No comments about The Red Cross And Jane Arminda Delano.

2 comments about Saving Faces: A Plastic Surgeon's Remarkable Story.

1. a self grandizing book about a self proclaimed wonder of plastic surgery....only in his own mind....leaving a long trail of abuse, hatred, greed and self adornment. A pitiful review by a pitiful old man desperate to gain acknowledgment by his peers...and the people who really know him only know better....



2. I am a 4th year med student. I used this book along with Cleft Craft and Principilization of Plastic Surgery for a presentation I gave concerning Dr. Millard's contribution to Plastic Surgery. It was a success and I recommend this book to those interested in learning more about Dr. Millard.

No comments about Habermas, Critical Theory and Health.

No comments about Fatal Extraction: The Story Behind the Florida Dentist Accused of Infecting His Patients With HIV And Poisoning Public Health.

1 comments about My Walk on the Parkinson's Path.

1. My Walk on the Parkinson's Path
   Excellent reading about a subject I knew little about.And how Parkinson's can effect a person and those around that person.(Read the Book) This is a must read My Walk on the Parkinson's Path.Thank you Kenneth Delabre for your story.

No comments about Lessons from the Bedside.

3 comments about Journey Toward Wholeness: A Spiritual Encounter With Prostate Cancer.

1. Stegall's book is honest, educational, painful and joyful. He gives a very personal portrayal of what it can be like for someone diagnosed with a potentially fatal disease. I recommend it highly.



2. After losing a close friend to prostate cancer and witnessing a cousin's battle with the disease, I tackled this book hoping that it would give me some notion of my odds of avoiding or at least surviving the disease. It did not disappoint.

   Stegall's book gives a clear picture of prostate cancer from a patient's point of view. Much to my surprise, I laughed out loud over the author's struggles with spells of diarrhea, incontinence, depression and impotence, and I empathized with his emotional and spiritual roller coaster rides. Once worried by my own temporary PSA result of 14, I found that the author's PSA had hit an astronomical 528 and he has survived.

   By literally baring his body and soul to the reader, Stegall provides a graphic, understandable guide to medical procedures that prostate cancer patients face. More importantly, by speaking candidly about his own dark night of the soul (and the parallel struggles of his wife and children), Stegall prepares the reader for war with a deadly, heartless, and frightening enemy and a world that seldom appreciates the depth of a patient's dilemma.

   After reading this book, I am much better prepared for what (my family history says) probably awaits me. With humor and verve, Stegall lifts the veil that has cloaked the disease. The book is chock full of helpful hints and references that any prostate disease patient would need. Some great advice for living comes as a bonus.

   Despite my fear of cancer, the book uplifted me. Perhaps that's because I share the author's interest in religion, music and education. More likely, it is because as a professional story teller, Stegall was well prepared to relate the tale of his battles.

   If you are a male, you should read this book. If you know a male, the same advice applies. I'm going to buy copies for my physicians's waiting room and for our church and public library. I'm sure that others will gain as much from the book as I did.

   - Gary Davis, Lincoln, Illinois




3. I have found Journey Toward Wholeness very rewarding. I am truly impressed with Dr. Stegall's candor about such an intimate event and processes--probably the clearest and most honest I have read about anything so personal as this. I cried at times and laughed a lot, plus finding myself both educated and empathizing. Also, he writes well along with his honesty. I can learn much from him.
   Bruce Evans

4 comments about American Is in the Heart, American Autobiography Ser..

1. Bulosan's "America is in My Heart" is an excellent book about filipino experience in the US during the 20's and the 30's. It describes in simple and touching prose the struggle against discrimination and the loneliness and ostracism that most immigrants feel in an unwelcoming land. It is critical of american bigotry and cruelty towards brown-skinned immigrants but it also explains the reason why these immigrants chose to be in America. Bulosan describes in detail the political and social circumstances that leads him to abandon his country. It is a hopeful and poetic book that sees the good and the bad of two converging cultures and I highly recommend it for readers who want to read a realistic account of the filipino immigrant experience in the US during the early to middle 20th century.



2. I bought the soft-cover version from Amazon a long time ago, and since then, I have read the book many times. All Filipino immigrants should get this. Bulosan's prose is brilliant. His plight as a newcomer in America would touch your heart. It is easy to take for granted now what we Filipino immigrants have in North America, but after reading this book,one would realize that what our ancestors went through was amazing- living in a time when "the lives of Filipinos were cheaper than those of dogs" (p.143, Chapter XIX).Buy it!!!



