by Debra E. Meyerson with Danny Zuckerman ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 14, 2019
An encouraging story of personal growth after a life-altering medical event.
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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
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by Anne Heche ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 24, 2023
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.
The late actor offers a gentle guide for living with more purpose, love, and joy.
Mixing poetry, prescriptive challenges, and elements of memoir, Heche (1969-2022) delivers a narrative that is more encouraging workbook than life story. The author wants to share what she has discovered over the course of a life filled with abuse, advocacy, and uncanny turning points. Her greatest discovery? Love. “Open yourself up to love and transform kindness from a feeling you extend to those around you to actions that you perform for them,” she writes. “Only by caring can we open ourselves up to the universe, and only by opening up to the universe can we fully experience all the wonders that it holds, the greatest of which is love.” Throughout the occasionally overwrought text, Heche is heavy on the concept of care. She wants us to experience joy as she does, and she provides a road map for how to get there. Instead of slinking away from Hollywood and the ridicule that she endured there, Heche found the good and hung on, with Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford starring as particularly shining knights in her story. Some readers may dismiss this material as vapid Hollywood stuff, but Heche’s perspective is an empathetic blend of Buddhism (minimize suffering), dialectical behavioral therapy (tolerating distress), Christianity (do unto others), and pre-Socratic philosophy (sufficient reason). “You’re not out to change the whole world, but to increase the levels of love and kindness in the world, drop by drop,” she writes. “Over time, these actions wear away the coldness, hate, and indifference around us as surely as water slowly wearing away stone.” Readers grieving her loss will take solace knowing that she lived her love-filled life on her own terms. Heche’s business and podcast partner, Heather Duffy, writes the epilogue, closing the book on a life well lived.
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9781627783316
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Viva Editions
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
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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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