An impressionistic portrait of Harvard Medical School that reveals the pluses and minuses of research-oriented medical education. Whether or not it's the number one medical school in the country—the point is arguable—Harvard Med is undeniably a prestigious and influential institution whose methods and results warrant examination. Journalist Langone (In the Shogun's Shadow, 1994, etc.) provides an occasionally awestruck, mostly anecdotal, rarely academic picture of the school, its teachers, and its students. Although he begins with orientation and ends with commencement, his approach is nonlinear: A chapter describing new students' first exposure to patients is followed by an account of how applicants are selected, which precedes a grisly account of dissecting a cadaver. Langone's research included taking the gross anatomy lab along with first-year students—an experience, he claims, that begins the hardening process that leads to arrogant and unfeeling doctors. Harvard Med, the author makes abundantly clear, is a training ground for medical scientists and specialists, not for general practitioners. It excels at teaching students to diagnose, treat, and research diseases. How to treat patients is a skill much harder to impart, and few at Harvard try, in Langone's view. He depicts a school that mirrors the best and worst features of America's health care system, giving Harvard an A+ in technology but a dismal grade in compassion. His chapters on the school's history, showing that it has made huge changes over time in its admission policies (in 1992 minorities were 22% of those admitted, women 45%) and in its teaching methods and subjects, suggest that Harvard Med will continue to evolve, but there is no indication that its plans include providing the kind of medical education that leads to empathetic healers. Strongly recommended for pre-med students, Harvard-bound or not.
Pub Date: June 30, 1995
ISBN: 0-517-59306-8
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1995
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
© Copyright 2025 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.
