A timely, profound, multidimensional guide on alternative methods of medical care delivery.
A former immunologist lays the holistic groundwork for what she perceives as imperative changes needed in modern medicine.
In her timely guide, health and wellness coach Zhong, aka Dr. Z, addresses the critical conundrum of burnout affecting medical workers. With the problem amplified by the current pandemic, she recognizes the detrimental effects of chronic stress on the health care community and outlines how beneficial change can occur through her 12-step transformative program. She begins by isolating seven signs associated with burnout, which she likens to a soldier’s PTSD, a “moral injury” where someone’s “core value, identity, purpose, and self-worthiness are jeopardized by loyalty to the institute.” Withdrawal, weakness, and loss of compassion as a frontline worker can become a crisis, the author writes. While she concedes that burnout is an inevitable consequence, Zhong asserts that it allows opportunities for radical, beneficial paradigm shifts in health care systems. These changes include a general revision toward more health-focused approaches, the integration of holistic healing into disease management procedures, and the incorporation of organic learning and unlearning processes into one’s scope of medical practice. The author’s 12-step program for “future doctors for the new world” forms the book’s core and includes practical guidance on envisioning the future of health care, focusing on personal and professional attention and intention, centering oneself amid a chaotic world, mastering emotions, and finding empowerment. Zhong believes the modern practice of medical care is generally and irrationally grounded in both a fear and an avoidance of death. Her program uniquely encourages an impartiality concerning life and death, as both are “equally beautiful parts of the process.”
To better illustrate and support her methodology in revamping medical practices, Zhong effectively includes aspects of spiritualism, poetry, allegorical storytelling, and personal observations in the manual. A section chronicling her own history growing up in Shanghai alongside her experiences as a biomedical researcher forms the basis of her ideology and affords readers a deeper perspective on the author. Watershed influences like practicing qi gong energy work and meditation became the impetus for Zhong’s eventual career change as she passionately envisioned new directions. The author openly describes her immense passion for creating a sanctuary training center for “soul-crushed and energetically depleted” health care professionals who desire renewed clarity and purpose and, most importantly, to “experience various healing modalities that are not taught in medical school.” Despite the pandemic lockdown, she proceeded with developing the Medicine Mage Academy, a yearlong, intuitive holistic training program conducted in a nature-based setting and encompassing aspects of organic learning and “consciousness downloading.” But in later chapters, the author veers into uncharted territory and the book loses some of its initial focus. Some readers may find her more science-minded inclusion of Taoism, the quantum entanglement phenomenon, interspecies telepathy, and theories on artificial intelligence and superconsciousness overly complex and distracting from her central theme of transformational wellness practices through human interconnectedness. Those able to extract and retain the volume’s central message will find Zhong’s enlightening and liberating suggestions on revamping health care a breath of fresh air.
A timely, profound, multidimensional guide on alternative methods of medical care delivery.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2020
ISBN: 979-8-5510-0812-5
Page Count: 302
Publisher: Independently Published
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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
© Copyright 2026 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.
