A mind-boggling, sometimes stomach-churning glimpse of a profession that is far more demanding than TV’s glamorized version...
A “bone doctor’s” gritty, fascinating account of her challenging career analyzing skeletal remains to discover how people died, who they were, and even what they looked like.
Craig, the state forensic anthropologist for Kentucky since 1994, has grisly stories to tell that go way beyond her state’s borders. While a graduate student at the University of Tennessee—site of the infamous Body Farm, where outdoor decomposition of bodies is studied—she was sent to Waco, Texas, to help in the investigation into the disaster at the Branch Davidian compound. Her work there revealed that some members of the cult, including infants and the group’s leader, David Koresh, had been killed not by fire but by a point-blank shot to the head. After the Oklahoma City bombing, she was called in by the FBI to help identify a dismembered leg that had become a crucial part of Timothy McVeigh’s defense strategy, and after the destruction of the World Trade Center, she spent months in New York’s emergency morgue as a volunteer for the Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team. However, it’s her cases as Kentucky’s “Boondock Bone Doc” that reveal the most about how a forensic anthropologist works in the field. In the backwoods, on the sides of mountain, on the banks of rivers, Craig recovers body parts and pieces together three-dimensional pictures that tell stories of violent deaths. Her images are vivid and homely: cleaning a skeleton is “something like deboning a rotten chicken, though of course on a much larger scale”; decomposed tissue resembles “chocolate pudding into which someone has stirred a few cups of chunky vomit,” and what she has to say about the huge number of maggots she encounters in corpses is not for the squeamish. Throughout, though, what stands out is Craig’s humanity. While the scientist focuses on the gruesome task at hand, she never forgets that what she’s dealing with was once a living human being. An unexpected bonus is the author’s account of her training for and work as a medical illustrator, her career before going back to school in her mid-40s to become a forensic anthropologist.
A mind-boggling, sometimes stomach-churning glimpse of a profession that is far more demanding than TV’s glamorized version of it.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2004
ISBN: 1-4000-4922-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2004
Mostly conservative in its stance and choices but common-sensical and current.
Savvy counsel and starter lists for fretting parents.
New York Times Book Review editor Paul (My Life With Bob: Flawed Heroine Keeps Book of Books, Plot Ensues, 2017, etc.) and Russo, the children’s book editor for that publication, provide standard-issue but deftly noninvasive strategies for making books and reading integral elements in children’s lives. Some of it is easier said than done, but all is intended to promote “the natural, timeless, time-stopping joys of reading” for pleasure. Mediumwise, print reigns supreme, with mild approval for audio and video books but discouraging words about reading apps and the hazards of children becoming “slaves to the screen.” In a series of chapters keyed to stages of childhood, infancy to the teen years, the authors supplement their advice with short lists of developmentally appropriate titles—by their lights, anyway: Ellen Raskin’s Westing Game on a list for teens?—all kitted out with enticing annotations. The authors enlarge their offerings with thematic lists, from “Books That Made Us Laugh” to “Historical Fiction.” In each set, the authors go for a mix of recent and perennially popular favorites, leaving off mention of publication dates so that hoary classics like Janice May Udry’s A Tree Is Nice seem as fresh as David Wiesner’s Flotsam and Carson Ellis’ Du Iz Tak? and sidestepping controversial titles and themes in the sections for younger and middle-grade readers—with a few exceptions, such as a cautionary note that some grown-ups see “relentless overparenting” in Margaret Wise Brown’s Runaway Bunny. Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House series doesn’t make the cut except for a passing reference to its “troubling treatment of Indians.” The teen lists tend to be edgier, salted with the provocative likes of Art Spiegelman’s Maus and Angie Thomas’ The Hate U Give, and a nod to current demands for more LGBTQ and other #ownvoices books casts at least a glance beyond the mainstream. Yaccarino leads a quartet of illustrators who supplement the occasional book cover thumbnails with vignettes and larger views of children happily absorbed in reading.
Mostly conservative in its stance and choices but common-sensical and current.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5235-0530-2
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Workman
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Romance feels deeply liberating in Zalmanek’s hands.
Stories and guidance designed to keep the fires burning in your relationship.
This book is about adventures, unusual and exciting experiences in love–particularly with established couples–that speak of abiding affection. And they speak loudly, because you have to work to keep these adventures moving. They range from daily, loving gestures–the little threads that sew you together–to grand celebrations. Zalmanek, a self-proclaimed “Romantic Adventurer,” begins with the baby steps needed to get started. Fearless where she treads, Zalmanek is happy to give tips on everything from marriage proposals to divorce ceremonies. Each chapter is filled with episodes of romantic adventure intended to jump-start the imagination in the form of illustrative stories from people who have taken one of her workshops. She stresses the importance of being an attentive and aware mate–to understand your lover’s surprise quotient, for example–to explore the sensual acts that please the two of you, to learn how to give (and receive) unexpected gifts and to develop your own romantic traditions. She wants you to cherish the act of intimacy, to step back for a moment, regain some perspective and realize how important it is to keep adding fuel to the fire that drives your romance. Best of all, she makes it sound like an awful lot of fun.
Romance feels deeply liberating in Zalmanek’s hands.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-9766879-0-9
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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