A timely, significant examination of how Covid-19 affected many American systems, from health care to government.
An in-depth study of medical mistrust in post-pandemic America.
Gorman, a public health expert and author of Denying to the Grave, uses interviews she conducted with subjects from a range of backgrounds to show how medical mistrust and belief in conspiracy theories connect to the current political climate, as well as how the Covid-19 pandemic influenced Americans’ lack of confidence in the health care system and the government’s ability to care for its people. Though the author focuses on the current pandemic era, she makes relevant arguments about how our current situation has been building through disasters like the 2008 financial crisis, the AIDS epidemic, and ongoing attacks on funding for social services in the U.S. “The loss of trust in the healthcare system is not independent of the loss of trust in other prominent institutions of our democracy—everything is in fact connected,” writes Gorman. She also examines how egregious experiments of the past, including but not limited to the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, have further alienated Black Americans, though she argues that present-day systemic racism is an even deadlier deterrent for many people of color in seeking health care. In that way, Gorman’s work is equal parts tightly focused and wide ranging, tackling many related issues of our age with expert research and highly readable storytelling. “It feels as though every event in the United States is inevitably shrouded in a dark cloud of distrust and conspiracy theories,” she writes, “and sometimes that smog is so thick and so opaque that we feel absolutely lost in looking for a clear path forward.” Throughout the book, Gorman not only helps readers understand the grave mistakes of the past; she also offers suggestions to find a path forward.
A timely, significant examination of how Covid-19 affected many American systems, from health care to government.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2024
ISBN: 9780197678121
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 29, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2024
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.
The chef, rapper, and TV host serves up a blustery memoir with lashings of self-help.
“I’ve always had a sick confidence,” writes Bronson, ne Ariyan Arslani. The confidence, he adds, comes from numerous sources: being a New Yorker, and more specifically a New Yorker from Queens; being “short and fucking husky” and still game for a standoff on the basketball court; having strength, stamina, and seemingly no fear. All these things serve him well in the rough-and-tumble youth he describes, all stickball and steroids. Yet another confidence-builder: In the big city, you’ve got to sink or swim. “No one is just accepted—you have to fucking show that you’re able to roll,” he writes. In a narrative steeped in language that would make Lenny Bruce blush, Bronson recounts his sentimental education, schooled by immigrant Italian and Albanian family members and the mean streets, building habits good and bad. The virtue of those habits will depend on your take on modern mores. Bronson writes, for example, of “getting my dick pierced” down in the West Village, then grabbing a pizza and smoking weed. “I always smoke weed freely, always have and always will,” he writes. “I’ll just light a blunt anywhere.” Though he’s gone through the classic experiences of the latter-day stoner, flunking out and getting arrested numerous times, Bronson is a hard charger who’s not afraid to face nearly any challenge—especially, given his physique and genes, the necessity of losing weight: “If you’re husky, you’re always dieting in your mind,” he writes. Though vulgar and boastful, Bronson serves up a model that has plenty of good points, including his growing interest in nature, creativity, and the desire to “leave a legacy for everybody.”
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4478-5
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and...
A dense, absorbing investigation into the medical community's exploitation of a dying woman and her family's struggle to salvage truth and dignity decades later.
In a well-paced, vibrant narrative, Popular Science contributor and Culture Dish blogger Skloot (Creative Writing/Univ. of Memphis) demonstrates that for every human cell put under a microscope, a complex life story is inexorably attached, to which doctors, researchers and laboratories have often been woefully insensitive and unaccountable. In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, an African-American mother of five, was diagnosed with what proved to be a fatal form of cervical cancer. At Johns Hopkins, the doctors harvested cells from her cervix without her permission and distributed them to labs around the globe, where they were multiplied and used for a diverse array of treatments. Known as HeLa cells, they became one of the world's most ubiquitous sources for medical research of everything from hormones, steroids and vitamins to gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, even the polio vaccine—all without the knowledge, must less consent, of the Lacks family. Skloot spent a decade interviewing every relative of Lacks she could find, excavating difficult memories and long-simmering outrage that had lay dormant since their loved one's sorrowful demise. Equal parts intimate biography and brutal clinical reportage, Skloot's graceful narrative adeptly navigates the wrenching Lack family recollections and the sobering, overarching realities of poverty and pre–civil-rights racism. The author's style is matched by a methodical scientific rigor and manifest expertise in the field.
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and Petri dish politics.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4000-5217-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
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