Educative and thoughtful—important reading for patients and fellow medical professionals alike.
A sensitive doctor describes her beginnings navigating the unpredictable, woolly world of modern American health care.
Pearson’s inspired collective of illuminating clinical episodes immediately sparks to life with anecdotes from her early work in a female-owned and -operated abortion clinic in her 20s. Her experience there as a young, bilingual patient advocate counseling Spanish-speaking women greatly broadened her perspective on women’s issues, “the suffering that women go through,” and it solidified her decision to pursue a career in medicine. Because many of the artfully and creatively compressed stories she shares are so personal and admittedly “hard to tell,” the book takes on an intimate tone, even while the details veer toward the gruesome or the emotionally raw. Intensive medical school classes on Galveston Island led to hospital and family medicine rotations, and all of the experiences exposed the author to the trauma and heartbreak of pain, cancer, and disease and the frustrations of age and death—but also the sincere appreciation from those she was fortunate enough to assist in creating wellness. Pearson’s history as a poet and a fiction writer aids with the flow and the tone of her memoir. Eloquently and briskly written, the narrative is moving and will be inspirational and particularly enlightening for pre-med students eager to discover and explore the real insider details found both in and out of school. The author offers a helpful, pragmatic perspective on how the American health care system operates, how and who it helps, and what it has become hobbled by, though, disappointingly, only a few closing pages are devoted to these thoughts. On the whole, Pearson’s well-balanced book provides a smooth combination of personal history and patient care cases.
Educative and thoughtful—important reading for patients and fellow medical professionals alike.Pub Date: May 9, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-393-24924-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: April 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017
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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