A well-researched and enlightening book of popular science.
A celebration of women’s reproductive organs.
Hazard, a midwife for Britain’s National Health Service and host of the podcast What the Midwife Said, offers an informative, thoughtful investigation of “the complexity of birthing bodies,” focusing particularly on the uterus: its structure, microbiome, and “how it grows, bleeds, births, and transforms with life’s ever-changing tides.” Drawing on considerable research, interviews, and her own experience as a midwife and mother, the author offers a comprehensive overview of female anatomy and the problems and challenges that may occur at different stages of life. She explains the development of the uterus and its vital role in conception; the surprisingly rich composition of menstrual tissue; and the process of birth. This includes labor, which may involve induction with a synthetic hormone; delivery, increasingly by elective Cesarean section; and postnatal care. She discusses the unfortunate outcomes of some pregnancies when chromosomal abnormalities, maternal infection, or medical conditions such as high blood pressure or diabetes result in a stillbirth; or when wombs inexplicably “tighten and surge” before full term has been reached, expelling a fetus that is not viable. Hazard looks at many common maladies, such as fibroids and endometriosis, as well as interventions such as hysterectomy and the controversial use of hormones to suppress menstruation. As she traces gynecological and obstetric history, dominated by male physicians and scientists, she debunks terms and assumptions that demean a woman’s natural functions: menstruation, for one, often viewed “as embarrassing, gross, and downright dangerous.” Similarly, if a woman has trouble conceiving or maintaining a pregnancy, she risks being diagnosed with a “hostile” or “irritable” uterus or an “incompetent cervix.” Hazard’s investigation has taken her to the forefront of scientific innovation, such as uterine transplants, but she points to inequities in funding for women’s health. As she clearly shows, the womb is “linked inextricably to our biological, social, and political destinies.”
A well-researched and enlightening book of popular science.Pub Date: March 7, 2023
ISBN: 9780063157620
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2023
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.
The chef, rapper, and TV host serves up a blustery memoir with lashings of self-help.
“I’ve always had a sick confidence,” writes Bronson, ne Ariyan Arslani. The confidence, he adds, comes from numerous sources: being a New Yorker, and more specifically a New Yorker from Queens; being “short and fucking husky” and still game for a standoff on the basketball court; having strength, stamina, and seemingly no fear. All these things serve him well in the rough-and-tumble youth he describes, all stickball and steroids. Yet another confidence-builder: In the big city, you’ve got to sink or swim. “No one is just accepted—you have to fucking show that you’re able to roll,” he writes. In a narrative steeped in language that would make Lenny Bruce blush, Bronson recounts his sentimental education, schooled by immigrant Italian and Albanian family members and the mean streets, building habits good and bad. The virtue of those habits will depend on your take on modern mores. Bronson writes, for example, of “getting my dick pierced” down in the West Village, then grabbing a pizza and smoking weed. “I always smoke weed freely, always have and always will,” he writes. “I’ll just light a blunt anywhere.” Though he’s gone through the classic experiences of the latter-day stoner, flunking out and getting arrested numerous times, Bronson is a hard charger who’s not afraid to face nearly any challenge—especially, given his physique and genes, the necessity of losing weight: “If you’re husky, you’re always dieting in your mind,” he writes. Though vulgar and boastful, Bronson serves up a model that has plenty of good points, including his growing interest in nature, creativity, and the desire to “leave a legacy for everybody.”
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4478-5
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
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
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