A meticulous overview of the ongoing battle against brain diseases.
Harvard University professor Weiner surveys the challenges of neurological ailments and the extraordinary progress in understanding and treating them.
According to the author, the brain is “the last great frontier of medical science”—an organ that’s maddeningly complex and central not only to biological life, but also to consciousness and identity: “The brain is unique, and because of this it poses unique challenges,” he says. Problematically, this miraculous organ is plagued by a variety of neurological diseases, and the author devotes his book to a discussion of five of them: multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease), and glioblastoma (brain tumors). Weiner provides a very thorough account of each, including their causes and current research into potential cures, and makes an optimistic case for future progress on all counts, with treatments for MS the most immediately promising and Alzheimer’s the most vexing; he characterizes the latter as the “number-one scourge of civilization at this time.” Throughout, he considers a range of relevant issues, including the “complex detective work” involved in the search for cures, the tangled world of publication and funding, and even the motivation that professional recognition provides to researchers. Weiner is the Robert L. Kroc Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School and the founder and director of the Brigham MS Center and co-director of the Ann Romney Center in Boston, and his command of the material in this book is magisterial. That said, its comprehensiveness may prove prohibitive to lay readers. Although Weiner’s prose is likely as accessible as the technical nature of the subject permits, readers will find it more challenging than most popular scientific literature. For those who are up to the challenge, though, this is a masterful and rigorous rendering of the state of neurological disease research infused with a rationally defensible sense of hope.
A meticulous overview of the ongoing battle against brain diseases.Pub Date: Oct. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-953295-54-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: BenBella
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
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
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
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