no good treatment exists (several drugs purport to slow its progress, but many experts believe they’re worthless). A medical expert with a page-turning style, Karlawish is mostly successful in conveying optimism. Hopeful drugs are in the research pipeline, but even better news is that physicians, institutions, and advocacy organizations are adopting more imaginative and humane programs to care for victims both before and after their disease becomes crippling.
An outstanding primer that readers should put into the hands of their doctors.Pub Date: Feb. 23, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-250-21873-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.
Bearing witness to oppression.
Award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Coates probes the narratives that shape our perception of the world through his reports on three journeys: to Dakar, Senegal, the last stop for Black Africans “before the genocide and rebirth of the Middle Passage”; to Chapin, South Carolina, where controversy erupted over a writing teacher’s use of Between the World and Me in class; and to Israel and Palestine, where he spent 10 days in a “Holy Land of barbed wire, settlers, and outrageous guns.” By addressing the essays to students in his writing workshop at Howard University in 2022, Coates makes a literary choice similar to the letter to his son that informed Between the World and Me; as in that book, the choice creates a sense of intimacy between writer and reader. Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual. In Dakar, he is haunted by ghosts of his ancestors and “the shade of Niggerology,” a pseudoscientific narrative put forth to justify enslavement by portraying Blacks as inferior. In South Carolina, the 22-acre State House grounds, dotted with Confederate statues, continue to impart a narrative of white supremacy. His trip to the Middle East inspires the longest and most impassioned essay: “I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel,” he writes. In his complex analysis, he sees the trauma of the Holocaust playing a role in Israel’s tactics in the Middle East: “The wars against the Palestinians and their Arab allies were a kind of theater in which ‘weak Jews’ who went ‘like lambs to slaughter’ were supplanted by Israelis who would ‘fight back.’” Roiled by what he witnessed, Coates feels speechless, unable to adequately convey Palestinians’ agony; their reality “demands new messengers, tasked as we all are, with nothing less than saving the world.”
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9780593230381
Page Count: 176
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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