A handy reference that addresses the detection and treatment of common diseases and disorders.
The first in a two-volume health care guide for both laypersons and health care workers.
Veluchamy brings over 30 years’ experience in medical research and patient-care services to this easy-to-read work, which is both an at-home guide to health and wellness and a clinical reference manual. The first volume discusses a host of topics, including the doctor-patient relationship, patient safety, diagnostic tests and preventive wellness care. It’s particularly designed to provide health care information to readers in developing countries in the Asia-Pacific region, where chronic diseases have eclipsed infectious diseases as the leading causes of death. Still, the manual is general enough for a worldwide audience. Part 1 of this book looks at risk factors for chronic ailments, informed consent and patient rights, common medical errors and when to get a second opinion. The author includes stories about his own patients, which illustrate his points and make the guide more instructive. For example, as he discusses the case of a surgical patient, he offers a questionnaire to help patients determine whether they’re strong enough to undergo surgery. In this section, there’s also a useful table of screening tests for a variety of diseases, with recommended intervals. In Part 2, Veluchamy covers preventive care and wellness initiatives, with special sections on the health needs of children and the elderly. The subchapter “Healthy Aging” is particularly helpful, as it addresses the changes one may expect during the natural aging process. Part 3 specifically tackles chronic diseases, including heart and vascular issues, cerebrovascular disorders, diabetes, and respiratory and kidney ailments. Drawings, photos and tables in each chapter will help readers understand the material, and the text is amply footnoted with explanations and cross-references to other chapters. Overall, the book will be easily accessible for nonexperts, as it’s generally free of medical jargon. Although the guide could benefit from a topical index, its table of contents is detailed and well-organized, allowing readers the chance to explore hundreds of subjects.
A handy reference that addresses the detection and treatment of common diseases and disorders.Pub Date: July 15, 2014
ISBN: 978-1493712458
Page Count: 320
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 11, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An extraordinary true tale of torment, retribution, and loyalty that's irresistibly readable in spite of its intrusively melodramatic prose. Starting out with calculated, movie-ready anecdotes about his boyhood gang, Carcaterra's memoir takes a hairpin turn into horror and then changes tack once more to relate grippingly what must be one of the most outrageous confidence schemes ever perpetrated. Growing up in New York's Hell's Kitchen in the 1960s, former New York Daily News reporter Carcaterra (A Safe Place, 1993) had three close friends with whom he played stickball, bedeviled nuns, and ran errands for the neighborhood Mob boss. All this is recalled through a dripping mist of nostalgia; the streetcorner banter is as stilted and coy as a late Bowery Boys film. But a third of the way in, the story suddenly takes off: In 1967 the four friends seriously injured a man when they more or less unintentionally rolled a hot-dog cart down the steps of a subway entrance. The boys, aged 11 to 14, were packed off to an upstate New York reformatory so brutal it makes Sing Sing sound like Sunnybrook Farm. The guards continually raped and beat them, at one point tossing all of them into solitary confinement, where rats gnawed at their wounds and the menu consisted of oatmeal soaked in urine. Two of Carcaterra's friends were dehumanized by their year upstate, eventually becoming prominent gangsters. In 1980, they happened upon the former guard who had been their principal torturer and shot him dead. The book's stunning denouement concerns the successful plot devised by the author and his third friend, now a Manhattan assistant DA, to free the two killers and to exact revenge against the remaining ex-guards who had scarred their lives so irrevocably. Carcaterra has run a moral and emotional gauntlet, and the resulting book, despite its flaws, is disturbing and hard to forget. (Film rights to Propaganda; author tour)
Pub Date: July 10, 1995
ISBN: 0-345-39606-5
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The memoir of George Dawson, who learned to read when he was 98, places his life in the context of the entire 20th century in this inspiring, yet ultimately blighted, biography. Dawson begins his story with an emotional bang: his account of witnessing the lynching of a young African-American man falsely accused of rape. America’s racial caste system and his illiteracy emerge as the two biggest obstacles in Dawson’s life, but a full view of the man overcoming the obstacles remains oddly hidden. Travels to Ohio, Canada, and Mexico reveal little beyond Dawson’s restlessness, since nothing much happens to him during these wanderings. Similarly, the diverse activities he finds himself engaging in—bootlegging in St. Louis, breaking horses, attending cockfights—never really advance the reader’s understanding of the man. He calls himself a “ladies’ man” and hints at a score of exciting stories, but then describes only his decorous marriage. Despite the personal nature of this memoir, Dawson remains a strangely aloof figure, never quite inviting the reader to enter his world. In contrast to Dawson’s diffidence, however, Glaubman’s overbearing presence, as he repeatedly parades himself out to converse with Dawson, stifles any momentum the memoir might develop. Almost every chapter begins with Glaubman presenting Dawson with a newspaper clipping or historical fact and asking him to comment on it, despite the fact that Dawson often does not remember or never knew about the event in question. Exasperated readers may wonder whether Dawson’s life and his accomplishments, his passion for learning despite daunting obstacles, is the tale at hand, or whether the real issue is his recollections of Archduke Ferdinand. Dawson’s achievements are impressive and potentially exalting, but the gee-whiz nature of the tale degrades it to the status of yet another bowl of chicken soup for the soul, with a narrative frame as clunky as an old bone.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-375-50396-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1999
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