A richly detailed account of a medical malpractice suit that reveals how human-energy-intensive, expensive, and inefficient the medical liability system can be. Werth, a business and science writer (The Billion-Dollar Molecule, 1994), has written an up-close and personal narrative involving the lives of a large, ever-changing cast of characters. He met the Sabias, a working-class couple and their profoundly brain-damaged and physically handicapped son, Tony, through their lawyer, Michael Koskoff, a prominent Connecticut medical malpractice attorney. Tony had an extremely difficult birth and his twin brother was stillborn. Using in-depth interviews, medical records, court documents, and deposition transcripts, Werth has reconstructed dramatic scenes spanning the years from 1983, when the Sabias had their first date (she invited him to pull off I-95 for coffee after hearing him on her CB radio), to 1996, three years after the settlement of their lawsuit against Norwalk Hospital. Besides creating a vivid picture of the Sabias, Werth takes the reader inside the minds of the lawyers at Koskoff's firm, and even into the heart of Dr. Maryellen Humes, who delivered Tony. (Humes's battle with her medical malpractice insurance carrier is a story unto itself.) There are no real villains here, just a host of individuals in an imperfect system trying to protect their own interests. While the Sabias' marriage nearly founders, for six and a half years lawyers on both sides prepare for the trial that no one wants. Medical experts are consulted and depositions are taken, not to discover the truth about what happened to Tony but to construct a persuasive theory. After prolonged maneuvering and delayed trial dates, both sides at last agree to try mediation, a process that soon leads to resolution of the case. Never resolved is just how Tony's brain was damaged, but at least the Sabias received money to care for their helpless son. A gripping, page-turning story, and a revealing and troubling look at our medical liability system.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-684-80769-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1997
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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