Best Man by Owen Lewis. Dos Madres press, 2015 Reviewed by Wendy French. Best Man has just been awarded first prize in the Jean Pedrick Chapbook prize from the New England Poetry Club. When you read the poems you can certainly understand why Lewis’s work has received this recognition. Edward Hirsch’s epigraph features at the […]
Category: Book Reviews
Science Fiction Book Review: Spaceship Medic
The theme for the next issue of Medical Humanities is Science Fiction. There are many online articles already available on the theme (see Related Reading below). A Spaceship in Trouble: Reflections on Harry Harrison’s Spaceship Medic. Puffin books, 1976 Kindle version currently available Reviewed by Matthew Castleden Lieutenant Donald Chase, a […]
Book review: Is Literature Healthy?
Is Literature Healthy? by Josie Billington. Published by Oxford University Press, 2016. Reviewed by Dr Neil Vickers Many years ago, I blagged a ticket to an invitation-only symposium on the subject of medicine and narrative, held under the auspices of what was then the Arts and Humanities Research Board. The premise […]
Book Review: A Body, Undone: Living On After Great Pain
Christina Crosby, A Body, Undone: Living On After Great Pain. NYU Press, 2016. Reviewed by Ayesha Ahmad There is a paradox in Professor Christina Crosby’s biography A Body, Undone: Living On After Great Pain–the paralysis that constrained her body so suddenly seems to have freed the language that we all possess and contain but which is generally […]
Book Review: Multiple Autisms
Multiple Autisms: Spectrums of Advocacy and Genomic Science, by Jennifer S. Singh. University of Minnesota Press, 2016. Reviewed by Patrick Danner Ph.D. Student, University of Louisville, Rhetoric and Composition Jennifer S. Singh’s Multiple Autisms: Spectrums of Advocacy and Genomic Science weaves together several moving pieces surrounding autism research over the past 40+ […]
Book Review: This Mortal Coil
Fay Bound Alberti, This Mortal Coil: the human body in history and culture, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016) Reviewed by Hazel Croft We all have stories to tell about our bodies. They are, as Fay Bound Alberti writes, ‘the inescapable material reality we live with and in.’ In today’s scientific and medical […]
Book Review: Aliceheimer’s
Aliceheimer’s. Alzheimer’s Through the Looking Glass By Dana Walrath. Published by The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2016. Reviewed by Dr Martina Zimmermann. Dana Walrath’s Aliceheimer’s. Alzheimer’s Through the Looking Glass is the second graphic memoir by an adult child about her mother’s Alzheimer’s disease, after Sarah Leavitt’s Tangle. A Story About Alzheimer’s, […]
Book Review: The Slumbering Masses
Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer, The Slumbering Masses: Sleep, Medicine, and Modern American Life (Minneapolis & London: University of Minnesota Press, 2012) Reviewed by Steffan Blayney Need a quick recharge? Power up with a power nap. Geniuses like Dali and Einstein loved sneaking in some extra ZZZs. Opening up my Mozilla Firefox web browser, a […]
Book Review: Dad’s Not All There Anymore
This is the first of a series of comic book reviews on the theme of Dementia. Reviews of Sarah Leavitt’s Tangles and Dana Walrath’s Aliceheimer’s to follow. Dad’s Not All There Anymore by Alex Demetris Reviewed by Harriet Earle As an academic, I have a love-hate relationship with Wikipedia. I […]
Reclaiming Reflection: Creative Writing and the Medical Humanities (3)
Reminiscence Bumps: self-mythology and the landscapes of the mind by Eleanor Holmes When I think about the landscapes of the mind, I recall the undulations of the brain’s surface. The ridges and valleys of cortex, the gyri and sulci I had learnt about in my neuroanatomy classes aged nineteen. Those white plastic […]