Frank and poignant, with the optimum balance of personal storytelling and actionable guidance.
This highly readable guide for dementia caregivers blends a medical memoir with useful advice.
After the emotionally draining experience lived through by this book’s three authors, they’re undoubtedly thinking the same thing: “If I knew then what I know now.” The sisters share the story of their mother’s five-year mental decline as she went through the various stages of dementia. The sisters had intended to craft a personal memoir; however, they write, “In the course of our research, that goal changed as we gained insight into the hopes and concerns of the people we met in memory care facilities.” This led them to recast the book into a manual for caregivers that recounts their own experience and guides readers to a greater understanding of dementia as well as the care options. With considerable skill, the authors interweave their story with the issues they faced, drawing upon their own situation to illustrate what they didn’t know at the time. “We learned about dementia by trial and error,” they write, “and we stumbled many times, because we didn’t know where to turn. Now we realize the importance of understanding the course of the disease and its outcome—this knowledge would have given us the tools to plan ahead and provide the best possible care for our mother.” It is these tools the authors generously share in a tightly organized, well-written work. They offer a comprehensive discussion of dementia, its types (including Alzheimer’s) and stages; detail the kinds of available care facilities and facility agreements; address paying for dementia care; talk about patient advocacy; cover hospice and palliative care; and include a chapter on advance care directives. Every chapter ends with “Lessons Learned”—not so much a summary as insightful observations. In closing, the authors peek into the future in a fascinating section that demonstrates how social and technological changes might revolutionize dementia care. They also provide an excellent compilation of resources.
Frank and poignant, with the optimum balance of personal storytelling and actionable guidance.Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4929-2744-0
Page Count: 242
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
