An imperative analysis that begs for discussion by industry watchdogs and consumers alike.
A succinct, disturbing report on the prevalence of malpractice in modern medicine.
Pittsburgh-based employment attorney Lieber (Rats in the Grain: The Dirty Tricks of the “Supermarket to the World,” Archer Daniels Midland, 2000, etc.) assesses medical error with a straightforward approach and provides chilling results. A victim of misdiagnosis himself, he believes “medical errors always have been with us.” The author examines a number of cases, including college freshman Libby Zion’s untimely death in 1984, Floridian Willie King’s grievous amputation error, and Jesica Santillan’s death due to the mismatched blood type of an organ transplant. Fortunately, Lieber doesn’t decorate his study with scare tactics or confusing jargon; his perspective is clearly that of an informed consumer concerned with the welfare of those seeking American medical care. He cites a downward attitudinal shift in perception of professional clinical care which began in the 1990s, when a bloom of malpractice cases—which Lieber lists in chilling succession—initiated disclosure clauses and fostered quality improvement and monitoring initiatives. The media firestorm became fueled by further exposure from celebrities like Dana Carvey, Dennis Quaid, and the late Andy Warhol (and more recently, Joan Rivers), who all were on the receiving end of lethal or potentially lethal medical negligence. The malpractice statistical data borne from the ensuing scrutiny of medical centers became a startling wake-up call for the industry at large. The book’s second half is perhaps more user-friendly from a consumer standpoint, as the author provides illuminating, cautionary chapters focusing on avoiding prescription medication blunders, the rampant politicization of the health care spectrum, and the inherent dangers lurking within the “maze-like, chaotically organized acute and long-term care institutions.” While not a medical professional, Lieber does offer proactive patient advice for those seeking to reduce the risk of infection or injury while hospitalized. He concludes with a hopeful appeal to medical environments to be more vigilant about performance standards.
An imperative analysis that begs for discussion by industry watchdogs and consumers alike.Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-682190-10-4
Page Count: 282
Publisher: OR Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
© Copyright 2023 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
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.
bookshelf
