A big, sprawling, highly personal inquiry into the making, approval, selling, and prescribing of drugs. When a single dose of the antiobiotic Floxin sent Diane Fried to the emergency room in delirium and left her with serious neurological problems, her journalist husband turned his investigative eye on Floxin’s safety. It is a well-told story, fascinating and often frightening, occupying nearly a third of this book. From it, Fried (Thing of Beauty, 1993) then began a broader investigation into the pharmaceutical-industrial complex, seeking to find the flaws in the process by which drugs make it from pharmaceutical lab to family medicine cabinet. Fried attended medical and scientific conferences and government hearings, compiled enormous files of documents, and seemingly interviewed just about anyone with anything pertinent or interesting to tell him about the hazards of legal drugs: researchers, pharmaceutical company reps, FDA officials, and patients with adverse-reaction stories. Trying for the big picture, he seems more often to resemble the blind men struggling to figure out the nature of an elephant from its separate parts. While this work lacks focus, Fried has an ingratiating personal style and he provides some insightful interviews with insiders as well as information on the safety of quinolones (the drug family embracing Floxin), how the FDA dealt with thalidomide in the 1960s, the development of powerful protease inhibitors to treat AIDs, and the growth of direct-to-consumer marketing of prescription drugs. As might be expected, pharmaceutical companies come in for heavy criticism, but so does the federal government, for inadequacies in surveillance of drugs for possible adverse affects once they’re on the market. To reassure the nervous consumer, there’s an appendix on how to read a drug package insert and how to ask the right questions of one’s physician and pharmacist. For all its virtues, a collection of absorbing articles that never quite coalesces into a cohesive whole.
Pub Date: April 13, 1998
ISBN: 0-553-10383-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1998
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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