Thoroughly encouraging and, best of all, entirely practical.
A guide to not just coping, but living in the wake of a sudden catastrophic disability.
Bray, who operates a healing ministry in Arizona and experienced an accident years ago in which he lost his sight, is a testament to St. Barton’s ode: “I am hurt, but I am not slain. I will lie me down and bleed awhile, then I will rise up and fight again.” In a voice that is businesslike, but still buoyant, he advocates for maintaining one’s independence and decision-making authority in the face of disability, plowing through the trauma, humiliation and embarrassment that a sudden change in your physical health entails. Bray’s advice is sprinkled with nondenominational Christianity and leavened with humor: “This book cannot and will not diminish the absolute hell of a suddenly blind individual, but if in hell, why not bring an air conditioner and try to beat the devil at his own game.” The author’s mantra is that a person will only be victimized if he or she plays the role of a victim. Bray advises those living with disabilities to follow his brass-tacks listing of commandments, including warnings, reminders and rules: how to secure mobility (“develop the right ‘attitude’ by never looking at the ground while traveling. Since the [suddenly blind] can’t see it anyway, it doesn’t make sense to look down”), tap into the benefits available for higher education, deal with finances and organize a kitchen and cook. The author wants the suddenly disabled to be their own masters and delegate any personal authority only as a last resort, while taking full advantage of the laws assisting persons with disabilities, and the panoply of community resources at their disposal. Much of the book covers optimizing use of the computer for entertainment and information, and it closes with a short segment on physical fitness. The author spells out each of his prescriptions in aching detail, leaving no issue unexplored.
Thoroughly encouraging and, best of all, entirely practical.Pub Date: June 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4196-0633-5
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
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