Sensitive but skeptical, a narrative for practitioners and patients alike about the search to understand a corner of the...
A seasoned doctor takes on the head-scratching phenomenon of near-death experiences.
Part gallery of cases, part theory of medicine, debut memoirist Bellg’s look at near-death experiences bridges issues of body and mind. After forgoing a research career, Bellg pursued work as a critical care doctor in an ICU. The often high-stakes scenarios of the ICU brought her into contact with patients close to drawing their last breaths—or who had “died.” Both recollection and commentary, Bellg’s book tracks her patients’ puzzling out-of-body episodes and her attempts to grapple with them. In one startling anecdote, a patient recovering from cardiac arrest described to Bellg not only the details of his surgery, for which he was supposedly unconscious, but the specifics of a nurse training center on the floor above. Another patient recounted how an injection given as part of an imaging procedure sent him on a race through the cosmos. By happenstance, on Bellg’s first day of medical school—when she received a copy of an anthology that dealt with the “more philosophical, relationship-centered” side of medicine—she encountered something of the approach touted in her own book, one that convincingly advocates stronger roles for empathy, patient testimony, and emotional intelligence in institutionalized medical practice. Framing the history of medicine as a prolonged refutation of superstition, she recognizes the obstacles inherent in persuading others to see NDEs as genuine, not just apparent, medical phenomena. Bellg’s responses to these obstacles, though hardly conclusive, are well-considered. She indicates, for instance, the difficulties that would plague any attempt to seriously study NDEs empirically and suggests that observations of NDEs are “simply the beginning of developing a scientific understanding of them.” And she emphasizes the qualitative differences, for her patients, between NDEs and average dreams. Above all, she argues persuasively that patients should be accorded dignity when their stories about these bizarre but often transformative experiences are acknowledged rather than dismissed.
Sensitive but skeptical, a narrative for practitioners and patients alike about the search to understand a corner of the unknown in medicine.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9965103-0-1
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Sloan Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 24, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Full of interesting factoids–-but the blatant advertising for Kushner's products is pervasive to the point the book becomes...
A wake-up call about caffeine from a committed and self-interested author.
Formerly a newspaper journalist in Russia who consumed enormous amounts of coffee and cigarettes, Kushner relocated to New York City during the early '90s. Shortly thereafter, she learned she suffered from Celiac disease, a genetic disorder that was perhaps exacerbated by products containing caffeine. She researched caffeine substitutes, none of them suiting her tastes. And she discovered that certain substitutes contain gluten, another substance that those with Celiac cannot tolerate. Thus, she "invented" soy coffee and uses this book as her marketing platform. It's frequently informative, though, once the the text moves beyond pure publicity. For instance, she mentions that England's King Charles II attempted to shutter coffeehouses in 1675 because men tended to neglect their families while staying out to consume caffeine. Widespread protest, though, defeated the ban; the Boston Tea Party of 1773 resulted in the consumption of coffee as a patriotic duty; the world's first espresso machine began making noise in France in 1882; Maxwell House coffee is named after a Nashville hotel; US coffee sales boomed during the 1920s thanks to Prohibition; the US imported 70 percent of the world’s coffee crop at the beginning of WWII; Starbucks opened its first store in Seattle in 1971. These are just a few pieces of coffee trivia the author offers. She also briefly discusses the history of the American addiction to caffeine, explaining the chemistry of the substance, listing specific health threats (heart disease, central-nervous-system disorders, ulcers, cancer) and mapping out specific routes to end dependency. Unfortunately, though, the style interferes with the substance, as the tone is often shrill and alarmist. An appendix titled "Make a Difference!" is the call to action here, urging readers to petition the FDA for fuller disclosure among coffee manufacturers of specific product caffeine levels.
Full of interesting factoids–-but the blatant advertising for Kushner's products is pervasive to the point the book becomes soporific.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-9747582-0-5
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An adequate guide for running high-performance workgroups within a corporate setting, but far from a guaranteed formula for...
A satisfactory business study confirming the old business saw that 10% of the people do 90% of the work.
According to Annunzio's analysis, only 10% of elite information workers work in high performance-workgroups. The remaining 90%? Apparently they labor away as modern-day Bob Cratchits, in environments that neither demand nor deliver optimal performance. Ebullient accounts of the ideal workplace are nothing new in business nonfiction, nor are the lugubrious tales of moribund organizations. The author rarely notes here, though, anything we haven't heard a million times before from Tom Peters, Steven Covey, or even Donald Trump. Her maxims are boilerplate business clichés: value people; optimize critical thinking; seize opportunities. But basing a formula for business success on such bland principles is problematic, since they are so vague as to be meaningless. Do companies fail because they neglect to do such things? Most failures had nothing to do with workgroup functioning; instead, they stemmed from lack of foresight and, more commonly, simple bad luck. Nonetheless, Annunzio does proffer good advice for companies that wish to maximize the performance of their workgroups. First, identify those that are performing at a high level, those that can provide evidence of profit/revenue growth along with product, service, or process innovation. Second, work on bringing average groups up to maximum performance. More importantly, avoid destructive behaviors such as micromanagement, bureaucratic interference, resource and information hoarding, politics, and control. She also makes the astute—and cost-saving—observation that before hiring high-priced consultants to solve business problems, companies might consider consulting their own employees, who are more likely to know the answers.
An adequate guide for running high-performance workgroups within a corporate setting, but far from a guaranteed formula for business success.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2004
ISBN: 0-59184-060-0
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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