by Kristy Wood-Giles ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 18, 2018
A profoundly personal and illuminating chronicle on a growing public health problem.
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A heartfelt memoir about the repercussions of Lyme disease in one woman’s life.
Wood-Giles’ debut begins with surprising facts about Lyme disease, including the fact that it can adversely affect one’s immune system within just two weeks of infection. The Canadian author, a married mother of two, then goes on to detail her harrowing ordeal, which began while she was training for a physically demanding hike along Ontario’s Rideau Trail. She’d previously experienced leg-ligament injuries while playing hockey, so she was glad to return to intensive exercise. She also felt that the multiday hike would act as a salve for her grief over her father’s death. Due to her previous tenure as a park manager, she knew to get tested for Lyme infection when she discovered several ticks on her back, but she put it off until after the hike was over. Over the ensuing months, Wood-Giles was plagued by lethargy, labored breathing, and endless cycles of colds and viral infections. She also experienced chest pains and rapidly deteriorating cognitive function, which disturbed her supportive husband. She found some hope in listening to religious podcasts, but her feelings of powerlessness and dread grew as her mysterious ailments compounded. Wood-Giles passionately and vividly narrates this often distressing tale, and readers will express concern and apprehension as she navigates a maze of clinical diagnoses, trial-and-error treatment options, and other setbacks before her eventual recovery. She tells of how she became inspired to help others by disseminating lesser-known information about the contraction, incubation, clinical assessment, and treatment of Lyme disease. The author also effectively imparts her knowledge of how sugar, gluten, and stress can be detrimental to the health of Lyme patients. Several pages of resource materials, including a section of lyrically written self-care advice (including puppy therapy!), further fortify this significant, engrossing story.
A profoundly personal and illuminating chronicle on a growing public health problem.Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-982211-32-5
Page Count: 242
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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developed by Ludwig Bemelmans ; illustrated by Steven Salerno
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by Ludwig Bemelmans ; illustrated by Steven Salerno
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by Charlayne Hunter-Gault ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1992
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
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