Tired all the time? Anna Katharina Schaffner, Exhaustion: A History (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016) Reviewed by Steffan Blayney In 2015 in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, a new specialist NHS clinic was launched to deal with what seems to be an increasingly common British malady.[1] Among the most frequent presentations in GP’s surgeries, the health […]
Category: Book Reviews
Book Review: Keywords for Disability Studies
Keywords for Disability Studies. Edited by Rachel Adams, Benjamin Reiss and David Serlin. New York University Press, 2015. Reviewed by Kathryn Lafferty, PhD student in Comparative Humanities, University of Louisville Disability studies as a field has extended into many areas of scholarship, from literature to sociology, gaining much attention as it grew out […]
Book Review: Thinks Itself a Hawk
Review: Thinks Itself A Hawk, Wendy French, The Hippocrates Press, 2016. by Rebecca Goss On June 30th this year, I headed to University College London Hospital (UCLH) Macmillan Cancer Centre to listen to Wendy French read from her new poetry collection Thinks Itself A Hawk. As I approached the revolving doors in the middle of the […]
Book Review: The Heart
Maylis de Kerangal, The Heart. Translated by Sam Taylor. Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, US. In the UK it is titled Mend the Living, translated by Jessica French, and published by MacLehose Press. Reviewed by Elizabeth Glass, PhD student in Comparative Humanities, University of Louisville. The Heart by Maylis de Kerangal tells the story of […]
Book Review: Hysteria Today
Hysteria Today, edited by Anouchka Grose. Karnac Books, 2016. Reviewed by Kathryn Lafferty, PhD student in Comparative Humanities, University of Louisville. In the first edition of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-I) published in 1952, the American Psychiatric Association removed the term “hysteria,” implying that the term was no longer relevant to […]
Book Review: Brett Kahr’s ‘Tea with Winnicott’
Tea with Winnicott by Brett Kahr with illustrations by Alison Bechdel. Published by Karnac, 2016. Reviewed by Dr Neil Vickers. Brett Kahr’s Tea with Winnicott is the first volume to appear in Karnac’s new ‘Interviews With Icons’ series, in which contemporary psychoanalysts conduct imaginary interviews with major figures from the psychoanalytic pantheon. […]
Book Review: The Way We Die Now
Seamus O’Mahony, The Way We Die Now. Head of Zeus, 2016. Reviewed by Richard Smith Perhaps the first and most important thing to say about this book is that it’s a joy to read. I started it on a flight from Dhaka to Mexico City when I was exhausted, but quickly […]
Wellcome Book Prize Winner 2016 – ‘It’s All In Your Head’ reviewed
Suzanne O’Sullivan, It’s All In Your Head: True Stories of Imaginary Illness. London: Vintage, 2016; first publ in hardback 2015 by Chatto & Windus Reviewed by Professor Edward Shorter The very subtitle of the book makes one nervous: “stories of imaginary illness.” If there is one phrase that psychosomatic patients – who have symptoms […]
Book review: Social Class in the 21st Century
Mike Savage, Social Class in the 21st Century, Pelican, 2015 Reviewed by Jacob King, Medical Student. You may have heard about the Great British Class Survey, you may have even completed the Great British Class survey (GBCS) or tried their online Class Calculator. In 2015 Mike Savage and colleagues summarised the findings of […]
The Reading Room: The Violet Hour – Great Writers at the End
Katie Roiphe. The Violet Hour: Great Writers at the End. Virago, 2016 Reviewed by Professor Robert C Abrams, Professor of Psychiatry, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York A central premise of Katie Roiphe’s The Violet Hour is that the awareness of approaching death is a milestone we all will face at some time […]