A slightly scattershot collection, but, as usual for Nuland, more hits than misses.
An assortment of essays by National Book Award winner Nuland (Surgery/Yale; The Art of Aging: A Doctor's Prescription for Well-Being, 2007, etc.).
All but one originally published in the American Scholar, these meditations concern the uncertainty inherent in the art of medicine, the necessity of integrating the humanities into a medical education too focused on technology and research, the boundaries of medical responsibility and the limits of physicians’ authority. The author even dares to predict medical advances that will come in the 21st century. Several pieces address the history of medicine: stories of grave robbers; a survey of ancient and not-so-ancient beliefs about the bowel; an analysis of how medical beliefs are reflected in language (“liver” and “life” have the same root, because that organ was once seen as the seat of life); and an appreciation of Thomas Eakins’s two wildly different but equally perceptive portraits of physicians, The Gross Clinic and The Agnew Clinic. Into these ruminations Nuland inserts personal stories: the happy results of his own weight-training program, his thoughts on the art of writing, his observations of and speculations about the effectiveness of acupuncture as an anesthetic during surgery and a lighthearted trifle on what it is like to hear the words, “Is there a doctor in the house?” The most moving essay, written for this collection, is a warm tribute to a man who was awaiting a heart transplant at the same time that Nuland was planning an article on heart transplantation for the New Yorker. George Leyden agreed to record his thoughts in a daily journal titled “The Musings of a Heart Transplant Candidate,” which he kept from the time the two men met until a week before his death some eight months later. Nuland quotes extensively from this wrenching, revealing journal in his profile of Leyden, whom he came to admire greatly for his honesty and courage.
A slightly scattershot collection, but, as usual for Nuland, more hits than misses.Pub Date: May 27, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6478-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2008
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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