Insightfully portrays an ailing American health system and ways to improve one’s health.
An American-trained pharmacist discusses the shortcomings of traditional Western medicine and advocates natural approaches to health care and wellness.
Ali writes with refreshing candor about her disillusionment with traditional medicine. After receiving her degree as a doctor of pharmacy and taking a position as a well-paid pharmacist, the author found herself unfulfilled and “essentially working a retail job” instead of using her knowledge to help sick people. Her career dissatisfaction led to financial and personal setbacks, until eventually, Ali read a book recommended by a friend—Cleanse and Purify Thyself by Richard Anderson, which claims “that 99 percent of known human disease is caused by what we eat.” The book changed her life and led to personal and professional epiphanies: She was “off-balance” and so was the American health care system. Ali writes, “[i]t eventually became very clear to me that many standard medical treatments are manufactured in order to: Create long-term customers; Provide patients with temporary comfort; Specifically, NOT treat the underlying cause.” In 15 chapters, Ali addresses topics such as “What’s Wrong with American Medicine?”; “Cleansing and Detox”; “Weight Loss”; “Pain”; and “Starting Your Holistic Journey”. She believes that, for centuries, people used natural remedies; however, the early 20th century brought about a paradigm shift in health care treatment in which the American Medical Association, the Food and Drug Administration, and large pharmaceutical and insurance companies created a profit-driven system that doesn’t prevent illness or cure it but perpetuates customers who “will turn to drugs in their time of sickness.” The book includes insightful interviews with alternative healing practitioners as well as individuals who’ve reclaimed their health through natural means after the American health care system failed them. Chapters begin with pithy quotes and color cartoon illustrations, and there are colorful charts, interview balloons and chapter summaries, too. In an age of mandated American health insurance, in which “drugs are covered by insurance, [but] holistic solutions are not,” Ali offers a thoughtful guide for those seeking another path.
Insightfully portrays an ailing American health system and ways to improve one’s health.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-0985345204
Page Count: 290
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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