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Cancer Care Standards

Name: Cancer Care Standards
Author: Colleen O. Lee
ISBN: 978-1482518207

PUTTING THE PUZZLE PIECES TOGETHER TO PERSONALIZE MEDICINE

by Colleen O. Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 2, 2015

A solid compilation of the fundamentals of cancer, its diagnosis, and its treatment.

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A guide to common questions regarding cancer, along with a substantial collection of resources.

Cancer and Complementary Medicine, 2012) uses a Q-and-A structure to present comprehensive information about cancer, its diagnosis, and its methods of treatment. The approach is informative rather than advisory, providing definitions of common terms and lists of screening and diagnostic tests without encouraging readers to pursue particular courses of action. Each chapter features concise answers in straightforward language that will be easy for nonspecialists to follow. There’s also a list of references, including citations of studies published by the National Institutes of Health and other established research facilities. Lee avoids both alarmism and criticism; for example, she addresses controversial topics, such as the possible overuse of medical screening tests, without passing judgments or making suggestions about patient behavior. The book’s professional, detached tone lends authority to its straight-ahead statements. Its Q-and-A structure is also largely effective though occasionally awkward, as when it forces periodic summaries into its format (“Thus far, we have covered the foundational components of cancer care, symptom management, integrative oncology, guideline development, screening and treatment guidelines”). There are also occasional instances of acronym-laden prose (“if standards were available for developing valid SRs and CPGs, then the public and clinicians should have greater trust in these CPGs”), but Lee generally avoids esoteric jargon. Indeed, the book makes a point of clearly defining standard medical terminology. Readers searching for factual information about cancer, rather than medical advice, will find that this book offers dispassionate, thoroughly documented clinical information.

A solid compilation of the fundamentals of cancer, its diagnosis, and its treatment.

Pub Date: May 2, 2015

ISBN: 978-1482518207

Page Count: 248

Publisher: CreateSpace

Review Posted Online: May 13, 2015

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

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IN MY PLACE

by Charlayne Hunter-Gault ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1992

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From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992

ISBN: 0-374-17563-2

Page Count: 192

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

- BOOK REVIEW
MY PEOPLE
by Charlayne Hunter-Gault

- BOOK REVIEW
TO THE MOUNTAINTOP
by Charlayne Hunter-Gault

- BOOK REVIEW
NEW NEWS OUT OF AFRICA
by Charlayne Hunter-Gault

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A LITTLE HISTORY OF POETRY

by John Carey ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 21, 2020

Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.

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A light-speed tour of (mostly) Western poetry, from the 4,000-year-old Gilgamesh to the work of Australian poet Les Murray, who died in 2019.

In the latest entry in the publisher’s Little Histories series, Carey, an emeritus professor at Oxford whose books include What Good Are the Arts? and The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books, offers a quick definition of poetry—“relates to language as music relates to noise. It is language made special”—before diving in to poetry’s vast history. In most chapters, the author deals with only a few writers, but as the narrative progresses, he finds himself forced to deal with far more than a handful. In his chapter on 20th-century political poets, for example, he talks about 14 writers in seven pages. Carey displays a determination to inform us about who the best poets were—and what their best poems were. The word “greatest” appears continually; Chaucer was “the greatest medieval English poet,” and Langston Hughes was “the greatest male poet” of the Harlem Renaissance. For readers who need a refresher—or suggestions for the nightstand—Carey provides the best-known names and the most celebrated poems, including Paradise Lost (about which the author has written extensively), “Kubla Khan,” “Ozymandias,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, which “changed the course of English poetry.” Carey explains some poetic technique (Hopkins’ “sprung rhythm”) and pauses occasionally to provide autobiographical tidbits—e.g., John Masefield, who wrote the famous “Sea Fever,” “hated the sea.” We learn, as well, about the sexuality of some poets (Auden was bisexual), and, especially later on, Carey discusses the demons that drove some of them, Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath among them. Refreshingly, he includes many women in the volume—all the way back to Sappho—and has especially kind words for Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, who share a chapter.

Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.