Intriguing case histories, related with a personal passion that sets Mason’s book apart from Oliver Sacks’s cooler writings...
Dispassionate neuroscience meets fierce advocacy in this heartbreaking but hopeful look at the little-understood world of those who suffer traumatic brain injuries.
Mason is a traumatic brain-injury case manager; brain-injury survivors (an estimated 5.3 million in the United States) go to him after they’ve exhausted every other option. His mission is getting help for people stuck in the purgatory of the U.S. healthcare system. His job, which takes him across the country, is convincing hospital administrators and neurologists and specialty care centers to give clients suffering debilitating brain injuries a new chance at life. Currently, Mason reports, there are at least 90,000 Americans with a brain injury severe enough to require an extended stay in rehab, but there are only a few thousand specialty beds, even fewer for patients whose disabilities are not just mental and physical but emotional. Clients include a man with encephalitis who is convinced he is dead; a woman with no memory, not even of the daughter who was killed in the car wreck that left her disabled; and an amnesiac serving time for a crime he can’t remember committing. These patients’ initial injuries are only prologues to the real tragedies, which begin when healthcare policies run out, or government support goes dry, and the severely disabled victims are left to fend for themselves, in many cases bankrupting their families. Few of the stories end happily: one client attempts suicide; another ends up in a mental hospital with no brain-injury experts on staff. Mason’s goal here is to convey awareness, not to uplift.
Intriguing case histories, related with a personal passion that sets Mason’s book apart from Oliver Sacks’s cooler writings on the subject.Pub Date: April 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-374-13452-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2008
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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