A wise one-stop guide for new mothers.
A debut handbook for a healthy pregnancy and baby care in the first three months after childbirth.
In this wide-ranging volume, executive coach and yoga teacher Murray takes readers through the multifaceted experience of being pregnant and parenting a newborn. It clearly describes an array of standard prenatal tests and optional procedures and, refreshingly, estimates prices for each. Early on, she advises that new mothers should, for instance, call their insurance company sometime in the first trimester and inform them of the pregnancy. “Then,” she continues, “ask them what info they tend to share with those who are pregnant, as well as what they need from you when (e.g., prior authorizations for genetics or gestational diabetes testing and/or post-delivery hospital stay, protocol for adding baby to your insurance, any coordination of benefits requirements you should know about...)” and so on. In addition, the author includes carefully itemized sections regarding human resources policies in the United States, using policies in Illinois, where she lives, as a specific example; the practicalities and politics of selecting helpers at every stage; the pragmatics of returning to work; and dozens of other aspects of the pregnancy and infant-care experience. The work lays out all of this practical information with impressive clarity, but the book’s strongest aspect may well be its reliable, consistent tone of calm and wise reassurance. “Hopefully this goes without saying, but being pregnant and giving birth are natural things your body is born knowing how to do,” she says in one representative passage. “You are not sick. There is not something wrong with you.” Prospective mothers and their loved ones will find this a comprehensive volume that answers their questions and calms their fears.
A wise one-stop guide for new mothers.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-0578878454
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Joy & Clarity, LLC
Review Posted Online: Nov. 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2022
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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