The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down June 9, 2009
Posted by sadiejean in Book Reviews, Nonfiction.Tags: Anne Faidman, Epilepsy, Medical Ethics, Nonfiction, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
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—3.5—
My physician assistant class read Anne Fadiman’s The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down for our Professional Seminar course, its purpose to help us examine cultural competency in medicine. Since then I have found out that this book is required reading for many university ethics classes, medical ethics courses, and various medical practioner schools such as ours. With good reason. The Spirit Catches You is the true story of young Lia Lee, born to US immigrants of the Hmong culture. Lia had epilepsy, which her parents saw as a gift and a sign that she was divine. Doctors in their California community didn’t see it that way, however, because epilepsy is serious and dangerous. And so sets off a clash of cultures, traditional vs. western medicine. Each side is trying to do what is best for Lia, resulting in disaster.
Faidman describes Lia’s situation from both the family’s perspective and the doctors’. This story is truly frustrating. You want to shout at her parents for not understanding, or trying; you want to shout at the medical team for not listening, or trying! Yet everyone is trying! So you’re even more frustrated. I tried to put myself in the case while reading the book, attempting to see where and when I would have done something different to avoid the outcome, but time and time again I felt like people made the decisions they had to make, on both sides. I guess that’s why we read it for class though, so we see medicine as not always black and white, and understand the importance of patient values in their own care.
There were a few chapters inserted into the story to provide character development and background on the Hmong culture that I felt were a little extraneous. I wanted them to stick to Lia’s medical story. But, now that I write that, I guess that is again westernized medicine poking it’s head in. It’s hard to ignore what you’ve learned and how you’ve been raised.
3.5/5
The Demon in the Freezer March 9, 2009
Posted by sadiejean in Book Reviews, Nonfiction.Tags: Anthrax, Ebola, Nonfiction, Richard Preston, Smallpox, The Demon in the Freezer, The Hot Zone
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—4—
I know what you’re saying. What a funny title! I wish I had something interesting in my freezer, other than those peas and some vanilla ice cream, and what could be more interesting than A DEMON. But oh no, you do not want this demon in your freezer, cause it is SMALLPOX! And the freezers are in the US and Russia. BUT, if you think we are the only ones with smallpox stores, Richard Preston is going to tell you how mistaken you are. The Demon in the Freezer is a thrilling look at the eradication of smallpox in the 1970’s, and the current bio-terrorism threat it poses. We follow several members of the scientific community as they consider the controversy of smallpox research and vaccine development.
The Demon in the Freezer also leads us through the anthrax scares following September 11 in the United States. Preston uses anthrax as a way to demonstrate how a potential smallpox attack would be so simple to conduct, and so absolutely devastating. I enjoyed the smallpox portions better than the anthrax portions; it seemed so much more exciting, perhaps because it was so much more terrifying. I have never lived in an age in which smallpox existed in nature, and to understand how easy it would be to transform the virus into an unstoppable force is truly fascinating. A great book for science and medicine lovers alike. Also check out Preston’s The Hot Zone about Ebola.
4/5
Stumbling on Happiness December 31, 2008
Posted by sadiejean in Book Reviews, Nonfiction.Tags: Daniel Gilbert, Nonfiction, psychology, Stumbling on Happiness
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—4—
My lovely boyfriend, in an effort to cheer me up, gave me this book, Daniel Gilbert’s Stumbling on Happiness. The premise of the book is simple: you may think you know what makes you happy, but you would be wrong. Stumbling on Happiness combines a little neurology, a little psychology, and a lot of wit to explain why our imaginations don’t do us justice, why we can’t prepare for the future as hard as we try, and we can’t have control over the uncontrollable (although we think we can). Most of all, we can’t know what will make us happy tomorrow, or next year, or in the next decade.
To show us all this, Gilbert describes how the brain works, and how it fills in its gaps often incorrectly. For the science minded of you, this is a funny book (and a little frightening) that shows you how you’ve got it all wrong. Sometimes it felt a little heavy on the psychology for me (I am not a huge psych fan, stick to the hard-sciences for me), but overall Stumbling on Happiness strikes a good balance. Thanks for the gift Jonathan!
