An optimistic, ruminative appreciation for the art, the power, and the cultivation of human healing.
In this memoir, a man with Crohn’s disease reflects on a lifetime spent attenuating symptoms using a combination of modern medicine and an intuitive, holistic healing approach.
When Cohen, a gender and sexuality studies professor at Rutgers University, was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease at the age of 13, he feared it would compromise him medically (and psychologically) forever. The author recalls being somberly advised that a lifetime of immunosuppressive medication and “periods of remission” were the best scenarios modern medicine could offer. In his early 20s as a graduate student in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1982, Cohen witnessed the beginning of the AIDS epidemic. Since he was a young, gay man, a life-threatening intestinal attack was initially (and wrongly) perceived as an HIV infection. From that grueling Crohn’s episode came a radical, “miraculous,” “out-of-body” epiphany and a newfound appreciation for learning the art of self-healing. With an appealing mixture of intellectual prose, spirited perspective, and refreshing honesty, Cohen shares how, over a four-decade timeline, he nurtured a desire and a respect for the healing process and how nature (specifically trees) aided him on his wellness journey. He argues that the “Western understandings of therapeutic action” have steered modern medicine toward a quick, biochemical, “fix it” modality, discouraging patients from fostering their own abilities to learn to heal. This discussion as well as a deep dive into daily life with Crohn’s disease will find wide appeal with readers who consider modern medical care frustrating. Denser, divergent, referential deliberations on the history of medicine and clinical practice as well as ambiguous philosophies on the nature of illness will appeal more to academics. In A Body Worth Defending (2009), Cohen explored biological immunity, biopolitics, and “the apotheosis of the modern body.” In this book, he shifts his gaze toward how people can tap into their own intrinsic capacities to heal in conjunction with skilled clinical care and curative technologies. He stresses that self-healing needs to be encouraged at every level of health care delivery and promoted as another weapon in the biological arsenal against chronic illness. Cohen persuasively champions the benefits of therapeutic, reparative healing and the vital roles it plays in overall wellness.
An optimistic, ruminative appreciation for the art, the power, and the cultivation of human healing.Pub Date: Jan. 3, 2023
ISBN: 9781478016670
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Duke Univ.
Review Posted Online: Jan. 13, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Suffering unfathomable anguish, a mother memorializes her murdered son with great tenderness.
Remembering “Hershy.”
Three hundred and twenty-eight days. That’s how long Hersh Goldberg-Polin was held in captivity—tortured and starved by his captors in underground tunnels—before he was executed. He was 23 years old. In this unvarnished and heartrending account, Goldberg-Polin’s mother, Rachel, writes of the unending torment that she and her husband, Jon, endured after learning that their son had been kidnapped by Hamas terrorists during the attacks of October 7, 2023. Like so many other young people on that day, Hersh was attending a music festival in Israel—a celebration of love and unity. As Goldberg-Polin writes, her son was “the only American citizen kidnapped alive on October 7th who did not return alive.” In direct, plainspoken language that steers clear of politics, the author, a Jewish educator, recounts “being in a daze of the most indescribably sickening horror and fear, like nothing I had ever felt in my life. I remember my heart racing and feeling like I was in a permanent state of someone scaring me.” In addition to “shovel[ing] out my pain in the form of words,” she shares reminiscences of her son, as well as details that only a parent could notice. “His eyes were cookies,” she says of her “Hershy.” “I couldn’t find the pupils within the dark chocolate-brown irises.…He had a raspy voice, even when he was a baby.” And: “I thought he was hilarious; his sarcasm and humor were similar to mine.” Hersh and his sisters, Leebie and Orly, adapted well to life in Israel after the family moved from Richmond, Virginia. (Hersh was born in the Bay Area.) After being discharged from his service in the Israeli army as a combat medic, he was planning to journey around the world—a longtime dream of his. “So many people have come to love you, Hersh,” Jon Polin writes in the book’s afterword. And with one simple word that has the power to touch any heart, he signs off: “Dada.”
Suffering unfathomable anguish, a mother memorializes her murdered son with great tenderness.Pub Date: April 21, 2026
ISBN: 9798217198009
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2026
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
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