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NonfictionMemoirMedicine

The Invisible Kingdom

Review by Sarah McCraw Crow

In her early 20s, Meghan O’Rourke began to experience an array of symptoms—fatigue, joint pain, brain fog, hives, fever, a sensation of electric shocks along her legs and arms—that neither doctors nor bloodwork could connect to a diagnosis. When one doctor suggested that O’Rourke might have an autoimmune disease, a condition in which the immune system begins to turn on the body, O’Rourke recalled her practical Irish aunts who lived with rheumatoid arthritis, Hashimoto’s disease and ulcerative colitis, all autoimmune diseases. As O’Rourke entered her 30s, her symptoms grew worse, despite seeing multiple specialists. She found herself barely able to leave her apartment, let alone have the baby she’d been hoping for.

O’Rourke is the author of three collections of poetry and a memoir, The Long Goodbye. In The Invisible Kingdom, she chronicles her long search for healing, layering in extensive reporting on the rise of chronic illness and autoimmune disease and the way our medical system fails to see ailments that aren’t readily diagnosable or easily treated. Likewise, she notes that autoimmune diseases are far more likely to affect women, and women, in turn, are more likely to be told that their symptoms are all in their heads. “Of the nearly one hundred women I interviewed, all of whom were eventually diagnosed with an autoimmune disease or other concrete illness, more than 90 percent had been encouraged to seek treatment for anxiety or depression by doctors who told them nothing physical was wrong with them,” she writes.

O’Rourke examines her own experience with a lucid but compassionate lens, and she brings that same mix of analysis and compassion to the book’s reporting. It’s a delicate balancing act to write about a long journey of misery without being tedious or repetitive. She pulls it off by adding lyrical imagery and the words of other writers, such as Alice James and Susan Sontag, to her descriptions of suffering, the peculiar treatments she found herself undergoing, and the effect her quest for healing had on her marriage. And yes, the book reaches a happy, though not uncomplicated, ending.

While it’s especially useful for those who have personally encountered chronic illness, The Invisible Kingdom will add to everyone’s understanding of disease and health. Ultimately it offers a fresh image of what good medicine could look like: doctors understanding each patient as a whole person, not just as a collection of parts.

With a mix of analysis and compassion, Meghan O’Rourke chronicles the rise of chronic illness and autoimmune disease alongside her own long search for healing.
Medicine

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Just Here Trying to Save a Few Lives is a gripping, real-life book by Dr. Pamela Grim, an emergency room physician. Grim, an ER doctor for ten years, paints a graphic picture of what life in the real ER is like the adrenaline, the life-and-death quick decisions, the burnout, and the hours of boredom punctuated by moments of terror and relief. Grim recounts her most interesting cases in the ER and her travels with Doctors Without Borders the organization that recently won the Nobel Peace Prize. Grim traveled to Nigeria, Kosovo, and Macedonia with that organization, and Lives portrays how heart-breaking this practice of medicine is compared to the state of the art technology-driven practice in the States. Her front-line stories from these war-ridden and impoverished countries are maddening, touching, and inspiring.

The doctor’s recollections of her most remarkable cases are enlivened by her refreshing honesty. Readers witness Grim’s doubts, frustrations, insecurities, exhaustion, and confusion her thoughts and emotions are laid on the table, making this book difficult to put down. As evidenced by the popularity of the TV show ER, we are captivated by the events that take place in this setting, and. Grim tells her stories with a realistic flavor that could only come from someone who has been there.

Grim narrates with an insightful, humorous tone that hints at a bit of cynicism about her profession. It appears the author may have written this book as an evaluation of her career, struggling to decide whether she’s too burned out to continue practicing medicine, and perhaps trying to remember why she entered medicine in the first place. Do the rewards outweigh the costs? I encourage you to read and find out.

Susanna Swilley recently finished her first year of medical school in Memphis.

