by Ira Rutkow ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 13, 2010
A useful primer for policy wonks and medical practitioners.
Despite manifest shortcomings, the American health-care system has come a long way over the past 250 years.
Retired surgeon and public-health professional Rutkow (James A. Garfield, 2006, etc.) provides an anecdotal overview of the theory and practice of medicine in the United States from the colonial period to the present. “The evolution of American medicine has often closely mirrored the nation’s history,” he writes, from the early days when the “bleed, blister, puke, and purge” therapies were advocated by America’s leading doctor, Benjamin Rush, to the nation’s superpower status after World War II. By the mid-1800s, prevailing wisdom recommended avoiding doctors, but the invention of the stethoscope in 1816 by a Parisian physician was an important step toward modern diagnostics, especially when coupled by the French practice of measuring pulse rate. Infection remained the major cause of death during the Civil War and even in 1881—after the role of germs had been established—when President Garfield died from an infection in the aftermath of a gunshot wound. The passage of New York City’s Metropolitan Health Bill in 1866, which established an effective sanitation code controlling raw sewage and other harmful materials, was “a major triumph in the history of public health and American medicine,” allowing contagious diseases such as cholera and typhus to be brought under control. Major advances continued during WWII—the development of blood plasma storage, orthopedic procedures, operating techniques—and in the postwar period with open-heart surgery and organ transplants. Rutkow is optimistic about the future role of new biotechnologies (“cellular scanners, gene therapies, robotic surgeries, wireless monitoring”—but he recognizes the difficulty of navigating the tradeoffs between private service and public good.
A useful primer for policy wonks and medical practitioners.Pub Date: April 13, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4165-3828-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 29, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2010
Share your opinion of this book
More by Ira Rutkow
BOOK REVIEW
by Ira Rutkow
by Tom Clavin ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 21, 2020
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
Share your opinion of this book
More by Tom Clavin
BOOK REVIEW
by Tom Clavin
BOOK REVIEW
by Tom Clavin
BOOK REVIEW
by Bob Drury & Tom Clavin
by Steven Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2018
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics,...
A provocative analysis of the parallels between Donald Trump’s ascent and the fall of other democracies.
Following the last presidential election, Levitsky (Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America, 2003, etc.) and Ziblatt (Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy, 2017, etc.), both professors of government at Harvard, wrote an op-ed column titled, “Is Donald Trump a Threat to Democracy?” The answer here is a resounding yes, though, as in that column, the authors underscore their belief that the crisis extends well beyond the power won by an outsider whom they consider a demagogue and a liar. “Donald Trump may have accelerated the process, but he didn’t cause it,” they write of the politics-as-warfare mentality. “The weakening of our democratic norms is rooted in extreme partisan polarization—one that extends beyond policy differences into an existential conflict over race and culture.” The authors fault the Republican establishment for failing to stand up to Trump, even if that meant electing his opponent, and they seem almost wistfully nostalgic for the days when power brokers in smoke-filled rooms kept candidacies restricted to a club whose members knew how to play by the rules. Those supporting the candidacy of Bernie Sanders might take as much issue with their prescriptions as Trump followers will. However, the comparisons they draw to how democratic populism paved the way toward tyranny in Peru, Venezuela, Chile, and elsewhere are chilling. Among the warning signs they highlight are the Republican Senate’s refusal to consider Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee as well as Trump’s demonization of political opponents, minorities, and the media. As disturbing as they find the dismantling of Democratic safeguards, Levitsky and Ziblatt suggest that “a broad opposition coalition would have important benefits,” though such a coalition would strike some as a move to the center, a return to politics as usual, and even a pragmatic betrayal of principles.
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics, rather than in the consensus it is not likely to build.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6293-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
Share your opinion of this book
More by Steven Levitsky
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.