A forceful, if somewhat irritable, critique of the American medical system.
In a medical memoir and exposé, a successful spinal surgeon describes his career and the legal and professional challenges that almost derailed it.
From the start of this remembrance, orthopedic surgeon Cyr speaks about “the cutthroatbusinessmen who surround our profession” in extreme terms, calling them “predators who are waiting to devour us.” Asserting his intention to “expose conditions in our healthcare system that need an overhaul,” the author begins with his own background. A devout Christian who was born into a military family, Cyr was inclined to view his role as a doctor in terms of service rather than profit. He was inspired to take up orthopedic surgery after he had a successful knee operation following a football injury. He obtained a U.S. Air Force scholarship to pay for his expensive education, though it required him to remain in the service for 14 years and included two grueling Iraq combat deployments. He rose to the role of chief spinal surgeon and professor at the flagship U.S. Air Force hospital in Texas, where he routinely faced criticism and competition from colleagues. The legal issues that would plague his career began with the opening of his private practice, when he had to defend his right to use the name he’d chosen, which was similar to another practice’s. Many other legal issues, the author contends, resulted from counterproductive governmental regulations and insurance practices that favor corporate profits over patient welfare. Cyr is an often captivating storyteller, recounting his experiences with passion and immediacy, from intimate details of his family dynamics to the breakneck pace of his ambitious career. The role of the author’s religious faith in his dedication to medicine is also noteworthy, as when he writes that “God has surrounded me with angels and put a hand of protection over me and my family despite the constant stream of attacks I have experienced.” The tone veers toward querulousness at times, however, as in complaints about “malignant” fellow spine surgeons who disliked him, he says, because of his corporate recruiter wife’s high salary.
A forceful, if somewhat irritable, critique of the American medical system.Pub Date: May 24, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-63755-304-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Amplify Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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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