Just Here Trying to Save a Few Lives is a gripping, real-life book by Dr. Pamela Grim, an emergency room physician. Grim, an ER doctor for ten years, paints a graphic picture of what life in the real ER is like the adrenaline, the life-and-death…

Medicine

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Pain as God’s Megaphone, C. S. Lewis wrote, “is a terrible instrument.” Frank T. Vertosick quotes this line as epigraph to his new book, Why We Hurt. Lewis’s comparison points out why pain is essential: It gets our attention, alerting us that something is terribly wrong and, if possible, must be dealt with.

Throughout history, pain has been an unavoidable aspect of the human condition. It still is, but over the last century we have made great inroads not only against illnesses but against the pain they cause. We would do well to remember the agonies of past generations, for which there was simply no relief but the grave. Vertosick’s beautifully written book, The Natural History of Pain explores this essential but terrifying adaptation with intelligence, sympathy, and an encyclopedic store of references from across the cultural and scientific spectrum. A literate scholar and an experienced neurosurgeon, Vertosick is the author of a celebrated account of his training as a neurosurgeon, When the Air Hits Your Brain. He combines his own case histories (suitably disguised), fascinating tidbits from the history of medicine, and an endless curiosity about the nature of pain as a physical sensation. The surprises never stop. Vertosick explains the horrific etymology of the word “cancer,” which, as in the sign of the zodiac, refers to a crab in this case, a crab’s unshakable grip. He explains sciatica, and how Shakespeare came to coin the term. Carpal tunnel syndrome, rheumatoid arthritis, migraine headaches, phantom limb syndrome it’s all here, in lucid, witty prose.

Nor does Vertosick overlook the pains of everyday life that are not considered disorders but are nonetheless what the Koran calls “a hurt”: menstrual cramps, the pain of childbirth, office-induced back pain.

Vertosick has examined and operated upon countless patients. He admits that he likes to play Sherlock Holmes and make a tentative diagnosis at first glance. He tells of the patient who awoke on the operating table and began screaming when he saw his opened chest and exposed heart, and of the woman who had to lift her leg with a towel because it wouldn’t move of its own volition. From these anecdotes, with sympathy and wit, he builds insightful chapters about the curse and blessing that is pain.

Michael Sims is the author of Darwin’s Orchestra (Henry Holt).

Pain as God's Megaphone, C. S. Lewis wrote, "is a terrible instrument." Frank T. Vertosick quotes this line as epigraph to his new book, Why We Hurt. Lewis's comparison points out why pain is essential: It gets our attention, alerting us that something is terribly…

Medicine

Review

Review by bookpagedev

The concept of a body-mind connection is nothing new. With the recent rise in the use of alternative therapies to treat illness, the public has been swift to recognize this connection. Larry Dossey, one of the first in the scientific community to write about mind-body integration, now shows how this powerful combination can further affect our own personal healing. In his recent book, Reinventing Medicine, he explains the present shift away from how we have viewed medicine in the past and offers a fascinating look at what the future holds for creating wellness in our lives. Dossey identifies what he sees as three recent eras in medicine. He explains how we have gone beyond Era I (the 1860s) in understanding the mechanical or physical healing that takes place in the body. We have also ventured well beyond Era II (1950s), which allowed us to discover that the mind could actually influence the body, for better or worse. Now, Dossey believes that we have entered Era III, a combination of the two previous eras . . . with a twist. The mind-body interaction in Era III is characterized by phenomena such as familiar, unaccountable hunches, prophetic dreams, and bursts of creative energy. Although science has traditionally distrusted these phenomena for lack of evidence, Dossey offers the recent work of scientists at universities such as Harvard, Princeton, and Stanford to add convincing weight to his argument.

A perhaps troubling aspect for those in the scientific field is Dossey’s key concept, which characterizes Era III medicine, the concept of the nonlocal mind. The author believes that there is sufficient evidence to show that the mind operates beyond the body and is not subject to time. To strengthen his claim, he offers impressive studies for nonlocal events, which suggest that there is not only startling interaction between humans, but also between humans and plants, humans and animals, and even humans and inanimate objects. Anyone interested in the mind-body connection, how it influences our well-being, and how we can focus on it to positively affect our health will be interested in this book.

