An absorbing blend of memoir, history, and fiction that explores the story of addiction treatment for a kinder path ahead.
Looking into the past of addiction science and treatment to find a more empathetic future.
On the heels of a harrowing first glimpse into the world of addiction treatment during an interview for a part-time position at a methadone clinic in Arizona, Glenn searches for answers in her own medical training and scientific study. Much of what she learned in medical school about addiction and those who suffer from it was rooted in judgment and stigmas, but the clinic showed another path forward in working with addicts. While diving into the history of methadone treatment, Glenn lands on a black-and-white photo of a woman in a Journal of the American Medical Association article commemorating the 40th anniversary of methadone treatment for addiction and its chief proponent. “She was about sixty or seventy, joy radiating from her eyes. Perhaps this is what it looked like to be proud of your life’s work,” she writes. So begins a deep, compassionate exploration of the life and impact of Dr. Marie Nyswander, an American psychiatrist who studied and promoted the use of methadone in heroin addiction treatment protocols that still stand today. Glenn, engagingly blending memoir, research, and fiction, seeks a role model in Nyswander and her decades-old work. “I had always craved a female boss or mentor in medicine, but they were hard to come by,” she writes. “Why did I get the sense that I was fighting the same battles, with myself, my patients, and medicine at large, that Marie had already fought more than fifty years ago?” The author then traces the past to learn how to understand her present. Facing a deadly opiate epidemic at unprecedented scale in the history of the United States, Glenn offers a look behind the curtain into addiction science, recovery, and what might be possible.
An absorbing blend of memoir, history, and fiction that explores the story of addiction treatment for a kinder path ahead.Pub Date: July 22, 2025
ISBN: 9780807017760
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: May 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2025
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
IN THE NEWS
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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