An earnest account of what the author calls a “mercury epidemic” in dentistry.
In this debut memoir, educator and advocate Bauer chronicles her and her daughter’s recovery from a variety of maladies, tying them all to a single cause—mercury in her fillings.
In 1993, when the Oregon-based author began suffering from acute light sensitivity, weakness, poor vision, skin peeling, and insomnia, she found no relief from her doctors, who found nothing wrong with her. She found her own answer in an entry describing mercury poisoning in an encyclopedia of alternative medicine. After studying the topic more thoroughly and looking back on her life, she concluded that her many silver fillings, which contained mercury, had been slowly poisoning her since she was 5 years old. The harmful effects, she felt, had likely been transferred to her daughter, Miko, during pregnancy and breastfeeding. The author gradually and creatively reveals these details over the course of this memoir, using the framing device of her visit to a holistic dentistry center in Colorado Springs, Colorado, in 1994. There, she had all of her fillings replaced and underwent an intense detoxification period which eventually led her back to full health, she says. This allowed her to then focus on young Miko, who suffered from developmental delays and her own array of health problems. With the help of a unique diet, homeopathy, and therapies such as Auditory Integration Training and behavioral optometry, Bauer says, Miko was able to flourish. Bauer is a highly engaging storyteller, which makes her memoir an enjoyable read. However, although she offers a convincing account of her recovery, she doesn’t address why so many other people with similar fillings haven’t suffered the same ailments that she did. Still, she presents her arguments powerfully: “How could putting the second most dangerous element on earth into our teeth be beneficial?” She also discusses the American Dental Association, which, she says, continues to support the use of fillings that contain mercury. Her book won’t convince every reader, but some may come away from this account more curious and cautious about its subject.
An earnest account of what the author calls a “mercury epidemic” in dentistry.Pub Date: May 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-948018-51-7
Page Count: 158
Publisher: Other Mother
Review Posted Online: June 6, 2019
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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