The concept of a body-mind connection is nothing new. With the recent rise in the use of alternative therapies to treat illness, the public has been swift to recognize this connection. Larry Dossey, one of the first in the scientific community to write about mind-body…

Medicine

An author does time with the dead

Behind the Book by Mary Roach

To write a book about cadavers, you have to get in to see some. This is harder than you’d think. You’d think dead people would be easy to make appointments with. Their schedules are pretty open and they rarely go out of town. But of course dead people don’t make appointments. The researchers and surgeons and undertakers who work with them do that, and they don’t do it easily. If you were, for instance, a plastic surgeon who had set up a seminar with 40 severed human heads for other plastic surgeons to practice on, would you want a writer there? You would not. I contacted the organizers of this very head event, and indeed, they did not want me there. As the day drew near, I considered paying the $500 fee and registering as a surgeon. Maybe no one would notice that the woman in the back row was holding her retractor upside down and only pretending to make incisions.

In the end, an acquaintance, a plastic surgeon whom I’d profiled years ago, made some calls and got me in. I fear for his welfare once the book comes out. Not that I say anything negative about surgeons practicing on cadavers. I simply describe the things I saw, and most surgeons would probably prefer that the public not know about these things.

Inevitably, the doctors and scientists I wanted to visit would ask me to tell them about the book. I would assure them that I was in favor of cadaver-based education and research and that the book would support and encourage the donation of bodies to science.

This is true, but it didn’t really tell them much about the book. For instance, that its title is Stiff. That it’s meant not just to inform readers, but to entertain them. What could I say? “It’s a fun book about dead people. You’ll love it!” What scientist would agree to help me?

My past made matters worse. I used to write an irreverent, goofball column about medicine and the human body for the online magazine Salon.com. Occasionally my columns were about dead human bodies. There was one about car crash tests in the ’60s that involved cadavers. I did not criticize these studies, for they were and still occasionally are necessary and have, indirectly, saved thousands of lives. However, my tone was somewhat cavalier. Flippant, you might even say. By and large, it’s fair to say that people who do research using cadavers would rather not be the subject of flippant articles. At one point, I contacted a researcher at the University of Michigan to see if I could observe a cadaver impact test for the book. The man asked me how I’d become interested in the subject, and I said I’d done a little research on the topic for a Salon article. You don’t figure engineers log on to Salon.com.

“Salon!” he said. “I hope you’re not the one who wrote that horrible piece a couple months ago.” My piece had run about a year prior, so I replied that it must have been someone else. Then he began describing the piece, which was in fact my piece. I said, “I have to go now,” and I got off and called a different lab. I became so paranoid about potential sources running a Google search on me and finding my Salon columns that I’d sign off on my e-mails as Marion Roach. (Later I realized that my messages arrive with “Mary Roach” in the From heading.) The man whose automotive impact lab I eventually visited had seen the Salon column too, but he let me watch anyway. To this day I think of him as a kind of saint.

And now comes the part where the people in the book get to read it. There are days when I honestly believe they’ll be okay with it, maybe even enjoy it. Other days I imagine them turning up at my doorstep, saying I’ve destroyed their scientific standing. And then they shoot me, and the author of Stiff is a corpse too. Horrifying, but think of the PR possibilities: Dead author goes on tour to promote cadaver book! Sales through roof!

Mary Roach currently writes the “My Planet” humor column in Reader’s Digest. Her work has also appeared in Outside, Wired, GQ and Vogue. A contributing editor at Discover magazine, she lives in San Francisco. Stiff is her first book.

To write a book about cadavers, you have to get in to see some. This is harder than you'd think. You'd think dead people would be easy to make appointments with. Their schedules are pretty open and they rarely go out of town. But of course dead people don't make appointments. The researchers and surgeons and undertakers who work with them do that, and they don't do it easily.
Medicine

Review

Review by bookpagedev

I first encountered Dr. Verghese in his acclaimed My Own Country. There he recorded his heartbreaking experiences with the country’s first cases of AIDS as they returned from the cities of each coast to come home to East Tennessee, not knowing what disease they had or what to expect. We followed the lives of each new patient, went into their homes, met their friends, lovers, and sometimes wives. We witnessed the community and his profession reject Verghese as he tried to understand and treat the people with the strange unfolding disease of AIDS.

