White-knuckle medical adventures paired with revealing, expert insights.
In this engrossing memoir, a thoughtful physician battles baffling ailments—including a strange new malady called AIDS.
Jordan, a prominent infectious disease specialist, looks back on his first 20 years of teaching, research and clinical practice in the fast-changing medical universe of the 1960s to the 1980s. He’s an internist whose primary mission is the intellectual task of finding the correct diagnosis; he both disdains and envies “procedural” specialists, the gastroenterology types who grow rich performing routine colonoscopies. He centers much of his narrative on case studies that he approaches with the inquisitive cunning of a detective. These medical mysteries, which read like episodes of House without the snarky attitude, run the gamut: searching for the source of a restaurant outbreak of salmonella, figuring out what triggers a woman’s repeated herpes eruptions, playing a hunch that a patient’s apparently classic leukemia is really tuberculosis, struggling to understand the opportunistic infections that erupt in immunocompromised AIDS patients, etc. Jordan’s lucid, evocative prose—sometimes, as with the rupture of a pus-filled eyeball, almost too evocative—conveys both the complexity of medical issues and the life-and-death drama that hinges on them. He also gives readers a revealing insider’s view of the culture of medicine, showing the brutal, sleep-deprived grind of a student’s internship and residency, warm mentor–student relationships, tense personality clashes between doctors, hair-raising encounters with difficult and downright delusional patients, and the multifaceted strains of underpaid, overworked academic medicine. At one point, he feels so overwhelmed that he takes to reading Sylvia Plath. Jordan weaves into his anecdotes pointed commentary on the state of modern health care and its bottom-line orientation; he’s especially outspoken on the topics of physician incompetence and “sleazy medicine by money-hungry doctors” ringing up fees for unnecessary treatments. But there’s a philosophical depth to his writing as well, a plangent recognition of the importance of humility in the face of the often unknowable sickness.
White-knuckle medical adventures paired with revealing, expert insights.Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2013
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 314
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
In more ways than one, a tale about young creatures testing their wings; a moving, entertaining winner.
A fifth-grade New Orleans girl discovers a mysterious chrysalis containing an unexpected creature in this middle-grade novel.
Jacquelyn Marie Johnson, called Jackie, is a 10-year-old African-American girl, the second oldest and the only girl of six siblings. She’s responsible, smart, and enjoys being in charge; she likes “paper dolls and long division and imagining things she had never seen.” Normally, Jackie has no trouble obeying her strict but loving parents. But when her potted snapdragon acquires a peculiar egg or maybe a chrysalis (she dubs it a chrysalegg), Jackie’s strong desire to protect it runs up against her mother’s rule against plants in the house. Jackie doesn’t exactly mean to lie, but she tells her mother she needs to keep the snapdragon in her room for a science project and gets permission. Jackie draws the chrysalegg daily, waiting for something to happen as it gets larger. When the amazing creature inside breaks free, Jackie is more determined than ever to protect it, but this leads her further into secrets and lies. The results when her parents find out are painful, and resolving the problem will take courage, honesty, and trust. Dumas (Jaden Toussaint, the Greatest: Episode 5, 2017, etc.) presents a very likable character in Jackie. At 10, she’s young enough to enjoy playing with paper dolls but has a maturity that even older kids can lack. She’s resourceful, as when she wants to measure a red spot on the chrysalegg; lacking calipers, she fashions one from her hairpin. Jackie’s inward struggle about what to obey—her dearest wishes or the parents she loves—is one many readers will understand. The book complicates this question by making Jackie’s parents, especially her mother, strict (as one might expect to keep order in a large family) but undeniably loving and protective as well—it’s not just a question of outwitting clueless adults. Jackie’s feelings about the creature (tender and responsible but also more than a little obsessive) are similarly shaded rather than black-and-white. The ending suggests that an intriguing sequel is to come.
In more ways than one, a tale about young creatures testing their wings; a moving, entertaining winner.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-943169-32-0
Page Count: 212
Publisher: Plum Street Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A YA novel that treats its subject and its readers with respect while delivering an engaging story.
In the ninth book in the Bluford young-adult series, a young Latino man walks away from violence—but at great personal cost.
In a large Southern California city, 16-year-old Martin Luna hangs out on the fringes of gang life. He’s disaffected, fatherless and increasingly drawn into the orbit of the older, rougher Frankie. When a stray bullet kills Martin’s adored 8-year-old brother, Huero, Martin seems to be heading into a life of crime. But Martin’s mother, determined not to lose another son, moves him to another neighborhood—the fictional town of Bluford, where he attends the racially diverse Bluford High. At his new school, the still-grieving Martin quickly makes enemies and gets into trouble. But he also makes friends with a kind English teacher and catches the eye of Vicky, a smart, pretty and outgoing Bluford student. Martin’s first-person narration supplies much of the book’s power. His dialogue is plain, but realistic and believable, and the authors wisely avoid the temptation to lard his speech with dated and potentially embarrassing slang. The author draws a vivid and affecting picture of Martin’s pain and confusion, bringing a tight-lipped teenager to life. In fact, Martin’s character is so well drawn that when he realizes the truth about his friend Frankie, readers won’t feel as if they are watching an after-school special, but as though they are observing the natural progression of Martin’s personal growth. This short novel appears to be aimed at urban teens who don’t often see their neighborhoods portrayed in young-adult fiction, but its sophisticated characters and affecting story will likely have much wider appeal.
A YA novel that treats its subject and its readers with respect while delivering an engaging story.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2004
ISBN: 978-1591940173
Page Count: 152
Publisher: Townsend Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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