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AFTERWARDS, YOU'RE A GENIUS

Name: AFTERWARDS, YOU'RE A GENIUS
Author: Chip Brown
ISBN: 1-57322-113-9

FAITH, MEDICINE, AND THE METAPHYSICS OF HEALING

by Chip Brown ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1999

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An entertaining and insightful exploration of the relation between spirituality and healing by a journalist taking an exhilarating, often confounding trip into the world of healing hands, chakras, spirit guides, and the paranormal. In this first-person account, Brown, a former reporter for the Washington Post, shares with readers his mind-blowing experiences with and his reactions to a psychic, a practitioner of transformational aura balancing, and various hands-on healers trained in the art of manipulating the human energy field. He describes himself as caught “in the old quarrel between the heart and the head, where the heart signifies the hunger for faith and the head expresses the compulsion to doubt,” and his efforts to reconcile these two forces provide the book’s central theme. His descriptions of the characters he meets on his journey into the world of alternative healers are choice. If there’s any mockery, it’s directed only at himself. In the end he is still vacillating, skeptical of his own enthusiasms but longing to believe. Besides the personal story, Brown provides some background on the schism between mainstream medicine, with its emphasis on the mechanics of matter, and alternative medicine, with its focus on the immaterial. He describes how the 1909 Flexner report on medical education in the US shaped modern medicine, and he traces the link between Franz Mesmer’s 18th-century animal magnetism, Wilhelm Reich’s orgone energy, and today’s “therapeutic touch.” Brown ponders the relationship of the body to the mind, the conflict between faith and reason, the role of spirituality in healing, the lack of humanity in the practice of modern medicine, and always the probability of the impossible. No answers here, but a pleasurable trip through unfamiliar territory in the company of a curious mind and lively intelligence.

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1999

ISBN: 1-57322-113-9

Page Count: 416

Publisher: Riverhead

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1998

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

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NUTCRACKER

by E.T.A. Hoffmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1996

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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

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER AND THE MOUSE KING
by E.T.A. Hoffmann ; adapted by Natalie Andrewson ; illustrated by Natalie Andrewson

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER
by E.T.A. Hoffmann & illustrated by Julie Paschkis

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TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955

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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.