A persuasive, well-written evaluation of the logic and evidence that influence medical decision-making.
A physician takes an evidence-based approach to evaluating alternative medical treatments.
Tavel (Hell in the Heavens, 2013) brings a scientist’s skepticism to this personal health book. After guiding readers through an explanation of logical fallacies, from post hoc, ergo propter hoc to confirmation bias, Tavel sets out to demonstrate how such errors in logic have led people to embrace treatments that have not been proven in scientific studies. The book draws heavily on published studies, with frequent citations guiding readers to further information on everything from the effectiveness of yoga to the results of chiropractic treatment. While most of the treatments Tavel critiques from an evidence-based perspective are alternative and traditional therapies, he also has harsh words for major drug manufacturers who take advantage of the same logical flaws to promote their products. He looks back at the history of medicine, providing engaging, detailed narratives of both hoaxes and genuinely effective treatments. One of the book’s most effective sections addresses the complexities of the placebo effect, which shapes the perceptions of both medical treatments and the treatments’ actual effectiveness. The book is less successful in its efforts to guide readers’ behavior, as Tavel seems to expect scientific data to be sufficient to drive readers’ decision-making (of course, that’s not always the case). He recommends that readers avoid organic foods because they are more expensive and studies have not found higher nutrient content—a recommendation that doesn’t address the many other social or environmental factors that drive decisions to eat organic food. Although the book’s approach will not win over all readers, those who prefer regimented, peer-reviewed studies as a basis for making health decisions will find the book a useful tool for evaluating both mainstream and alternative treatments.
A persuasive, well-written evaluation of the logic and evidence that influence medical decision-making.Pub Date: Aug. 29, 2012
ISBN: 978-1936587889
Page Count: 252
Publisher: Brighton Publishing LLC
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.
A light-speed tour of (mostly) Western poetry, from the 4,000-year-old Gilgamesh to the work of Australian poet Les Murray, who died in 2019.
In the latest entry in the publisher’s Little Histories series, Carey, an emeritus professor at Oxford whose books include What Good Are the Arts? and The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books, offers a quick definition of poetry—“relates to language as music relates to noise. It is language made special”—before diving in to poetry’s vast history. In most chapters, the author deals with only a few writers, but as the narrative progresses, he finds himself forced to deal with far more than a handful. In his chapter on 20th-century political poets, for example, he talks about 14 writers in seven pages. Carey displays a determination to inform us about who the best poets were—and what their best poems were. The word “greatest” appears continually; Chaucer was “the greatest medieval English poet,” and Langston Hughes was “the greatest male poet” of the Harlem Renaissance. For readers who need a refresher—or suggestions for the nightstand—Carey provides the best-known names and the most celebrated poems, including Paradise Lost (about which the author has written extensively), “Kubla Khan,” “Ozymandias,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, which “changed the course of English poetry.” Carey explains some poetic technique (Hopkins’ “sprung rhythm”) and pauses occasionally to provide autobiographical tidbits—e.g., John Masefield, who wrote the famous “Sea Fever,” “hated the sea.” We learn, as well, about the sexuality of some poets (Auden was bisexual), and, especially later on, Carey discusses the demons that drove some of them, Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath among them. Refreshingly, he includes many women in the volume—all the way back to Sappho—and has especially kind words for Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, who share a chapter.
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-23222-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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