An encouraging story of personal growth after a life-altering medical event.
Meyerson, a former Stanford University professor, looks at how the experience of a stroke affects one’s concept of identity.
On Labor Day weekend in 2010, while on a hiking trip with her family, Meyerson had a “weird” feeling in her right leg: “neither uncomfortable nor painful, not numb or asleep, just…not right.” It was the first sign that she was experiencing a stroke that reduced blood flow to her brain. It caused her to lose her ability to communicate her thoughts via speech or writing. She’d long studied how personal identity shapes one’s experiences; this book looks at how the traumatic experience of a stroke shapes identity. It also aims to offer hope to stroke survivors as they adjust to their new normal. Although the book is written in the first-person singular, the “I” refers to her writing team, made up of her credited co-author son Zuckerman, her husband, and others—which is “a good example of how life has changed” for the author. What sets this book apart from other, similar guides, though, is its focus on stroke survivors’ emotional journeys. People recovering from strokes are often asked to focus on their physical recoveries, and they often receive relatively little psychological support, the author notes. Her book clearly shows the benefits of focusing on the emotional side of the recovery process. Along the way, Meyerson walks readers through psychologist Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and quotes authors, such as Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant, who’ve written about post-traumatic growth and grief. She also assures readers that they, too, can build resilience as she has. The book presents stories of other stroke survivors, including a 13-year-old who suffered his event at football practice; a man whose stroke put him on a ventilator and who can now do four sets of 25 pushups; and a woman who fought to regain her long-term disability benefits. Overall, Meyerson has written an inspiring guide for anyone starting down their own road to recovery.
An encouraging story of personal growth after a life-altering medical event.Pub Date: May 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4494-9631-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.
The chef, rapper, and TV host serves up a blustery memoir with lashings of self-help.
“I’ve always had a sick confidence,” writes Bronson, ne Ariyan Arslani. The confidence, he adds, comes from numerous sources: being a New Yorker, and more specifically a New Yorker from Queens; being “short and fucking husky” and still game for a standoff on the basketball court; having strength, stamina, and seemingly no fear. All these things serve him well in the rough-and-tumble youth he describes, all stickball and steroids. Yet another confidence-builder: In the big city, you’ve got to sink or swim. “No one is just accepted—you have to fucking show that you’re able to roll,” he writes. In a narrative steeped in language that would make Lenny Bruce blush, Bronson recounts his sentimental education, schooled by immigrant Italian and Albanian family members and the mean streets, building habits good and bad. The virtue of those habits will depend on your take on modern mores. Bronson writes, for example, of “getting my dick pierced” down in the West Village, then grabbing a pizza and smoking weed. “I always smoke weed freely, always have and always will,” he writes. “I’ll just light a blunt anywhere.” Though he’s gone through the classic experiences of the latter-day stoner, flunking out and getting arrested numerous times, Bronson is a hard charger who’s not afraid to face nearly any challenge—especially, given his physique and genes, the necessity of losing weight: “If you’re husky, you’re always dieting in your mind,” he writes. Though vulgar and boastful, Bronson serves up a model that has plenty of good points, including his growing interest in nature, creativity, and the desire to “leave a legacy for everybody.”
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4478-5
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
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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