4/5
The Zookeeper’s Wife: A War Story November 25, 2008
Posted by sadiejean in Book Reviews, Nonfiction.Tags: Diane Ackerman, Holocaust, Nonfiction, The Zookeeper's Wife, World War Two
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—2.5—
Well, I finally have some time to review the books I have been reading! Hooray for Thanksgiving Break and the end of another quarter at school! The first of the catch-up-reviews is The Zookeeper’s Wife: A War Story by Diane Ackerman. It follows the Zabinski family; Jan, the director of the Warsaw zoo and his wife Antonina, who has a special gift with the animals. In the cages of the zoo and the rooms of their home, the Zabinski’s sheltered Jews during the heart of the Holocaust. Ackerman obtained a great deal of her information from Antonina’s diary, as well as other records of the time. This is a true story of some remarkable people who risked a lot to save their friends, family, and animals.
I wanted to like this book, I really did. The premise is fascinating, and Antonina and Jan are truely a likable pair. But I almost wished to just read Antonina’s diary itself. Much of the book was spent with details of the natural world that is crashing in around them due to the war, which is fine, but I didn’t feel Ackerman convincingly tied it all in with the larger story of Warsaw’s Holocaust. It sometimes read like two separate books squished together. Overall, I thought the basic plot was fascinating, but the side stories (and tangents) never came together as a cohesive unit. However, I had never thought of World War Two’s destruction of the natural world or the lives of animals, whether in captivity or free, and so The Zookeeper’s Wife provided an interesting perspective in that way.
2.5/5
Shakespeare: The World as Stage September 2, 2008
Posted by sadiejean in Book Reviews, Nonfiction.Tags: Bill Bryson, Shakespeare, Shakespeare: The World as Stage, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid
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—3.5—
Bill Bryson’s Shakespeare: World as Stage is a deviation from Bryson’s norm. Here, he contributes to the Eminent Lives series, which uses well-known authors to biography famous figures . As we quickly find in this work, there is not much known about William Shakespeare, and much of what we thought we knew is unconfirmed or down-right fabricated. We don’t even know what he truly looked like, because the portraits we have have either been retouched or were painted well after his death. The authorities on Shakespeare know barely more than the average man, and much “information” is conjecture from analysis of his work. Bryson does a magnificent job sticking to the facts, and illuminating the controversial arguments as to who this Shakespeare fellow really was. I especially enjoyed when Bryson pointed out the absurd things scholars do to try and learn more about Shakespeare, including counting every word he wrote (that we have), or how many times a certain word appears in his plays. Shakespeare: World as Stage is brief, but it has to be considering how little we know about the most famous author of all time. As always, Bryson is quite charming, but if you want a true taste of Bryson’s work, I wouldn’t recommend this as the first to pick up by the author.
3.5/5
Check out my review of Bryson’s The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid.
Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex August 29, 2008
Posted by sadiejean in Book Reviews, Nonfiction.Tags: Best Sellers, Bonk, Mary Roach, Nonfiction, Spook, The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex
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—4.5—
What a great book! Mary Roach has redeemed herself following the (in my opinion) less-than-satisfying book Spookwith a phenomenal third work Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex. As the title hints, this is a fascinating and funny book in which Roach explores the history of sex research. In Bonk, Roach goes beyond Kinsey to try to explain to us readers what we really want to know: what exactly is an orgasm? Can paraplegics have sex? Is orgasm linked to fertility? Why is Viagra useless for women? And she answers some things we didn’t have questions on before, but are good fun to learn about anyway, such as why Panda’s have such a crappy sex-life, and how female pigs are inseminated. Roach also explores why it has taken so long for sex research to catch up with other forms of medicine, although it is just as important, just more taboo. She makes the point that can be quite difficult to get funding and approval for sex studies, cause they do often seem a little perverted, despite their good intentions. Plus, where do you find subjects?
If you enjoyed Spook or Stiff, I definately recommend you pick up Bonk. And if you haven’t read either of the other two, pick it up anyway! Roach is definately one of the most unique and funny science authors out there. And as always, her almost always irrelevant footnotes get the biggest laughs! Can’t wait for another book by her.
4.5/5
Check out my review of Spook as well!
