Book Review by Neil Vickers Iain Bamforth is a physician-writer who tries to understand his life in terms of philosophy, literature, history and art. He is stupendously well-read in English, German, French, Italian and Spanish sources, which he deploys to beguiling effect in this strange and magnificent book. In a ‘Preface’ to Scattered Limbs, Bamforth […]
Tag: book review
Fighting for a Hand to Hold: Confronting Medical Colonialism against Indigenous Children in Canada
Book Review by Philip B. Berger Shaheen-Hussain, Samir. Fighting for a Hand to Hold: Confronting Medical Colonialism against Indigenous Children in Canada. Foreword by Cindy Blackstock, afterword by Katsi’tsakwas Ellen Gabriel. McGill-Queen’s Indigenous and Northern Studies Series, 2020. Samir Shaheen-Hussain, a pediatric emergency physician, does not hold back in his historical scholarship detailing the pain […]
Grief Connects Us: A Neurosurgeon’s Lessons on Love, Loss, and Compassion
Book Review by Jeffrey M. Brown Stern, Joseph D. Grief Connects Us: A Neurosurgeon’s Lessons on Love, Loss, and Compassion. Central Recovery Press, 2021. Joseph Stern’s recent book, Grief Connects Us, opens with a study in contrasts. “My younger sister was an actress,” Stern writes. She was creative, trusting, warm, an engaged wife and […]
Movement of Knowledge: Medical Humanities Perspectives on Medicine, Science, and Experience
Book Review by Isobel Newby Hansson, Kristofer and Rachel Irwin, editors. Movement of Knowledge: Medical Humanities Perspectives on Medicine, Science, and Experience. Nordic Academic Press, 2020. Movement of Knowledge, edited by Kristofer Hansson and Rachel Irwin, is the result of a collaborative effort by the Cultural Studies Group of Neuroscience at Lund University. Indeed, multidisciplinary […]
How I Lost My Mother: A Story of Life, Care and Dying by Leslie Swartz
Book Review by Ken Junior Lipenga Leslie Swartz. How I Lost My Mother: A Story of Life, Care and Dying. Wits University Press, 2021. 222 pages. There are multiple angles from which one could approach Leslie Swartz’s latest life writing publication, How I Lost My Mother: A Story of Life, Care and Dying. The […]
The Body Politic: A Review of Cells at Work!, vols. 1-6
Book Review by A. David Lewis Shimizu, A. (2015). Cells at Work!, Volume 1. New York: Kodansha. 978-1-63236-356-5 Shimizu, A. (2016). Cells at Work!, Volume 2. New York: Kodansha. 978-1-63236-357-2 Shimizu, A. (2017). Cells at Work!, Volume 3. New York: Kodansha. 978-1-63236-390-9 Shimizu, A. (2017). Cells at Work!, Volume 4. New York: Kodansha. 978-1-63236-391-6 Shimizu, A. (2017). Cells at Work!, Volume 5. New York: Kodansha. […]
Unwell Women: A Journey Through Medicine and Myth in a Man-Made World
Book Review by Laura Grace Simpkins Elinor Cleghorn. Weidenfeld and Nicolson. 2021. ISBN 9781474616850 Anne Green joined a grand house in an Oxfordshire village as a scullery maid during the 1640s. She was raped by the owner’s nephew in 1650 and became pregnant. Four months later, Anne went into labour. Her son was stillborn and […]
Notes on Material Cultures of Psychiatry
Book Review by George Tudorie Material Cultures of Psychiatry, edited by Monika Ankele and Benoît Majerus, transcript, 2020, 416pp. Meditative excavations of lost worlds are not the exclusive territory of phantasy, of imagining in disguise one’s own world buried, waiting for a speaker for the dead. Sometimes the sediment one contemplates is real enough, and […]
Golem Girl: A Memoir by Riva Lehrer
Book Review by Dr Isabella Watts Published by One World and Virago This book is the beautiful memoir the artist Riva Lehrer, detailing her experiences of life, love, and her engagement with disability culture. Born in 1958 Lehrer is diagnosed with spina bifida- a condition of the spinal cord which many infants at that time […]
We’re Not Broken: Changing the Autism Conversation
Book Review by Isabella Watts Eric Garcia, We’re Not Broken: Changing the Autism Conversation. Mariner Books, 2021. 304 pages. The well-respected political journalist Eric Garcia has written for publications including The Washington Post, The Week, and The New Republic for many years. He is now the senior Washington Correspondent for The Independent. This is his […]