A chilling account of a livelihood spent curating the criminally psychotic.
Board-certified psychiatrist Seager (Street Crazy: America's Mental Health Tragedy, 2000, etc.) recounts his 12 harrowing months at Northern California’s Napa State Hospital.
As a newcomer to the psychiatric facility, the author was immediately immersed in the drastic severity of the psychotic patients housed in “Unit C,” a compound with security rivaling that of San Quentin prison. After being assaulted within minutes, Seager began reconsidering his job decision, especially after learning that the unit’s previous psychiatrist was put in a coma after being attacked. Dubbed “Gomorrah,” the hospital ward soon lived up to its moniker as a house of violence not readily obvious from its manicured grounds. The author chronicles months of daily, terrifying patient interactions, which tested not only his personal fortitude, but his professionalism as a mental health caregiver. Though all had murder on their rap sheets, the scariest of Unit C’s 40 residents was hulking, unpredictable Bill McCoy, whom everyone feared most yet wouldn’t be policed for his in-house extortion due to the circuitous nature of the prison system (he’d only end up back at Napa State). Some patients wore paper Zorro masks and smeared feces on themselves, while others hid makeshift distillery contraptions in their closets or sold fermented fruit cocktail as prison alcohol; the remainder were a manageably maniacal lot with short tempers. Special events like Halloween proved bizarre; Thanksgiving dinners were somber, with minimal visitors (many residents had killed their own families). Though relentlessly unsettling and grim, there are spots of levity. Seager’s descriptions can be darkly humorous: On a particularly bad day, the author became “engulfed in a wave of hungry psychopaths eagerly churning their way to the cafeteria.” In the final chapter, the author urges citizens to become proactive in enacting legislation to change how state hospitals are run, thus increasing their safety quotients and those of the communities they serve.
A chilling account of a livelihood spent curating the criminally psychotic.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2014
ISBN: 978-1476774497
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2014
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
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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