A heartwarming, educational guide for the afflicted, their loved ones and the intellectually curious.
An illuminating new way of understanding and coping with a loved one who suffers from dementia.
A loved one suffering from dementia or the effects of a traumatic brain injury may seem vacant, but, Forrest (Symphony of Spirits, 2000) says, we can still speak to their souls, “the deepest part of the self and one’s evolving human essence.” This digestible guide, Forrest’s second self-help book, will aid in understanding how to interact with someone who has degenerative brain disease or severe mental issues resulting from brain injuries. Interspersed with background information on the different types and stages of dementia, the guide also provides tips for strengthening the brain and memory. For instance, Forrest encourages eating antioxidant-rich foods such as blueberries, strawberries and greens, as well as activities like dancing and listening to and playing music to help keep the brain stimulated and trigger muscle memory for people of all ages. There are seven stages to Alzheimer’s, Forrest writes, from early onset to the fully developed disease, and the steps should be known and understood so as to serve as “red flags to alert loved ones.” She points to the caretaker as the “unsung hero” and routinely reminds anyone in that position not to ignore his or her own needs while caring for a loved one. In addition to her solid academic and professional foundation in cognitive behavior with a Ph.D. in clinical psychology (The Fielding Graduate University) and time spent as a psychologist and nurse, Forrest also has personal experience: She was the victim of a car accident that caused brain damage, and she acted as a caregiver for her husband, who was diagnosed with cancer. Though her background is academic, the writing is highly comprehensible and easily readable for general audiences, and the personal anecdotes sprinkled throughout the book add a layer of humanity and humility.
A heartwarming, educational guide for the afflicted, their loved ones and the intellectually curious.Pub Date: June 3, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-986015-2-5
Page Count: 222
Publisher: Butter Lamp Books
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.
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.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-23222-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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