It was my good fortune to spend an afternoon with Abe Verghese at the Southern Festival of Books, where we shared a panel discussion and several hours of talk. Later, I saw one of the patients he wrote about in My Own Country. The woman, still in the early stages of AIDS, told me her story in some detail and then said, but read Abe’s book . . . he put it down just the way it is. She reaffirmed my own observations that Dr. Verghese is an extraordinarily compassionate man who also happens to be a physician. She also convinced me that he is a very accurate recorder.

In The Tennis Partner, Verghese continues to show his uncanny ability to be a participant-observer. He writes objectively but at the same time with intense emotion. Time after time we follow him, as if just a step behind, through the most painful circumstances, experiences, and relationships. Verghese relates the moving stories of a medical school professor, a failing marriage, cocaine addiction, love affairs with medicine and tennis, and a brief and tragic friendship with a medical student/ex-tennis pro. The parallels between obsessions with tennis, medicine, and cocaine are thought-provoking and powerful. Verghese carries us into the world of troubled and impaired medical students and doctors and leads us to a better understanding of the profession’s proclivity for addictive behavior. For whatever reason, Verghese is drawn to the down-and-out, troubled, and tragic members of our world. He leaves us with some knowledge that, given a tiny twist of fate, they are not very different, if at all, from any of us.

Clifton Meador is a physician and author of several books.

I first encountered Dr. Verghese in his acclaimed My Own Country. There he recorded his heartbreaking experiences with the country's first cases of AIDS as they returned from the cities of each coast to come home to East Tennessee, not knowing what disease they had…

NonfictionMedicine

Making up your mind: Brain and body working together

Feature by Sheila M. Trask

“I’m of two minds,” we say. Or, “I changed my mind.” These phrases roll casually off the tongue, but we don’t mean them literally. Maybe we should, according to two new books that explore the fascinating history and tantalizing future of neuroscience.

COGNITIVE WONDERS
Are you primarily right-brained or left-brained? You might think you know, but Michael S. Gazzaniga is here to tell you it’s not that simple. Gazzaniga pioneered split-brain research with his colleagues at the California Institute of Technology in the 1960s. In Tales from Both Sides of the Brain: A Life in Neuroscience, he details the experiments that led us to talk about the brain’s two hemispheres in the first place. Filled with scientific luminaries like psychobiologist Roger W. Sperry and theoretical physicist Richard Feynman, Tales from Both Sides of the Brain takes us back to the intellectually energetic laboratories of Caltech. In scenes that read like episodes of “The Big Bang Theory”—intellectual energy abounds—we sit in on experiments done with split-brain patients, whose brains’ hemispheres had been surgically separated to treat epilepsy.

Gazzaniga meticulously documents the strange things that happen when the two sides of the brain aren’t communicating, such as losing the ability to label an item held in the left hand, even though the answer comes swiftly when the same object rests in the right. What’s even more fascinating, though, is the way the brain can sometimes overcome such limits. As Gazzaniga says, the brain is not a “random bowl of spaghetti” but a “biologic machine” with the power to rewire itself. Gazzaniga tells the stories of split-brain patients who have regained lost functionality as their brains’ hemispheres learned to “cue” each other in new ways.

Director of the SAGE Center for the Study of the Mind at the University of California, Santa Barbara and president of the Cognitive Neuroscience Institute, Gazzaniga continues to search for answers about how the brain works. His impassioned writing invites readers into his world, where the science of the past sets the stage for even greater discoveries to come.

BRAIN, HEAL THYSELF
Where Gazzaniga carefully documents the past, Norman Doidge, M.D. marches enthusiastically into the future in a dazzling collection of stories about neuroplasticity and the ever-changing brain. Following up on his 2007 bestseller, The Brain That Changes Itself, which brought the science of neuroplasticity to a mainstream audience, in The Brain's Way of Healing, Doidge considers cutting-edge treatments that use the body’s senses to access, and improve, neurological functioning.

