Aboujaoude is obviously proud of his work—and he should be—but his skills as a writer are seriously lacking.
Sketchy profiles of obsessive-compulsive patients, from the director of Stanford’s Impulse Control Disorders Clinic.
During his tenure as a psychiatrist specializing in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), Aboujaoude, whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, among other publications, has treated numerous cases of behavioral addiction. Here, the author offers five stories of odd psychiatric conditions he has encountered, salting the narrative with breezy discussions of pertinent medical information (OCD afflicts between one and two percent of the population, males and females are equally likely to be affected, “excessive checking” is the most common form of OCD, etc.). With the steady assistance of his trusted clinic clerk Dawn (“Our schedule is like a symphony of which she is the masterful conductor”), Aboujaoude navigates the difficult psychological terrain of five unique patients, with all identifying details removed, of course. There’s George, who must maintain a certain distance between his nose and everything else; Pat, who suffers from trichotillomania, in which patients (often unconsciously) pull out their hair; Hannah, a 48-year-old kleptomaniac comparative-literature professor; Mr. Kuong, a Chinese-American who fell victim to the gambling meccas of Las Vegas and eventually committed suicide; and Alex, who’s online persona, “Sasha,” overtook his reality and led him to break up with his real girlfriend in favor of “Nadia,” his online “masterpiece girlfriend.” After relishing the opportunity to help each person, the author draws conclusions about the behavior and provides more information that may be helpful for those suffering from similar conditions. But the narrative fails to reflect Aboujaoude’s insistence that the book “is not merely a disjointed collection of research anecdotes and clinical tales.” The anecdotes transition awkwardly into the doctor’s evaluations and medical opinions, and the remembered dialogue is often stilted and riddled with excessive exclamation points.
Aboujaoude is obviously proud of his work—and he should be—but his skills as a writer are seriously lacking.Pub Date: April 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-520-25567-8
Page Count: 190
Publisher: Univ. of California
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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