Though a passionate rendering of an often overlooked issue, the book’s style hinders its effectiveness.
In Esquibel’s debut novel, a psychiatrist critiques the Department of Veteran Affairs’ approach to the psychological care of veterans.
Through the experiences of Dr. Arthur Lyles, Esquibel explores how the VA system works, its shortcomings and ideas for reform. As Lyle’s career unfolds, it shows how giving monetary compensation to veterans because of combat-induced psychological problems can do more harm than the good—monthly stipends contingent on continued mental duress provide no motivation for veterans to improve their condition and re-enter society, especially as the money received from the VA is typically greater than what a veteran would earn if employed. In many of Lyles’ cases, veterans become addicted to psychiatric drugs that are prescribed and paid for by the VA. As long as a veteran can meet simple criteria to qualify for such benefits, they have unlimited access to money, drugs and a “pardon” from leading a normal life, according to the book. The veterans remain dependent and trapped in the VA system indefinitely, negating the therapeutic benefits the organization was established to foster. Esquibel intersperses these succinct points with less relevant material that unfortunately leaves the reader directionless and confused. He spends excessive portions of the book relaying anecdotes from his fictional protagonist’s life as well as including wordy discourses on unrelated philosophical ideas that draw the reader away from the book’s chief purpose. The author succeeds in addressing the importance of the inherent problems with the VA and how badly it needs attention and reform, but he states many of his ideas repetitively and with excessive elaboration. Further adding to the disarray of the prose and detracting from the book’s credibility is the use of fictional characters and circumstances to convey dependable information.
Though a passionate rendering of an often overlooked issue, the book’s style hinders its effectiveness.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2005
ISBN: 978-1-420-81233-6
Page Count: 428
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
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