In friendly vignettes reminiscent of Oliver Sacks’ case studies, Doidge chronicles the heroic efforts of patients with a wide variety of apparently intractable ailments, from chronic pain to multiple sclerosis. All have been treated successfully with non-invasive, natural methods that take advantage of the adaptive abilities of the nervous system. In-depth, personal stories describe patients like John Pepper, who has kept his Parkinson’s disease symptoms in check with a vigorous, yet careful, exercise regimen, and David Webber, whose blindness was relieved with a series of relaxation and visualization exercises.

The list of successful healings is long and impressive; it’s tempting to be skeptical of such a wealth of glowing accounts, except that Doidge truly takes a holistic approach to his subjects, getting to know them and their doctors and sharing every detail with his readers. Doidge doesn’t just read about low-light laser treatments, for example, but actually sits in on multiple sessions and discusses the science behind them. Similarly, he delves into the lives and careers of innovators like Moshé Feldenkrais, whose integrative movement protocol is well known, but whose escape from Nazi Germany is likely not.

Each of Doidge’s examples suggests tangible treatment ideas for patients who may have thought they were out of options. Doidge’s penchant for considering unconventional approaches to healing offers hope for all.

“I’m of two minds,” we say. Or, “I changed my mind.” These phrases roll casually off the tongue, but we don’t mean them literally. Maybe we should, according to two new books that explore the fascinating history and tantalizing future of neuroscience.
NonfictionMemoirMedicine

Final life lessons

Feature by Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

Several recent books, most notably Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal, urge us to ask ourselves how we can live a good life, recognizing that death is a seamless part of our existence. Two compelling new accounts highlight individuals struggling with this question.

LESSONS FROM HOSPICE
In On Living, hospice chaplain Kerry Egan begins her vocation with some resistance, unsure that in her own brokenness she can provide comfort to those who are broken by life and waiting for death. Reluctant to talk about religion with her patients, she soon discovers that simply listening to their stories—of their families, of their losses and regrets, of love—heals her and them: “I don’t know if listening to other people’s stories as they die can make you wise, but I do know that it can heal your soul. I know this because those stories healed mine.”

Egan shares the story of Gloria, a mother who’s been withholding a secret from her son and wants to reveal it as a gesture of love in her final days. A patient named Reggie expresses regret about a life that’s been “empty and alone,” leaving him without a single friend or family member to offer comfort. Then there’s Cynthia, who struggles to accept her overweight body even as she’s dying; like all people who are dying, Egan observes, Cynthia faces the reality that she will “no longer be able to experience this world in this body, ever again.” The lesson for those of us not dying, of course, is that living fully means embracing our imperfect selves with joy and love while we still can.

Egan’s evocative and eloquent book reminds us that we are defined by the stories we tell, and those stories often reveal how life can be “beautiful and crushing” at the same time.

DEATH WITH DIGNITY
Deborah Ziegler’s poignant and fierce Wild and Precious Life celebrates the life of her daughter, Brittany Maynard, who was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer in 2014 at the age of 29. 

When Ziegler first learned of her daughter’s condition, she ran screaming into the dark night of hopelessness, praying that God would take her and not her daughter. She refused to accept her daughter’s impending death and wanted to pursue any treatment that would extend her life.

Brittany, however, taught her mother the one truth we most often avoid in such situations: A good death is part of a life well lived. After Brittany learned the gravity of her situation, she moved from California to Oregon, where a death with dignity law allowed her to make her own choices on how and when her life would end. Her decision prompted a nationwide discussion of assisted suicide and a patient’s right to make end-of-life decisions. 

Skillfully interspersing stories of Brittany’s growing up with a touching account of her final year, Ziegler reminds us, in Brittany’s own words, of the real lesson we need to learn: “Live your lives well. Accept the sorrow with the joy, the ineffable grief with the love.”

 

This article was originally published in the November 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Several recent books, most notably Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal, urge us to ask ourselves how we can live a good life, recognizing that death is a seamless part of our existence. Two compelling new accounts highlight individuals struggling with this question.
NonfictionMemoirMedicineArt

Thinking outside the (gift) box

Feature by Lily McLemore

There’s always at least one puzzler on everyone’s gift list: your friend’s niece, your new in-law, your co-worker’s husband who’s coming to Christmas dinner. These four books err on the side of delightfully weird, and they’re bound to fit some oddball on your list!

