A luminous meditation on a healer’s experience that’s anguished and exuberant, by turns.
A doctor weighs the rigors, discontents, and joys of practicing medicine in this collection of essays and poetry.
In these pieces, Hergott, a cardiologist and emeritus professor of medicine at the University of Colorado, delves into the physically and emotionally grueling realities of a medical career as well as the humane idealism at its core. Several essays decry the subjection of doctors to the dictates of markets and corporate health care providers’ demands; the result, he contends, is burned-out physicians with little time to care for their patients’ emotional needs or to maintain family lives of their own. Hergott re-creates the ordeal and trauma of medical training—his nerves were so bad on one day of his residency, he writes, that he had to leave the hospital—and the hard-won confidence in his abilities that grew over time. He also tells stories of appropriate medical treatment choices that resulted in patients’ deaths—every doctor has some—and discusses the painful process of learning and moving on from them. Other, contrasting stories tell of health care professionals forging connections with patients despite obstacles. Hergott recalls a ward full of nonresponsive hydrocephalic infants, many abandoned by their parents, who received tender care from the ward nurses; World War II veterans who opened up to him about things they’d never discussed with anyone; and a doctor in an elevator who lifted the spirits of a fragile patient just by making small talk with her. In several essays, he recounts the death of his adult son, Zachary, in a 2009 plane crash and the rudderless grief that he weathered in its wake—and the colleagues, patients, and strangers who helped him through it with simple gestures of caring.
Hergott writes in a limpid style that’s vivid and often haunting: “They were young men, their bodies pale, translucent, and incomplete,” he writes of convalescents at a military hospital. “Each had part of an arm or a leg missing or had some other wound inconsistent with the perfection of the rest of the body.” His prose moves between clinical precision (“I felt the clamp placed in my hand and as I began to move it toward the cords a thought flashed in my mind…I could completely occlude his airway—which would be catastrophic,” he frets while treating a choking toddler) and more lyrical observations that skillfully evoke mood and feeling (the toddler’s mother had “her son enfolded in her arms, her head bent with her face close to his, she speaking softly to him in a way no one else could”). Even more than his prose, Hergott’s poetry offers dense imagery that conveys psychological wounds beneath physical ones, as in a piece about a brain surgery patient: “When the staples come out, / and the bone beneath has healed, / and your flowing hair— / artfully parted during— / covers the scar after, / there will be nothing seen / of what proceeded.” The overall result is a rich and absorbing portrait of a doctor’s life.
A luminous meditation on a healer’s experience that’s anguished and exuberant, by turns.Pub Date: March 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-62734-302-2
Page Count: 182
Publisher: Universal Publishers
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
SEEN & HEARD
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
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