An enthralling portrait of high-wire emergency care performed under the most trying circumstances.
An air ambulance doctor revisits his adventures saving lives in Africa in this soulful medical memoir.
Munk, an American emergency medicine physician, recaps his stints from 2008 to 2012 with AMREF Flying Doctors, an NGO that conducts medevac missions out of Nairobi to African locales as far away as Khartoum. His episodic chapters recount trips in difficult, dangerous circumstances—landing at tiny rural airstrips after the pilots ascertained that there was no livestock on the runways; on one occasion, braving potential anti-aircraft fire on a flight into Mogadishu—and his efforts to stabilize patients for the long journey to Nairobi in a flying emergency room. His account pairs engrossing dives into the cases he treated with ruminations on Africa’s travails. Thus, a trip to Congo to collect a priest stricken with heart failure highlights that country’s corruption—airport workers sometimes blocked a plane’s departure until they had received bribes—and the success of a bishop in suppressing it. In Ethiopia, the author encountered a Kafkaesque bureaucracy, left over from the country’s time as a Soviet client state, that forbade him to move a patient in diabetic shock 15 feet to the plane until officials had approved it. A trip to Kampala to rescue two Australian tourists injured in a motor-bike crash prompts a meditation on Africa’s lack of health and road-safety infrastructures that coddle Westerners. And a trip to a Somali refugee camp to pick up a psychotic aid worker reminded Munk of his privilege in flying back out while thousands immured there couldn’t escape. The author’s gripping, evocative prose conveys the adrenalized pressure of emergency care. (“I could hear the beeping heartrate monitor get slower and slower, a truly ominous sign….Why was the air not entering the boy’s lungs? Only seconds had passed, but they were dire. What was wrong? I felt a familiar sick feeling in my stomach—the one I get when things spin out of control.”) He also captures the plangent ironies of his inability to treat Africa’s manifold dysfunctions. (“I would frequently evacuate patients from one awful hospital in East Africa, provide them American-standard care in the air, and then deposit them at a second awful hospital.”) The result is a true-life medical drama that combines tense heroics with mordant reflections.
An enthralling portrait of high-wire emergency care performed under the most trying circumstances.Pub Date: Jan. 30, 2024
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 378
Publisher: Creemore Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 19, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.
The iconic model tells the story of her eventful life.
According to the acknowledgments, this memoir started as "a fifty-page poem and then grew into hundreds of pages of…more poetry." Readers will be glad that Anderson eventually turned to writing prose, since the well-told anecdotes and memorable character sketches are what make it a page-turner. The poetry (more accurately described as italicized notes-to-self with line breaks) remains strewn liberally through the pages, often summarizing the takeaway or the emotional impact of the events described: "I was / and still am / an exceptionally / easy target. / And, / I'm proud of that." This way of expressing herself is part of who she is, formed partly by her passion for Anaïs Nin and other writers; she is a serious maven of literature and the arts. The narrative gets off to a good start with Anderson’s nostalgic memories of her childhood in coastal Vancouver, raised by very young, very wild, and not very competent parents. Here and throughout the book, the author displays a remarkable lack of anger. She has faced abuse and mistreatment of many kinds over the decades, but she touches on the most appalling passages lightly—though not so lightly you don't feel the torment of the media attention on the events leading up to her divorce from Tommy Lee. Her trip to the pages of Playboy, which involved an escape from a violent fiance and sneaking across the border, is one of many jaw-dropping stories. In one interesting passage, Julian Assange's mother counsels Anderson to desexualize her image in order to be taken more seriously as an activist. She decided that “it was too late to turn back now”—that sexy is an inalienable part of who she is. Throughout her account of this kooky, messed-up, enviable, and often thrilling life, her humility (her sons "are true miracles, considering the gene pool") never fails her.
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023
ISBN: 9780063226562
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
SEEN & HEARD
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