(Illustration from Literally Me by Julie Houts.)

For a certain sect of young women, Julie Houts speaks—or rather, draws—the sometimes painful, always hilarious truth, and she’s gathered her truths in Literally Me. It may not be for you, but it’s definitely, literally perfect for someone you know. Houts, a designer at J. Crew and a skilled illustrator, initially found her audience on Instagram, and her clever, detailed drawings and satirical captions hit on everything a modern woman faces: nail polish decisions (Illiterate Sex Kitten or Skinny Ditz?), wine selections (hint: the pink one is the fun one), the arrival of the four horsewomen of the apocalypse at Coachella, conversations with a large, imaginary rat about your desires and fears—you know, the usual stuff. If you’ve got a smart, funny, slightly strange lady in your life, chances are she’ll find plenty to relate to in Houts’ charmingly off-kilter collection of drawings and essays.  

JOLLY BROLLY
Consider the umbrella. It’s an odd little contraption, and I’ve thoughtlessly lost more than I can count. But the umbrella has been around, in some fashion, for millennia and has shaded the domes of pharaohs and queens. The symbolic promise of an umbrella is rich for authors—just think of the metaphor possibilities!—and it makes cameo appearances in the writings of Dickens, Nietzsche and many more. Marion Rankine’s delightful Brolliology: The History of the Umbrella in Life and Literature unfurls the world of umbrellas, instilling an unexpected appreciation for these handy accessories in its readers. The book is also filled with illustrations and plenty of fascinating facts to pull out when conversation lulls—say, at a holiday dinner when you’re seated next to your wife’s boss.

LIFE’S A BEACH
John Hodgman’s Vacationland was recently listed as the #1 New Release in Maine Travel Guides on Amazon. Do not be fooled—with essays that touch on topics like proper etiquette at a rural Massachusetts trash dump, grotesque giant clams and the pain-inducing powers of Maine beaches, Vacationland is anything but a travel guide. Multi­talented actor, bestselling author and former “Daily Show” correspondent Hodgman takes us along as he struggles with deep-rooted anxieties and fears about aging, fatherhood and more in various dismal New England settings. The deadpan Hodgman is an excellent writer, reminding readers of David Sedaris with his self-deprecating style of comedy as he reflects on life with a sincerity that comes close to heartbreaking, but swerves at the last moment to hit the punchline.

DO NO HARM
What’s a great way to deal with blood loss? Why, bloodletting, of course! This is just one of the many “cures” described in the entertaining catalog of terrible treatments Quackery: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything. In amusing yet informative, well-researched style, Lydia Kang and Nate Pedersen cover the many supposed healing qualities of toxic mercury; gladiators’ blood as an epilepsy cure; the vomit-inducing toxin antimony, which would really clear out your system and was allegedly enjoyed by Captain James Cook; and the use of the melted fat of corpses as a salve in the 1700s. After perusing this book, you’ll be thankful you live in this century—and wondering what modern miracle will be considered utter quackery come the next.

 

This article was originally published in the November 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

There’s always at least one puzzler on everyone’s gift list: your friend’s niece, your new in-law, your co-worker’s husband who’s coming to Christmas dinner. These four books err on the side of delightfully weird, and they’re bound to fit some oddball on your list!

NonfictionMemoirMedicine

Good advice for grads entering the new normal

Feature by Carly Nations

When I graduated from high school in 2008, the U.S. was plummeting into a financial collapse that tanked the rest of the world’s economy as well. By the time I graduated from college in 2012, the descriptions of most entry-level positions began, “Must have at least five years of relevant experience.” And no one really had any advice about what to do with the massive, overwhelming problem that was and is student debt.

In 2021, as graduates face not only economic hardship but also the pandemics of poverty, racism and COVID-19, good advice is equally hard to find. The past year has taught them that stability is the illusion, while change and upheaval are the norm. Facing an uncertain future means figuring out how to navigate big changes.

