by Caroline Rosdahl ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 14, 2020
An engrossing and personal look at the evolution of the field of nursing.
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A nurse and educator recounts a vibrant career in this memoir featuring colorful vignettes.
When a friend and colleague suggested to Rosdahl that she write down the stories from her long and varied nursing career, the author was skeptical that her life would be of interest to readers. But she took up the challenge and gathered a wealth of anecdotes, case studies, and vivid history for an eclectic and compelling narrative of a career in a dynamic field. Author Joan Holman’s foreword gives an overview of Rosdahl’s pioneering work in the education of nurses, including writing a bestselling nursing text and introducing measurable learning objectives that continue to be used today. The bones of this brief biography are fleshed out enthusiastically in Rosdahl’s chronologically organized series of sketches that follow. Starting her career at age 16 in the 1950s, the author broke barriers in nursing and nursing education, including working for 40 cents an hour as the only Protestant nursing assistant in a Roman Catholic hospital, overcoming institutional resistance to become the first nonteaching high school counselor in Minnesota, and launching one of the first accredited practical nursing programs in that state. Stories such as “Being an “O.W.,” about the former stigma of out-of-wedlock pregnancy; “Heating Up Pizza,” in which student nurses heat leftovers in an operating room autoclave; and “Women in the Marching Band,” about gender barriers for female musicians, ground the narrative in Rosdahl’s personal experiences. The result is an accessible history of modern nursing, narrated with the concise clarity of a born teacher who can’t resist sharing an intriguing fact. The author’s tone is charmingly candid and coolly competent, whether she is flipping a would-be attacker on his back or handling a supervisor’s prim sputtering about an instructor’s pregnancy with a terse “I think I will just wait. I believe it will go away.” Occasionally, this frankness becomes a bit off-putting, as when a frequently pregnant, impoverished woman’s underwear is described as “a dirty, greasy bra.” It is also disappointing to find quotes from Wikipedia in the text rather than better researched information. Still, overall, the absorbing book is a warm and fitting tribute to the nurses and nursing educators to whom it is dedicated.
An engrossing and personal look at the evolution of the field of nursing.Pub Date: Dec. 14, 2020
ISBN: 979-8-57-951805-7
Page Count: 308
Publisher: Bunker Hills Media
Review Posted Online: March 17, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Jennette McCurdy ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 9, 2022
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.
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The former iCarly star reflects on her difficult childhood.
In her debut memoir, titled after her 2020 one-woman show, singer and actor McCurdy (b. 1992) reveals the raw details of what she describes as years of emotional abuse at the hands of her demanding, emotionally unstable stage mom, Debra. Born in Los Angeles, the author, along with three older brothers, grew up in a home controlled by her mother. When McCurdy was 3, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Though she initially survived, the disease’s recurrence would ultimately take her life when the author was 21. McCurdy candidly reconstructs those in-between years, showing how “my mom emotionally, mentally, and physically abused me in ways that will forever impact me.” Insistent on molding her only daughter into “Mommy’s little actress,” Debra shuffled her to auditions beginning at age 6. As she matured and starting booking acting gigs, McCurdy remained “desperate to impress Mom,” while Debra became increasingly obsessive about her daughter’s physical appearance. She tinted her daughter’s eyelashes, whitened her teeth, enforced a tightly monitored regimen of “calorie restriction,” and performed regular genital exams on her as a teenager. Eventually, the author grew understandably resentful and tried to distance herself from her mother. As a young celebrity, however, McCurdy became vulnerable to eating disorders, alcohol addiction, self-loathing, and unstable relationships. Throughout the book, she honestly portrays Debra’s cruel perfectionist personality and abusive behavior patterns, showing a woman who could get enraged by everything from crooked eyeliner to spilled milk. At the same time, McCurdy exhibits compassion for her deeply flawed mother. Late in the book, she shares a crushing secret her father revealed to her as an adult. While McCurdy didn’t emerge from her childhood unscathed, she’s managed to spin her harrowing experience into a sold-out stage act and achieve a form of catharsis that puts her mind, body, and acting career at peace.
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982185-82-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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