Book Excerpt from Ike Anya’s Small by Small Small by Small, Ike Anya’s newly published memoir, charts his journey to become a doctor in Nigeria. A medical memoir unlike any from the West, it is filled with the colour and vibrancy of tempestuous 1990s Nigeria, where political unrest, social change and a worsening economy make […]
Tag: book review
The Paramedic at Work: A Sociology of a New Profession
McCann, L. (2022). The Paramedic at Work: A Sociology of a New Profession. Oxford University Press. Book Review by Robin Burrow Many healthcare systems across the world are in crisis. For most, this is not a new state of affairs, though it has undoubtedly been exasperated by the devastation of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the […]
Understanding the Complexities of Dementia: A Personal and Scientific Journey
Book Review by Agustin Ibanez Cindy Weinstein, Bruce L. Miller. Finding the Right Words: A Story of Literature, Grief, and the Brain. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2021. 216 pp. ISBN 978-1421441269. In the summer of 2010, I moved to a beautiful apartment in the affluent Palermo neighborhood of Buenos Aires, Argentina. I was hoping […]
An Ancient Malady
Book Review by Samuel Freeman Carl Erik Fisher, The Urge: Our History of Addiction (New York: Penguin Press, 2022). ISBN 978-0525561446. Carl Erik Fisher’s use of alcohol and drugs nearly ended his burgeoning career when he was a psychiatrist in training. In The Urge: Our History of Addiction, Fisher, a psychiatrist, bioethicist, and addiction specialist […]
Sedated: How Modern Capitalism Created Our Mental Health Crisis
Book Review by Laura Grace Simpkins James Davies. Atlantic Books, 2021. 9781786499875. More than 20 per cent of adults take a psychiatric drug each year in Britain alone–over a 500 per cent increase since 1980. Despite this ‘prescription epidemic’, the prevalence of mental illnesses, from the least to most severe, has simultaneously risen. Many of […]
A New Take on the Canonic Book The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
Book Review by Luxin Yin More than two decades after its publication in 1997, Anne Fadiman’s The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down is frequently required reading in medical schools and used to train future practitioners on the importance of cross-cultural communication. The book concerns the difficulties faced by a young Hmong epileptic, Lia […]
Dissecting the Past
Book Review by Samuel Freeman Sabine Hildebrandt. The Anatomy of Murder: Ethical Transgressions and Anatomical Science during the Third Reich. Berghahn Books, 2016. In the summer of 1996 I turned thirteen and my family moved from Canada to Berlin. Because of my Jewish upbringing, I had a developed awareness of the history of World War […]
Music and Healing
Book Review by Professor Robert Abrams, Weill-Cornell Medicine, New York The Sound of Being Human by Jude Rogers, published by White Rabbit, London, UK, 2022 In recent years a fascinating neurobiological literature has emerged, describing the connections between music and one’s earliest memories and emotions.[1] Clinical applications have also been developed: Patients with advanced dementia […]
Empire of Pain: How One Family’s Addiction to Profit Contributed to the Opioid Epidemic
Book Review by Isabella Watts Patrick Radden Keefe. Empire of Pain: How One Family’s Addiction to Profit Contributed to the Opioid Epidemic. Picador 2021. ISBN-13: 978-1984899019, 640 pages. They say that life can be stranger than fiction, and this is truly how readers will feel after finishing each chapter of Patrick Radden Keefe’s well-researched history […]
Building Compassionate Communities
Book review by Professor Robert Abrams, Weill Cornell Medicine, New York. Walk with the Weary: Lessons in Humanity in Health Care, Dr M.R. Rajagopal, Notion Press, Chennai, India, 2022. Walk with the Weary by Dr M.R. Rajagopal is an account of how one physician moved from a career in anesthesiology to a lifetime mission […]