The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir August 25, 2008
Posted by sadiejean in Anderson Book Club, Book Reviews, Nonfiction.Tags: Bill Bryson, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid
4 comments
—4—
The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson, is an excellent book for any person who experienced the 1950’s firsthand, or, anyone (like me) who is a fan of this amazingly witty and funny author. Bryson takes us back to a simpler time, growing up in 1950’s Iowa and enjoying all that life has to offer. My favorite recollections were when the family doctor told Bryson’s parents to just give him some aspirin for a gushing head wound, because he could not be torn from watching a golf tournament; and when we hear all about the atomic-toilets (you read right) at the Bryson Family’s favorite restaurant. Bryson ’s use of hyperbole hilariously conveys the sheer ridiculousness of the time, while still instilling in the reader a desire to go back to a time where there were no chain stores, when people didn’t worry about their kids playing alone until dark, and when a toilet seat could be cleaned by radiation when you flushed it.
4/5
The Children’s Blizzard May 8, 2008
Posted by sadiejean in Anderson Book Club, Book Reviews, Nonfiction.Tags: David Laskin, The Children's Blizzard
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—4—
On January 12, 1888 an unexpected blizzard came down up the Dakota-Nebraskan plains, killing hundreds of settlers, many of them children trying to make their way home from school. In David Laskin’s book, The Children’s Blizzard he explores the causes of this disaster – meteorological and human – the devastation it brought, and the blizzard’s lasting effects – among settlers, national weather forecasting, and the plains today. He also focuses on several families in particular, and told the stories of how the members fared that day, what dreams had brought each them out into this unsettled land, and how many of those dreams were shattered in a matter of hours.
This book was SAD. Obviously, it is not light material. As I began the book I kept thinking how the characters Laskin introduced were likely to die in the upcoming chapters. The history is fascinating aw well, as you think of how all these seemingly unrelated events become so important when a natural disaster catches everyone by surprise. Anyone interested in US history, especially westward expansion, should not miss this book. It’s heartbreaking and terrifying.
4/5
The God Delusion April 13, 2008
Posted by sadiejean in Book Reviews, Nonfiction.Tags: Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
4 comments
—4—
I’m really not interested in getting into anything controversial on my book blog, but I just finished Richard Dawkins’ work The God Delusion so I’m going to say a few things. I have mixed feelings about this book. Dawkins is very insightful, and I found he about covered every type of bizarre confrontation I’ve had with overexcited believers in the past. But the book also made me sad because, does it do any good? It’s still going to be taboo to argue against religion, and only non-believers will ever pick up this book. Overall, without going into too much, Richard Dawkins presents well reasoned and researched arguments, without being dry or condescending. I disliked much of the middle section, however, because it seemed to veer off-topic. Or, more likely, he stayed on topic but I wasn’t capable of following it. The book’s main topics include: how religions form, why human morality does not come from the scripture or religion, and the facts of science which are based on evidence, not faith. Anyways, I don’t want to upset any of my religious friends and family (I love you!), so I’m not going into it anymore. It was a good book for those interested, and even believers might be curious about its perspective.
4/5
“Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?” — Douglas Adams
Deep Ancestry: Inside the Genographic Project March 8, 2008
Posted by sadiejean in Book Reviews, Nonfiction.Tags: Deep Ancestry, Genographic Project, Spencer Wells
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—4—
The tagline for Spencer Wells’ book Deep Ancestry: Inside the Genographic Project is “The Landmark DNA Quest to Decipher Our Distant Past”. And that is exactly what this remarkable book is about. Wells introduces the average man to genetic anthropology in this work, taking us along with the Genographic Project and showing us how genetics can reveal how our world was populized by modern Homo Sapiens. Where did we originate? Where did we spread first? Who are the ancestors of modern Asians, Aboriginal Australians, and Native Americans, Africans, and Europeans? Using our DNA, combined with clues from prehistoric artifacts and weather patterns, these questions are beginning to be answered.
Wells neither oversimplifies, nor does he use to much technical language. While I have a biological background and a basic understanding of mitochondrial DNA and the Y chromosome (the two big players in the genetic research), I wouldn’t say genetics are my forte. But I never felt in over my head, and I had no problem with comprehension. With figures, charts, and diagrams, plus Wells’ every-day analogies, this book is perfectly accesible to the non-scientist. However, I could see how those not interested may think that Deep Ancestry reads as a long research paper. But it is so much more than that! Step by step we are taken back to the “African Eve” 170,000 years ago, of which all 6.5 billion of us on Earth are descended (and no, this is nothing like the Biblical Eve, of course). Deep Ancestry is a fascinating look how our genes hold the answers to where we came from.
4/5