In Letter to a Young Female Physician: Notes From a Medical Life, author Suzanne Koven explores her own personal crises and growth, weaving them within the story of her practice as an internist, or doctor of internal medicine. Koven discusses her struggles with image, identity, sexuality and weight and sees these things as inextricably tied to her desire to be someone important: a doctor. Yet, what Koven discovers is that despite succeeding and becoming a doctor, she failed to overcome the impostor syndrome that plagued her even before she held others’ lives in her hands.

In this way, Koven’s story speaks to the impostor in all of us. Koven writes that “even the most blameless patient, the victim of an accident or a random illness in no way related to anything that person did and in no way preventable by them, feels shame.” We’re all victims of senseless suffering—an economic collapse, a pandemic. These shared traumas reveal our shame; but Koven advises us not to ignore or try to defeat it but rather to allow it to shape us into better, more empathetic people.

By contrast, Your Turn: How to Be an Adult by Julie Lythcott-Haims falls into the more traditional, practical advice category. With frank, straightforward counsel and to-do list chapter titles, Your Turn gives advice that all of us—adults, young adults and children—need to hear.

Citing the work of bestselling psychology researchers and writers like Lori Gottlieb and Brené Brown, Lythcott-Haims’ book advises young people to take chances and find what makes them happy, rather than following a prescribed path to success. Perhaps the most moving passages are the “don’t just take it from me” stories collected from various friends, acquaintances and pen pals. In a world that feels so isolating, reading these deeply intimate stories reminds us why we long to live in community with one another and how doing so truly helps us survive and thrive.

The greatest takeaway from both of these books isn’t the advice they provide but their acknowledgement that we all need each other. Alone, we’re more susceptible to our own shame and self-doubt. Yet here we are, longing not for some sort of undefinable success but simply to be in each other’s presence again. To be sure, many obstacles still stand in the way of our ideal lives; for example, no one envisions a pandemic as the perfect start to adulthood. But sharing our stories is the first step forward, as these tender, inspiring books make clear.

The greatest takeaway from both of these books for burgeoning adults isn’t the advice but the acknowledgement that we all need each other.
NonfictionMedicineAmerican History

The Doctors Blackwell

Review by Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

Florence Nightingale and Dorothea Dix loom large as women who reformed health care in the 19th century—in the fields of nursing and mental health, respectively—but Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell have remained largely unrecognized for their roles in medical history. No longer, though, for Janice P. Nimura’s compelling biography The Doctors Blackwell: How Two Pioneering Sisters Brought Medicine to Women and Women to Medicine reclaims the sisters’ enduring contributions to medicine and to women’s history.

In breathtaking prose and exhaustive detail, Nimura chronicles the lives of the Blackwell sisters—their childhood in England, their immigration to America, the challenges they faced as they made their way in the medical profession and their eventual establishment of institutions that would provide both access to quality medical care for women and a place where women could study medicine in order to practice it.

Attracted to healing as a teenager, Elizabeth saw medicine as a noble vocation, but as she sought to embrace her calling she encountered resistance at almost every turn. Eventually she was able to graduate from Geneva Medical College in New York, becoming the first woman in the U.S. to earn a medical degree, after which she set up a practice in New York City. Emily followed in her older sister’s footsteps, attending Rush Medical College in Chicago and the Medical College of Cleveland, where she became the third woman in the U.S. to receive a medical degree. In 1857, the two sisters founded the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children, and in 1868 they opened the Women’s Medical College in New York City, where Elizabeth taught courses on sanitation and hygiene and Emily taught obstetrics and gynecology. By 1900, the college had trained more than 364 women, and the sisters’ work led to thousands of women becoming educated in the medical field. 

Nimura’s compelling biography not only recovers the lives and work of Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell but also provides a colorful social history of medicine in America and Europe during the mid- to late-19th century.

Janice P. Nimura’s compelling biography The Doctors Blackwell reclaims two sisters’ enduring contributions to medicine and to women’s history.

NonfictionSocial ScienceMedicine

The Sensitives

Review by Becky Libourel Diamond

Environmental hazards such as chemicals, additives, pollution and allergens abound in today’s world. We are bombarded by them on a daily basis, yet for most of us, our bodies are able to filter out these foreign substances. But for some people, who call themselves “sensitives”, these bodily processes break down over time, causing people to develop an oversensitivity known as environmental illness, or EI.

