A passionate account about medical care written with dexterity throughout.
In this memoir, a retired physician shares four decades of joys and agonies as a practitioner and consumer of Canadian health care.
In 1978, Zehr was a nurse at a hospital in Yellowknife, the capital city of Canada’s Northwest Territories region, which served all the Inuit and Dene Indigenous settlements in the area. During a frantic case when she assisted in saving the life of a 6-month-old baby, she recognized an intense desire to pursue a career as a doctor. Even as a child growing up as the eldest of three in Ontario, the author, an enthusiastic learner, knew she wanted to be in a “helping profession” in a “clinical and hands-on” industry. She fondly recalls her mother alleviating her stressful younger years with long walks and talks as well as instilling in her an early appreciation for music, particularly an enduring love for Paul McCartney and the Beatles, a passion that would last a lifetime. Zehr’s career track involved years of registered nurse training in the 1970s, which she generously shares in chapters filled with anecdotal episodes featuring a panoply of pediatric patients, alternating between sad and complex and cheerful and gratifying cases. These vivid stories—and the accompanying family photographs of life on northern Canada’s Arctic tundra—drive home the critical importance of the nursing profession and demonstrate the mettle necessary to succeed as well as the rewarding nature of work in medicine. Medical school would test her resilience and patience as she went on to become an OB-GYN, including performing part of her residency at a controversial abortion clinic. Zehr is candid about physician burnout and how some doctors never notice the negative changes occurring in their own bodies due to mental stress and sheer exhaustion. The well-written memoir’s concluding chapters concern the author not as a medical professional but as a patient and health care consumer, forced to personally wrestle with the system’s inadequacies and frustrations. This segment is as real as it gets and unpacks a great amount of disillusionment and exasperation with an industry Zehr had enjoyed a bittersweet relationship with. Readers interested in knowing how health care operates outside of America will be fascinated by the author’s opinions and ordeals.
A passionate account about medical care written with dexterity throughout.Pub Date: Aug. 16, 2022
ISBN: 9781039143876
Page Count: 265
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2022
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
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.
Documenting perilous times.
In his most recent behind-the-scenes account of political power and how it is wielded, Woodward synthesizes several narrative strands, from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel to the 2024 presidential campaign. Woodward’s clear, gripping storytelling benefits from his legendary access to prominent figures and a structure of propulsive chapters. The run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is tense (if occasionally repetitive), as a cast of geopolitical insiders try to divine Vladimir Putin’s intent: “Doubt among allies, the public and among Ukrainians meant valuable time and space for Putin to maneuver.” Against this backdrop, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham implores Donald Trump to run again, notwithstanding the former president’s denial of his 2020 defeat. This provides unwelcome distraction for President Biden, portrayed as a thoughtful, compassionate lifetime politico who could not outrace time, as demonstrated in the June 2024 debate. Throughout, Trump’s prevarications and his supporters’ cynicism provide an unsettling counterpoint to warnings provided by everyone from former Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley to Vice President Kamala Harris, who calls a second Trump term a likely “death knell for American democracy.” The author’s ambitious scope shows him at the top of his capabilities. He concludes with these unsettling words: “Based on my reporting, Trump’s language and conduct has at times presented risks to national security—both during his presidency and afterward.”
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781668052273
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
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