An earnest but often dense work on international health care.
A call to change and improve medical systems in developing nations.
Jiwani, a physician who’s spent much of his career with the Aga Khan Development Network, presents a debut book that starts out as a doctor’s memoir and ends up focusing on his promotion of the importance of family medicine and primary care in less affluent countries. Most of Jiwani’s work, as described in these pages, has been about developing medical systems in a way that advances the latest in medical knowledge with necessary cultural sensitivity. He also writes about the AKDN and its constituent organizations, which have made multiple medical, educational, and other institutions possible throughout the developing world. Along the way, he increases awareness of the AKDN as an underrecognized force for good—a nongovernmental organization emerging from the Shia Ismaili Muslim sect, dedicated to improving people’s lives on a nonsectarian basis throughout Africa and Asia. Jiwani thus spends a great deal of time tracking parallels between his career and the development of AKDN–sponsored institutions in Pakistan, Tanzania, Uganda, and elsewhere; along the way, he offers accounts of his work as a private physician and medical-school faculty member at the University of British Columbia. This book has a compelling theme, but the author’s style isn’t consistently engaging; readers may sometimes feel lost among all the organizational descriptions. Jiwani’s prose can get technical, making it challenging for lay readers unfamiliar with complex medical infrastructures. He provides some moving descriptions of working with patients in these developing countries, including a story of a Pakistani child afflicted with polio: “I found that the child had indeed been moved to the ICU overnight. I found her awake; her large, wide, beautiful grey eyes were quite serene.” Some of his best anecdotes are about personal engagement that doesn’t have to do with his main work with the AKDN, such as serving as a passenger ship’s doctor. There’s also a helpful glossary in the back of the book along with maps of where the author has worked with AKDN institutions.
An earnest but often dense work on international health care.Pub Date: Aug. 19, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-03-910907-0
Page Count: 300
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Oct. 18, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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