Medicine
In The Beautiful Journey, Andrea takes you on an emotional rollercoaster as she chronicles her journey through cancer. You'll laugh (yes, laugh), cry, and cheer her on as she battles to become victorious over this disease. Andrea shares her raw, honest experiences as she is forced to make heavy, life-saving decisions.
However, The Beautiful Journey is more than a story about cancer. Andrea includes many valuable lessons she learns as a result of facing this adversity, including:
- How to overcome fear
- How blessings can be found in adversity
- The difference between living a successful life vs. one of significance
- The importance of living...on purpose
- Finding the beauty in all things
- The importance of listening to your body
As you follow Andrea's story of how she claims victory over cancer, you'll be able to go on your own "beautiful journey" of self-discovery and awareness.
A landmark literary anthology of poems, stories, and essays, Choice Words collects essential voices that renew our courage in the struggle to defend reproductive rights. Twenty years in the making, the book spans continents and centuries. This collection magnifies the voices of people reclaiming the sole authorship of their abortion experiences. These essays, poems, and prose are a testament to the profound political power of defying shame.
Contributors include Ai, Amy Tan, Anne Sexton, Audre Lorde, Bobbie Louise Hawkins. Camonghne Felix, Carol Muske-Dukes, Diane di Prima, Dorothy Parker, Gloria Naylor, Gloria Steinem, Gwendolyn Brooks, Jean Rhys, Joyce Carol Oates, Judith Arcana, Kathy Acker, Langston Hughes, Leslie Marmon Silko, Lindy West, Lucille Clifton, Mahogany L. Browne, Margaret Atwood, Molly Peacock, Ntozake Shange, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Sharon Doubiago, Sharon Olds, Shirley Geok-lin Lim, Sholeh Wolpe, Ursula Le Guin, and Vi Khi Nao.
For caregivers of deeply forgetful people: a book that combines new ethics guidelines with an innovative program on how to communicate and connect with people with Alzheimer's.
How do we approach a deeply forgetful loved one so as to notice and affirm their continuing self-identity? For three decades, Stephen G. Post has worked around the world encouraging caregivers to become more aware of--and find renewed hope in--surprising expressions of selfhood despite the challenges of cognitive decline.
In this book, Post offers new perspectives on the worth and dignity of people with Alzheimer's and related disorders despite the negative influence of hypercognitive values that place an ethically unacceptable emphasis on human dignity as based on linear rationality and strength of memory. This bias, Post argues, is responsible for the abusive exclusion of this population from our shared humanity. With vignettes and narratives, he argues for a deeper dignity grounded in consciousness, emotional presence, creativity, interdependence, music, and a self that is not gone but differently abled. Post covers key practical topics such as:
- understanding the experience of dementia
- noticing subtle expressions of continuing selfhood, including paradoxical lucidity
- perspectives on ethical quandaries from diagnosis to terminal care and everything in between, as gleaned from the voices of caregivers
- how to communicate optimally and use language effectively
- the value of art, poetry, symbols, personalized music, and nature in revealing self-identity
- the value of trained dementia companion dogs
At a time when medical advances to cure these conditions are still out of reach and the most recent drugs have shown limited effectiveness, Post argues that focusing discussion and resources on the relational dignity of these individuals and the respite needs of their caregivers is vital. Grounding ethics on the equal worth of all conscious human beings, he provides a cautionary perspective on preemptive assisted suicide based on cases that he has witnessed. He affirms vulnerability and interdependence as the core of the human condition and celebrates caregivers as advocates seeking social and economic justice in an American system where they and their loved ones receive only leftover scraps. Racially inclusive and grounded in diversity, Dignity for Deeply Forgetful People also includes a workshop appendix focused on communication and connection, A Caregiver Resilience Program, by Rev. Dr. Jade C. Angelica.
Enthralling. Harrowing. Heartbreaking. And utterly redemptive. Lindsey Fitzharris hit this one out of the park. --Erik Larson, author of The Splendid and the Vile
Lindsey Fitzharris, the award-winning author of The Butchering Art, presents the compelling, true story of a visionary surgeon who rebuilt the faces of the First World War's injured heroes, and in the process ushered in the modern era of plastic surgery.
Pre-Order Now! Release date: June 7, 2022
A Peculiar Book Club selection - July 28, 2022
From New York Times bestselling author Sam Kean comes the gripping, untold history of science's darkest secrets, "a fascinating book [that] deserves a wide audience" (Publishers Weekly, starred review)
Science is a force for good in the world--at least usually. But sometimes, when obsession gets the better of scientists, they twist a noble pursuit into something sinister. Under this spell, knowledge isn't everything, it's the only thing--no matter the cost. Bestselling author Sam Kean tells the true story of what happens when unfettered ambition pushes otherwise rational men and women to cross the line in the name of science, trampling ethical boundaries and often committing crimes in the process. The Icepick Surgeon masterfully guides the reader across two thousand years of history, beginning with Cleopatra's dark deeds in ancient Egypt. The book reveals the origins of much of modern science in the transatlantic slave trade of the 1700s, as well as Thomas Edison's mercenary support of the electric chair and the warped logic of the spies who infiltrated the Manhattan Project. But the sins of science aren't all safely buried in the past. Many of them, Kean reminds us, still affect us today. We can draw direct lines from the medical abuses of Tuskegee and Nazi Germany to current vaccine hesitancy, and connect icepick lobotomies from the 1950s to the contemporary failings of mental-health care. Kean even takes us into the future, when advanced computers and genetic engineering could unleash whole new ways to do one another wrong. Unflinching, and exhilarating to the last page, The Icepick Surgeon fuses the drama of scientific discovery with the illicit thrill of a true-crime tale. With his trademark wit and precision, Kean shows that, while science has done more good than harm in the world, rogue scientists do exist, and when we sacrifice morals for progress, we often end up with neither.