An important book that offers rarely heard warnings about the medical profession.
Isager, in this consistently intriguing book, warns that Western medicine is blindly, or perhaps willfully, dismissing symptoms of multisystem illnesses.
The author, a Danish physician, describes the indifferent response of the worldwide medical community to such afflictions as fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome and multiple chemical sensitivities. Why do doctors label such illnesses’ symptoms as psychosomatic or even fictitious? Isager suggests that insurance companies would prefer to avoid the enormous costs of treating patients with poorly understood illnesses and that governments would prefer to avoid the social costs they’d have to bear. He argues that the medical establishment has become a “totalitarian system” that’s hostile to the idea of undergoing the “paradigm shift in clinical medicine” that researching such illnesses would require. The author’s anecdotes, which demonstrate modern medicine’s transformation into a “secular cult,” are persuasive; and so, too, are the research findings that raise concerns about health risks from exposure to dental mercury and low-level electromagnetic fields. The author warns that such exposures, combined with other stressors, can cause “mitochondrial declines,” as observed in “fatigue patients.” The book valiantly attempts to explain the chemistry (and even quantum mechanics) of such declines, and this portion will likely be less accessible to lay readers. But the overarching message is clear: There’s vastly more going on with multisystem illnesses than most doctors can, or will, admit. Although Isager acknowledges that his book will leave readers “with many unresolved questions,” he points out that its ultimate purpose is to “incite debate” about a subject treated as “taboo” by medical journals. Isager not only confronts the realities of these illnesses, he also offers hope for those afflicted that there are some physicians who really want to help them.
An important book that offers rarely heard warnings about the medical profession.Pub Date: Aug. 29, 2013
ISBN: 978-1491875827
Page Count: 350
Publisher: AuthorHouseUK
Review Posted Online: Dec. 11, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2014
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
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
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