An enlightening read for those looking to buck traditional epilepsy treatments in favor of plant-based, spiritual therapies.
De Ory offers a thoroughly researched treatise on epilepsy and its alternative treatments.
This hefty tome is much more than a clinical handbook: Each section begins with a personal memory that helped shape the author’s life, beginning with his diagnosis of generalized epilepsy as a child. Part I traces epilepsy’s history, from it being considered a spiritual and/or supernatural affliction in many cultures to the acknowledgment of its medical origins, beginning in ancient Greece. Part II covers the author’s deep dive into the world of entheogens (more popularly known as “psychedelics”). While cannabis has been scientifically shown to help prevent seizures, de Ory also makes a connection between “the altered states of consciousness triggered by mind-manifesting substances and those triggered by the post-ictal epileptic seizure.” That finding ushers in Part III, in which he discusses humanity’s ability to tap into the “psychic nature of the collective unconscious” as a way of coping with not just epilepsy, but with the ills of the world as a whole. The sheer amount of research included is impressive—the guide is over 400 pages long, not including nine pages of references and a 37-page bibliography. While the author does his best to break his subject down for readers, the terms and concepts he tackles may prove difficult: “To be born and to die is perhaps the quintessential paradox of a predicament that ushers us in and out of our material existence whilst safeguarding our transcendence throughout the trials of our corporality.” His writing remains eloquent throughout, alternating between scientific reporting and novelistic personal anecdotes: “As I was walking away from the University campus with my girlfriend on a gray winter afternoon, I swallowed a tiny white piece of blotting paper impregnated with LSD…suddenly, the familiar world around me collapsed while a dazzling reality surged from within.” While there is plenty of fascinating history and spiritual theory included, readers who don’t approve of illegal drug use will likely want to skip all of Part II.
An enlightening read for those looking to buck traditional epilepsy treatments in favor of plant-based, spiritual therapies.Pub Date: Feb. 21, 2022
ISBN: 9798419305977
Page Count: 474
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.
An experimental, illustrated essay collection that questions neurotypical definitions of what is normal.
From a young age, writer and comedian Myers has been different. In addition to coping with obsessive compulsive disorder and panic attacks, she struggled to read basic social cues. During a round of seven minutes in heaven—a game in which two players spend seven minutes in a closet and are expected to kiss—Myers misread the romantic advances of her best friend and longtime crush, Marley. In Paris, she accidentally invited a sex worker to join her friends for “board games and beer,” thinking he was simply a random stranger who happened to be hitting on her. In community college, a stranger’s request for a pen spiraled her into a panic attack but resulted in a tentative friendship. When the author moved to Australia, she began taking notes on her colleagues in an effort to know them better. As the author says to her co-worker, Tabitha, “there are unspoken social contracts within a workplace that—by some miracle—everyone else already understands, and I don’t….When things Go Without Saying, they Never Get Said, and sometimes people need you to Say Those Things So They Understand What The Hell Is Going On.” At its best, Myers’ prose is vulnerable and humorous, capturing characterization in small but consequential life moments, and her illustrations beautifully complement the text. Unfortunately, the author’s tendency toward unnecessary capitalization and experimental forms is often unsuccessful, breaking the book’s otherwise steady rhythm.
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063381308
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.
Avuncular observations on matters historical from the late popularizer of the past.
McCullough made a fine career of storytelling his way through past events and the great men (and occasional woman) of long-ago American history. In that regard, to say nothing of his eschewing modern technology in favor of the typewriter (“I love the way the bell rings every time I swing the carriage lever”), he might be thought of as belonging to a past age himself. In this set of occasional pieces, including various speeches and genial essays on what to read and how to write, he strikes a strong tone as an old-fashioned moralist: “Indifference to history isn’t just ignorant, it’s rude,” he thunders. “It’s a form of ingratitude.” There are some charming reminiscences in here. One concerns cajoling his way into a meeting with Arthur Schlesinger in order to pitch a speech to presidential candidate John F. Kennedy: Where Richard Nixon “has no character and no convictions,” he opined, Kennedy “is appealing to our best instincts.” McCullough allows that it wasn’t the strongest of ideas, but Schlesinger told him to write up a speech anyway, and when it got to Kennedy, “he gave a speech in which there was one paragraph that had once sentence written by me.” Some of McCullough’s appreciations here are of writers who are not much read these days, such as Herman Wouk and Paul Horgan; a long piece concerns a president who’s been largely lost in the shuffle too, Harry Truman, whose decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan McCullough defends. At his best here, McCullough uses history as a way to orient thinking about the present, and with luck to good ends: “I am a short-range pessimist and a long-range optimist. I sincerely believe that we may be on the way to a very different and far better time.”
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781668098998
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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