David Clark, Cicely Saunders: A Life and Legacy, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 335pp., £25.99 hardcover, ISBN: 9780190637934 Reviewed by Joe Wood, University of Glasgow This biography, almost 20 years in gestation, provides an encyclopaedic account of the life of Cicely Saunders, often described as the founder of the modern hospice movement. The book […]
Category: Book Reviews
Book Review: The Reading Cure
The Reading Cure: How Books Restored My Appetite by Laura Freeman, London: W&N, 2018. Reviewed by Sarah Ahmed, King’s College London Almost ten years after being diagnosed with anorexia, after a decade of eating because she had to, not because she wanted to, Freeman found herself reading Siegfried Sassoon’s Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man. His […]
Book Review: Phenomenology of Illness
Phenomenology of Illness by Havi Carel, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016 Reviewed by James Rakoczi Havi Carel’s Phenomenology of Illness is a rich and tightly-structured book with two principle aims. First, ‘to provide a comprehensive and coherent phenomenology of illness’ (38). Second, to travel in the ‘opposite direction’ and give an account of ‘what illness […]
In Shock
Rana Awdish, In Shock: My Journey from Death to Recovery and the Redemptive Power of Hope (2018), New York: Bantam Press, 272 pp, £14.99. Reviewed by Róisín King, Trinity College Dublin Aptly stated by Ed Pellegrino, ‘medicine is the most humane of the sciences, the most scientific of the humanities’. This implies an essential balance […]
Diary of a Bipolar Explorer
Lucy Newlyn, Diary of a Bipolar Explorer (2018), Oxford: Signal Books, 232pp, £9.99. Reviewed by Neil Vickers Lucy Newlyn was until recently Professor of English Language and Literature at Oxford. She is one of the world’s leading authorities on English Romantic poetry. She has published two collections of poetry: Ginnel (2005) and Earth’s Almanac (2015). […]
Book Review: Disability and the Welfare State in Britain
Jameel Hampton, Disability and the Welfare State in Britain: Changes in Perception and Policy, 1948-1979 (Bristol: Policy Press, 2016), 277 pp., $ 110.00 cloth, ISBN: 9781447316428. Reviewed by Sasha Mullally, University of New Brunswick From 1948 to 1979, British society might have been on a ‘collective train’ into an egalitarian social democratic future, but, as […]
Child Pain, Migraine, and Invisible Disability
Honeyman, Susan, E. (2017) Child Pain, Migraine, and Invisible Disability. Abingdon: Routledge. 208 pages, 15 B/W Illus, with appendix. GBP £110.00. Reviewed by Dr Kimm Curran, University of Glasgow Child Pain, Migraine, and Invisible Disability is a look into how invisible disability in children, especially related to chronic pain and migraine, has been treated in […]
The Visualised Foetus
The Visualised Foetus: A Cultural and Political Analysis of Ultrasound Imagery by Julie Roberts, London: Routledge, 2017, 176 pages, £110. Reviewed by Anna McFarlane Julie Roberts’ book delves into the muddy distinctions between the medical, the social, and the cultural, by using an emotive nexus point; the foetus, and its representation on screen. The monograph […]
Book Review: Subprime Health
Subprime Health: Debt and Race in U.S. Medicine, edited by Nadine Ehlers and Leslie R. Hinkson, University of Minnesota Press, 2017, 248 pages, £86 (£21.99). Reviewed by Jenny Tsai I’ve always found an appropriate similitude between the words “inequity” and “iniquity.” Subprime Health: Debt and Race in U.S. Medicine, edited by Nadine Ehlers and Leslie […]
Book Review: Black Man in a White Coat
Black Man in a White Coat: A Doctor’s Reflections on Race and Medicine by Damon Tweedy, New York: Picador, 2015, 304 pages, £12.20. Reviewed by John Carlo Pasco The White Coat Ceremony is a common rite of passage in American medical schools that is intended to welcome physicians-in-training into the institution of medicine. The white coat […]