If Gawande’s hands in the operating room are as sure as his handling of words, his success in his chosen career is all but...
A gem-like collection of essays on medicine by eighth-year surgical resident, Harvard Med graduate, Rhodes scholar, and New Yorker staff writer Gawande, himself the son of physicians.
Part I contains chilling stories of medical errors, some the near-inevitable results of young docs learning their craft by practicing on live patients, some due to the burnout or depression of seasoned specialists. (To his credit, Gawande includes a tale of his own poor judgment in a medical emergency that fortunately ended happily.) Practice does make perfect, the author demonstrates; hospitals specializing in hernia repair, for example, maximize their efficiency for the greater benefit of patients. With profound empathy, Part II chronicles medical mysteries. Readers will feel for the pregnant woman whose nausea and vomiting could not be stopped no matter what antiemetic drug she was given—until her twins were born and that same night she was able to eat a hamburger with blue cheese and fries. Sadly, these anecdotes often serve as reminders that what doctors can’t pin down they often dismiss, as when a man with incapacitating back pain was advised by specialists to see a shrink. In Part III, Gawande addresses the issue of uncertainty, an ever-daunting challenge in a profession where information is always imperfect. Autopsies, which would help clarify many cases, are performed with appalling infrequency, perhaps because they reveal a depressing rate of misdiagnosis. The new, more democratic relationship between physicians and patients may also have a downside when patients make the wrong decision. The final chapter reports on a case of heart-stopping suspense, lacking clear indications and plagued by great uncertainty, in which the doctors’ intuition was critical.
If Gawande’s hands in the operating room are as sure as his handling of words, his success in his chosen career is all but guaranteed.Pub Date: April 4, 2002
ISBN: 0-8050-6319-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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