An energetic, irreverent look at prostate cancer and its treatment from a patient’s perspective.
Debut author MacKenzie takes readers from the importance of preventative health care through the unexpected trauma of diagnosis to the nitty-gritty specifics of treatment, making jokes all the way. His open disclosures about potentially embarrassing situations—urinary incontinence, erectile dysfunction, post-surgery masturbatory stimulation, a lack of ejaculate—are both lighthearted and reassuring, sure to bring comfort to anxious readers. MacKenzie makes clear that these readers are expected to be both male and female, patients and loved ones, and he expertly tailors the narrative accordingly. Notably, MacKenzie had a tremendous amount of social support, even from people whom he hadn’t spoken with for decades. For example, he spends the night before a hospital visit with a childhood friend who, despite years without contact, offered an invitation without reservation. Much of MacKenzie’s advice (e.g., always have a second pair of ears since the stress of the situation will impair comprehension) centers on the ready availability of friends and family. He’s open about his gratitude and indirectly acknowledges that other patients may have fewer resources. Given that reality, a fuller discussion that addressed potential issues related to deficits in social support would have enriched the work by increasing its relevance to a broader patient population. Similarly, the overall content is informative and humorous, but at 100-odd pages of large font, it may leave readers wishing for a more comprehensive work. Still, it's nearly impossible not to like MacKenzie’s nimble phrasing (“a manic, frantic panic”) and humbling self-disclosures (“it is completely unfamiliar not to have any ejaculate. It is foreign and made me feel less of who I am or was”). The conclusion is as uplifting and optimistic as the rest of the book, despite a sad reminder of the disease’s potential fatality. Nonetheless, Schwartz’s lighthearted, black-and-white cartoon sketches, which adorn the chapter divisions, further contribute to the book’s calming tone. An inspiring account of surviving and thriving after a devastating diagnosis.
Pub Date: Nov. 24, 2012
ISBN: 978-1478118114
Page Count: 146
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 4, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
BOOK REVIEW
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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