Not for the squeamish, the book provides a fascinating glimpse into a world of rapid life-or-death decisions and actions.
From the chief of trauma at Tucson’s University Medical Center, where Congresswoman Gabby Giffords was taken after the mass shooting in 2011, comes a memoir filled with explicit details about repairing horrific damage to human bodies.
Rhee, who is also a professor of surgery at the University of Arizona, is aided by veteran journalist Dillow in recounting a life rich in dramatic moments. Born in South Korea and raised partly in Uganda and then in the United States, Rhee, who received his medical education at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences and consequently served in the U.S. Navy, discovered his bent for surgery as a resident. He loved it, and he had “good hands.” What his memoir shows is that he also had stamina, drive, ingenuity, and the ability to focus and to lead. Having been a trauma surgeon in the “urban battlefields” of Seattle, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles and in the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan, Rhee has seen sights most people never will—or would ever want to. But this is not just a series of horror stories. The author wants readers to understand the importance of trauma centers—trauma is the major cause of death of all Americans under the age of 45—the training of trauma surgeons, and what they do and do not do. Rhee opens and closes the book with the story of Giffords, but what he makes clear is that what happened in Tucson was not unusual or remarkable. Every year, some 180,000 Americans die of traumatic injuries, and the ones who end up under the care of a skilled trauma team stand the best chances of surviving.
Not for the squeamish, the book provides a fascinating glimpse into a world of rapid life-or-death decisions and actions.Pub Date: June 3, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4767-2729-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2014
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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