Oliver Broudy (The Saint) investigates this condition in a multilayered way, weaving history, science, nature, health and psychology into a narrative with a good old-fashioned road trip as its backbone. Broudy chronicles his journey with a sensitive named James to find Brian, also a sensitive, who has gone missing and just happens to be a leader within the EI community. The two men drive to Snowflake, Arizona, a kind of “sensitives headquarters.” Here they hope to get more intel on Brian, and Broudy hopes to interview Liz, the community’s main “contact.”

Along the way Broudy provides informative commentary about EI, a disorder that can be intensely painful, irritating and maddening, leading those who experience it to develop a range of illnesses and idiosyncrasies. He provides a myriad of theories, expert opinions and patient feedback, highlighting the fluidity of EI’s impetus and evolution.

As the two men thread their way through the western U.S., Broudy describes in vivid detail the sparsely populated outposts that seem frozen in time and the desolate landscapes with rock formations rising up out of the earth as “wrinkled battlements surrounded by the dross of their own crumble the way an autumn tree is ringed by leaves.” Learning about EI is fascinating and even infuriating, but the excursion and bonding experience between the author and his travel companion is even more intriguing. Over miles of open road, Broudy and James learn more about each other and themselves, and the reader is educated about a chemical threat that is “woven into the fabric of everyday life.” The Sensitives: The Rise of Environmental Illness and the Search for America’s Last Pure Place is one road trip you’ll want to take.

Environmental hazards such as chemicals, additives, pollution and allergens abound in today’s world. We are bombarded by them on a daily basis, yet for most of us, our bodies are able to filter out these foreign substances. But for some people, who call themselves “sensitives”, these…

NonfictionMemoirMedicine

The Lady’s Handbook for Her Mysterious Illness

Review by Linda M. Castellitto

In her new memoir, The Lady’s Handbook for Her Mysterious Illness, Sarah Ramey writes about the 2012 day her music video featuring her alter ego, Wolf Larsen, premiered on NPR. It starred a red-lipsticked, vibrant version of herself, and it went viral online while she remained ill, exhausted, frustrated and alone at home.

This moment is but one of many, many times Ramey struggled to put on a happy face while her reality was much more painful. She is what she calls a WOMI, or “woman with a mysterious illness.” In the last 30 years, instances of autoimmune illnesses have tripled, and our medical system has not yet developed a respectful, effective way of working with such patients. Instead, skepticism and dismissiveness (the classic it’s-all-in-your-head response) is the norm, writes Ramey, and people, predominantly women, are staying sick.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our interview with Sarah Ramey.

Ramey’s angry about that, and she explains why with intelligence, humor and impressively thorough and far-ranging research into the various ailments that stem from trauma, exposure to harmful chemicals, consumption of unreal foods, overuse of antibiotics and more—diseases that defy easy diagnosis and a straightforward cure. They’re often invisible, too: WOMIs may look great even as they feel their worst, and that only increases the doubt among medical professionals, or even family or friends.

Ramey shares her own personal health journey, including conventional and alternative treatments; strategies she’s tried that have brought relief (or haven’t); and what she’s learned about the immune system and the gut. She also makes an impassioned case for profound change in our health care system, which, she argues, is out of balance because it lacks consideration and compassion: “We excel at acute (heroic, eliminate the bad guy) illness and can’t for the life of us solve chronic (heroinic, root system) illness.” She urges readers, especially those who are WOMIs, to be open to sharing their stories and asking for change, in an effort to bring about a cultural shift before it’s too late—since what we’re doing now clearly isn’t working for millions of people.

The Lady’s Handbook for Her Mysterious Illness is a stirring and inspiring rallying cry, an engaging and often harrowing personal story (or, as Ramey quips, “a kicky memoir about my gyno-rectal disease”) and an eminently worthwhile read.

In her new memoir, The Lady’s Handbook for Her Mysterious Illness, Sarah Ramey writes about the 2012 day her music video featuring her alter ego, Wolf Larsen, premiered on NPR. It starred a red-lipsticked, vibrant version of herself, and it went viral online while she…

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