A useful, accessible primer for readers hoping to keep themselves looking their best.
A comprehensive self-help guide that gives readers the lowdown on the full spectrum of options for maintaining a youthful appearance.
Plastic surgeon Terry Dubrow (The Acne Cure, 2003) of E!’s TV series Botched and Good Work, and his wife, Heather, an actress and cast member of Bravo’s The Real Housewives of Orange County, offer a comprehensive beauty and anti-aging manual. The book progresses from the least to most drastic approaches to enhancing one’s appearance. Early chapters, for example, offer preventative and reparative advice on makeup, hair care, and skin care; one explains the common ingredients in skin care products, detailing the conditions for which each is suited. From there, the focus shifts to noninvasive aesthetic treatments, such as facials and dermal fillers, and then to plastic surgery. The book clearly outlines the benefits and limitations of each procedure and offers detailed suggestions about choosing a doctor and what to expect during recovery. The final section synthesizes the preceding information to address specific conditions or concerns, ranking topical and nonsurgical treatments according to efficacy and risk. This guide assumes that readers will be familiar with both authors as television personalities and benefits from a conversational, approachable prose style. The information presented is clear and concise and will be valuable to anyone looking to treat or prevent the telltale signs of growing older. The authors advocate a pared-down approach to makeup, but the early sections might have been strengthened by some basic tutorials in this area, including photos or illustrations. Still, the book’s candid discussion of which well-known products and procedures simply don’t work is useful, as are its product recommendations, which range from drugstore bargains to high-end merchandise. It even includes several lesser-known Korean and Japanese brands now available stateside, highlighting an emerging trend in beauty and skin care. Overall, the Dubrows present a refreshing, less-is-more perspective on maintaining a youthful appearance and have crafted a solid information resource.
A useful, accessible primer for readers hoping to keep themselves looking their best.Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-939457-55-4
Page Count: 252
Publisher: Ghost Mountain Books
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A blast of good sense from a knowledgeable source, this puts Viagra in a proper perspective as a treatment for impotence. Psychiatrist Melchiode has been a therapist in human sexuality for more than 30 years, and he knows a real step forward when he sees one: when used as part of a well-thought-out therapeutic plan, Viagra can be key in relieving what he rightly terms the “soul-wrenching condition” of impotence, and in repairing “all-important human relationships that support our whole social structure.” For sufferers, Melchiode explains what Viagra is and how it works, and discusses the diagnosis and evaluation of sexual dysfunction in men (the first step is always a thorough medical exam and consultation with a urologist). He then goes into depth on the various causes of impotence, complete with realistic and instructive case histories—always with an eye as to whether Viagra would be an appropriate treatment. Melchiode makes his case neatly: the physical, emotional, and social are all inevitably intertwined, and in the hands of an experienced practitioner, Viagra is a crucial part of treatment. But no drug will ever “serve as an antidote for deceit, divorce, and empty or disrupted lives.”
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-8050-6060-X
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1999
Informative, honest, engrossing.
A nurse practitioner’s exploration of women’s health and treatment through the prism of four composite characters who represent some of the many types she’s encountered in 25 years of practice.
Davis is fascinated by women’s health, and how the spirit inhabits the flesh. By creating four case studies, she is able to focus on four issues that are quite common and unique to female health: teen pregnancy, cervical cancer, drug-addiction, and child abuse. Despite the fact that the four women she uses as examples are fabrications, the author’s emotional response to her “patients” feels very honest. She does her best to be helpful to Lila, a pregnant 15-year-old who lives with a man 13 years her senior. Davis’s resources are nearly tapped out when dealing with Renée, a drug addict who is doing her best to kick the habit in order not to lose yet another child to foster care. A favorite patient’s unexpected cervical cancer affects Davis more than anticipated, and an attempt to help a patient face emotionally painful truths about her past leads the author to divulge her own bit of uncomfortable history. The author’s account is equal parts medical text and good storytelling; as their tales unfold, the patients’ bodies and maladies are at all times explicitly discussed, with specula and vaginas appearing on page after page. These are, after all, the stock in trade of a nurse practitioner at an OB-GYN clinic. And though her prose can veer towards the purple, Davis’s respect for women’s particular physical makeup allows the reader to be drawn into the viscera and mundanities of common afflictions. A particularly graphic description of a hysterectomy nicely illustrates the author’s mastery of her topic, as she transforms what might normally be an episode that would try the squeamish into an entirely absorbing account that insists on being read.
Informative, honest, engrossing.Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2001
ISBN: 0-375-50418-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2001
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