Elevate Difference

Reviews tagged medicine

Are You My Guru? How Medicine, Meditation, and Madonna Saved my Life

Are You My Guru: How Medicine, Meditation, and Madonna Saved My Life is Wendy Shanker’s follow-up to The Fat Girl’s Guide to Life. It is a hilarious and inspiring account of Shanker’s battle with Wegener’s disease, a rare autoimmune disease that results in inflammation of blood vessels in various organs.

Black Dogs and Blue Words: Depression and Gender in the Age of Self-Care

Jerry Seinfeld jokes that pharmaceutical companies could save time by naming all of their antidepressants “Cramitol” (“Cram it all”). Kimberly Emmons would likely agree. Her eye-opening Black Dogs and Blue Words opens up an original, potentially life-changing perspective on antidepressants and the companies who market them.

Jungle Laboratories: Mexican Peasants, National Projects, and the Making of the Pill

Professor Gabriela Soto Laveaga’s newest monograph, Jungle Laboratories, is a telling history that unravels the transnational political economy of barbasco yam production in Mexico from its discovery to its use in the early medicalization of synthetic hormonal steroids that created the birth control pill.

Dr. Mary Walker: An American Radical, 1832-1919

Dr. Mary Walker: An American Radical, 1832-1919 is a plethora of facts, evidence, and tightly woven themes that are well-researched by Harris, yet the book isn’t boring or dry. I found it inspirational and enraging at the same time. Women of the past made it easier for women today by tirelessly battling for women’s rights (and for men who were not white property owners). Walker was a dutiful and energetic soldier.

Fit to Be Tied: Sterilization and Reproductive Rights in America, 1950 – 1980

In 2004, at the age of twenty-three, I entered my gynecologist's office to request permanent sterilization. My doctor repeatedly refused my request, and would not honor my alternate request for an IUD. I tried changing doctors, but still encountered severe resistance to my wish to be permanently sterilized.

Doctor Olaf Van Schuler’s Brain

A thriller that spans five centuries, Doctor Olaf Van Schuler’s Brain is entertaining and thought provoking. Thirteen generations of eccentric New York City doctors navigate genius, madness and morality. This book is eerie, smart, unique, and very delicately crafted, telling many stories in every layer of time. The Van Schulers and Steenwycks are a family of eccentric, genius, medical people, mostly doctors, some more on the fringe than others, some mad.

Patient Listening: A Doctor’s Guide

We talked for 45 minutes. It didn’t take much. You’re not asking them to be a guru, a Tibetan monk, a psychologist, or practice in a different field. Just ask one more question, two more questions. Somehow everything comes into place much quicker. This patient’s story captures the meaning of this collection of prose by twenty-four writers who have extensive experiences as patients.
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