A powerful expression of anguish from a 9/11 first responder.
A New York cop’s account of his 9/11-related health problems and struggle to have them recognized by the city’s bureaucracy.
After the tragedy on 9/11 at the World Trade Center, NYPD lieutenant Bill Dement spent four months amid the toxic dust and debris at Ground Zero and the Fresh Kills Landfill. Like other first responders, he has since developed a host of health problems: reactive airways dysfunction syndrome (RADS), acid reflux, sleep apnea, heavy metals poisoning and permanent cognitive damage. When Dement asked a doctor in 2008 if he could still be a cop, the doctor told him, “You can’t be a clerk in Wal-Mart.” Co-authored with his wife, Dement’s first-hand account as a first-responder unveils a harrowing, lingering tragedy. The contaminated air around Ground Zero “felt like death. It was death.” Dement’s deteriorating health forced him into retirement and has left him a virtual invalid. In lucid detail, the book then describes his Kafka-esque journey through New York City bureaucracy and the medical establishment in search of a diagnosis, treatment and an adequate disability settlement for his injuries. “We have faced organized obstruction in our struggles for health care and compensation,” Dement says. He was diagnosed with “WTC cough” as early as January 2002, but a pulmonary specialist in 2005 said he did not have RADS. “Perhaps it’s in your mind,” the specialist said. A panel of city doctors repeatedly denied his request for a tax-free disability pension, ruling he was not eligible because his sleep apnea was not related to 9/11. At one hearing, Dement presents a letter from a doctor diagnosing him with lead and aluminum poisoning. “Do you have anything more?” a member of the panel asks. Dement's conversational, pull-no-punches prose style and vivid imagery add to the power of his bleak narrative. “[I]t seemed like someone had glued my pleural lining together,” he says of his breathing problems. Congress finally passed a bill in 2010 to help ailing first responders, although that’s little solace for Dement. His focused, understandable anger should be our own. It is as he laments: “I and thousands of first responders have been handed a death sentence.”
A powerful expression of anguish from a 9/11 first responder.Pub Date: June 18, 2011
ISBN: 978-0615487564
Page Count: 276
Publisher: William Francis Dement
Review Posted Online: March 7, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
