The book’s title is no hype; this is a startling account of an improbable huckster who made his living promoting a...
A shocking and bizarre history of premature infant care in America.
Editor and journalist Raffel (The Secret Life of Objects, 2012, etc.) tells her story mostly as a biography of an implausible character, Martin Couney (1870-1950), whose claim to being a physician could not be verified. Premature infants are unable to maintain a normal temperature and may become too weak to eat. This was no secret, and by the end of the 19th century, inventive physicians, especially in France, had produced primitive containers designed to keep them warm. At the time, hospitals mostly served the poor, and doctors worked alone. Neither wanted these expensive new devices, so inventors promoted them in international exhibitions or as commercial entertainment. “At the Infant Incubator Charity at No. 26, Boulevard Poissonière,” writes the author, “Parisians paid fifteen centimes to see babies described by a reporter as ‘just big enough to put in your pocket.’ That same reporter stated that ‘like the bearded lady in the circus,’ the show was worth the price.” Raffel introduces her subject as a young promoter who secured London rights for Queen Victoria’s 1897 Diamond Jubilee. After a profitable run, he sailed to the United States, where he operated preemie exhibits in fairgrounds and international exhibitions, with a permanent facility in Coney Island. In 1943, Couney’s final year of operation, Cornell Hospital opened New York’s first neonatal unit. Many readers will share Raffel’s admiration of Couney, who never charged patients and paid obsessive attention to diet and hygiene (unfortunately, rivals were not so attentive). Survivors loved him, and while some physicians denounced the commercialization of his project, others approved, and he is considered a founder of American neonatology.
The book’s title is no hype; this is a startling account of an improbable huckster who made his living promoting a lifesaving device.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-399-17574-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Blue Rider Press
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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