3. i too had the soft cover, given to me by sesshu foster, and the ghost of the landscape that Bulosan writes of is still here. this is prose/poetry beautifully describing the dance of young people back in the philippines, the hardship of ordinary people, and the ugly laughter the filipino rich at spilled rice...but Carlos is not bitter in this great book, his journey from the PI to the US and then across this spoiled soil is cromatically sharp and true in it's up-close first encounter fasination with brute honesty and fading hope. borrow it from a friend unless you got $89...this is a wonderful book and should be taught in our universities/high schools



4. AMERICA IS IN THE HEART is an autobiographical memoir that traces the life of Carlos Bulosan, from his childhood, in the Philippines during the 1920s, to his adulthood, as an immigrant in the United States during the Depression. The memoir chronicles both his colonized and immigrant experience(s) and illustrates what it meant to be a Filipino in the early 20th century. The story is told with simple and poetic clarity, suffused with a lyricism that is laced by Bulosan's fiercely hopeful naiveté and the brutal disappointment of his experience of social violence. Although this book was written nearly 70 years ago, it remains astonishingly modern. Bulosan's language is sharp and immediate. It draws the reader closely to his life, his sentiments, and his undying faith and love for that shared ideal we call 'America'.

   I first read this book when I was a teenager and have found myself returning to it again and again...and again. I agree with the other reviewer - I, too, wish this book was required reading for high schools/colleges. It is an important piece of work, not only because it is a beautifully-written memoir of a young man's struggle for self-hood and identity, but also because it documents an essential part of colonial history in the Philippines and immigrant labor in the United States. Bulosan's 'Heart' gives voice to a piece of history, at once personal and collective, that should never be lost.

2 comments about Gentle Vengeance.

1. Where they get 6000 of the hopeful vying for 150 places. Where none of the courses are taught by physicians. Where you are presumed to have mastered biochemistry, bacteriology, virology and genetics *before* you arrive. Oh, you'll be a great doctor, all right, but this is because you were *always* gonna be a great doctor. Harvard seems incidental. You might as well pick a more meat-and-potatoes kinda med school.

   Trouble is, if you go to Harvard you'll end up getting the pick of the residencies. But then, you were gonna be this great doctor anyway, so you'd get the pick of the residencies anyway.




2. After returning this book to the library, I headed straight to a bookstore to order my own copy, which 25 years later I still own.
   
   Author Charles LeBaron applied as a mature student to two med schools, one of which was Harvard. Acceptance from both presents him with an enviable dilemma, and everyone he asks advises him to choose Harvard.
   
   Well, nearly everyone; the sole dissenter is a Harvard alumnus. Harvard is mired in its own tautological mystique; Harvard educated doctors are considered the best for no other reason than because they ARE from Harvard. Consequently the institution is content to rest on its laurels, preserve the status quo and do a lot more to preserve this reputation than to deserve it.
   
   Unlike most of his classmates, LeBaron has not spent his entire life in a lab and so can afford a luxurious sense of wonder about the human body, evolution, bacteria, and the possibility of a Higher Power. He also very soon finds himself at odds with the very philosophy of this particular school; on the very first day he allies with a couple of classmates in circulating a petition to reschedule Saturday classes... little realizing just how cherished a tradition of Harvard this is.
   
   LeBaron has worked at the Lower Manhattan Rehab by day while cramming science courses by night as preparation for med school. His experiences in the trenches of the medical profession and as the child of terminally ill parents give him a rare perspective on the fallibility of doctors. Only too familiar with their callous and distant side, he is determined not to allow the system to warp him. A man of rare compassion, he draws inspiration from several former clients, and these flashbacks provide some of the most moving material in the book.
   
   And yet for all this insight, the author occasionally displays a stunning naivete. Feeling overwhelmed at one point, he asks his instructor where he would be better off concentrating his dwindling study time, and is told that only muscles and nerves will be on the final, none of the bones or blood vessels. (Hook, line and sinker!)
   
   Somehow the author makes time to record his impressions of the first year of Harvard Medical School, and like all such memoirs, it includes often hilarious glimpses of student life: pressure cooker weeks relieved by drunken costume parties... the giddy, chaotic faculty-student Christmas party... in the middle of the night as everybody is cramming for finals, a power failure suddenly hits. His instructors and fellow students are so deftly drawn with such well-chosen and amusing details, you're left wondering if you could have met them in some of your own classes.
   
   The book is occasionally relieved, or interrupted, depending on your point of view, by philosophical short essays. The subject matter can range from the evolution of life on earth to an outraged private rant at God for allowing horrible diseases to afflict people who couldn't possibly deserve such agony. One can easily skip over these parts without losing any of the story, but this supplementary material is well worth reading at some point.
   
   Thought-provoking, funny, moving, and inspiring... in no particular order.

No comments about Genesis, A Portrait of a Spinal Cord Injury.