by Constance L. Vincent ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 25, 2014
A quick, emotional, and educational memoir about Alzheimer’s.
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Vincent describes her attempt to save her mother from the encroachment of Alzheimer’s disease in this medical memoir.
After watching her father sink into a dementia full of confusion and fear, Vincent was set on saving her mother from the same fate. At the time, Madeline was already suffering from mild cognitive impairment, and Vincent was determined to keep her from “joining the group whose MCI advanced to Alzheimer’s disease.” Vincent, a developmental psychologist, was a specialist in normal processes of aging; she was now forced to dive into the latest medical research to learn about the abnormalities of dementia and Alzheimer’s. The book chronicles Vincent’s investigation into the disease—its early warning signs, symptoms, dangers, diagnosis, and the misconceptions that surround it—and her increased involvement in her mother’s care. The resulting experience brings the love that Vincent has for her mother, and the insidious creep of aging and loss, into stark delineation. Following the main section of the memoir, Vincent covers the state of Alzheimer’s research today, including strategies for people who are dealing with the condition in a loved one. Vincent is an adept writer, both when it comes to engrossing storytelling (“The disappearance of a couple in their mid-eighties would cause concern almost anywhere, but especially so in Nevada”) and in delivering medical facts with significant weight (“Unless medical breakthroughs occur, by 2050 a new diagnosis will occur every thirty-three seconds, tripling the current number of 5.4 million Alzheimer’s patients to between 11 and 16 million people with AD in the United States alone”). The memoir, short and not unduly saccharine, outlines the quiet tragedy of dementia and the way it robs its hosts of dignity in their final years. The ordinariness of her story somehow makes it all the more terrible: Alzheimer’s is a disease that seems destined to affect anyone who lives long enough. Vincent effectively frames its dangers and illustrates the sense of despair it leaves in its wake.
A quick, emotional, and educational memoir about Alzheimer’s.Pub Date: Sept. 25, 2014
ISBN: 978-1499512595
Page Count: 168
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Rebecca Skloot ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 9, 2010
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and...
A dense, absorbing investigation into the medical community's exploitation of a dying woman and her family's struggle to salvage truth and dignity decades later.
In a well-paced, vibrant narrative, Popular Science contributor and Culture Dish blogger Skloot (Creative Writing/Univ. of Memphis) demonstrates that for every human cell put under a microscope, a complex life story is inexorably attached, to which doctors, researchers and laboratories have often been woefully insensitive and unaccountable. In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, an African-American mother of five, was diagnosed with what proved to be a fatal form of cervical cancer. At Johns Hopkins, the doctors harvested cells from her cervix without her permission and distributed them to labs around the globe, where they were multiplied and used for a diverse array of treatments. Known as HeLa cells, they became one of the world's most ubiquitous sources for medical research of everything from hormones, steroids and vitamins to gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, even the polio vaccine—all without the knowledge, must less consent, of the Lacks family. Skloot spent a decade interviewing every relative of Lacks she could find, excavating difficult memories and long-simmering outrage that had lay dormant since their loved one's sorrowful demise. Equal parts intimate biography and brutal clinical reportage, Skloot's graceful narrative adeptly navigates the wrenching Lack family recollections and the sobering, overarching realities of poverty and pre–civil-rights racism. The author's style is matched by a methodical scientific rigor and manifest expertise in the field.
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and Petri dish politics.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4000-5217-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
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edited by Rebecca Skloot and Floyd Skloot
by Bonnie Tsui ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 14, 2020
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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by Bonnie Tsui ; illustrated by Sophie Diao
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by Bonnie Tsui
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