5 comments about Tiny Dancer: The Incredible True Story of a Young Burn Victim's Journey from Afghanistan.

1. When I started to read TINY DANCER, I was expecting to read about the miraculous transformation of a horribly scarred burn victim to healthy girl. That story is told, of course, but it serves as a backdrop for the real story. The true miracle is the network of the American military, U.S. State Department, Non-Government Organizations and stateside citizens who all do what they can to help a stranger in need, despite all the "perfectly good reasons" not to get involved.
   
   What makes this book a remarkable read, however, is the author's seeming ability to get inside Zubaida's head and tell the story from her perspective. Mr. Flacco writes with compassion and empathy in a style that grabs the reader's attention from the first page.



2. From Zubaida's catastrophic accident until her return to Afghanistan, TINY DANCER is a remarkable series of miraculous events that is a pageant of human compassion. TINY DANCER is both a marvel and an ordeal to read. Through Anthony Flacco's erudite and eminently readable narration, I suffered the child's torture that would have made me mad before it murdered me. Set against the tumultuous background of 9/11 and the American invasion of Afghanistan, the beginning of the book belongs to Zubaida's devoted father who, in defiance of all that he knew and in exhaustion of all that he had for the sole purpose of saving his little girl, almost eclipses the story of the child who held fast to life with her bare hands. TINY DANCER revealed a kindness in the American Armed Forces that I never would have dreamed existed as the process unfolded that brought the child to the United States and her salvation at great risk to her benefactors. Flacco's revelation of the "domino" effect that supported Zubaida as she was rebuilt and reinvented in our country was compelling with a flow that kept me reading and missing it when I couldn't. TINY DANCER is graceful and powerful and at times, even funny. It's a glorious story with a large human heart and lean muscles. Anthony Flacco is showing great promise as a writer of creative non-fiction. I anticipate his next effort eagerly. To read TINY DANCER is to renew one's faith and to warm one's heart. She's a 21st Century Anne Frank who reveals that in spite of everything, there's good in all of us.
   
   Bill Jackson



3. From the moment nine and a half year old Zubaida Hasan accidentally fell into a kerosene fire while heating water for her bath,I could not put down TINY DANCER. Yes, this is a story filled with Zubaida's physical and mental pain, but this is also a marvelous, true story of hope and human caring ... from the American Green Beret soldier who by chance saw Zubaida and her father on a street in Afghanistan to Dr. Peter and his wife, Rebecca, Grossman in Los Angeles, CA. This is a story of hope, and the very best of human nature in difficult times. Zubaida's transformation back to normalcy thanks to Dr. Grossman's skill and the many individuals willing to become involved despite the possible repercussions to their own careers reinforced my belief in the inherent goodness of people. Bravo!



4. I was first introduced to Zubaida and Dr. Peter Grossman in a Discovery Health Channel program, and after reading this book, have seen other angles to this story, the most telling being the love shown by her father, who might have abandoned her to die but didn't.
   
   This is a young woman whose spirit could not be extinguished no matter what happened to her, and let's hope she stays this way. Great things await her, no matter where she ends up in this world.



5. This is a very incredible and inspiring story of human generosity and perseverance that transcends cultures - and you have already read about the subject matter in the other reviews so I am not going to repeat that. What I did not like was the fictionalized style of prose. The author seems to go inside the heads of the main characters and describe exactly their feelings, thoughts, perceptions etc. and this gives the prose a fictionalized, exaggerated, and subjective feel which applied to a true story, did not somehow feel right. I would have preferred it if the people in this story could have been interviewed to find out exactly how they felt rather than the getting the author's imaginary versions of their reactions. Even though most readers here seem to like it, I feel that this fictionalized style wasn't the right choice for this true story.

3 comments about Rising to the Light: A Portrait of Bruno Bettelheim.

1. As a former student of the O.S., I feel entitled to interrupt Raines' eulogizing about Bettelheim with a few questions:
   1) Why is it so easy for this Raines guy to downplay, whitewash, sugarcoat etc., the repeated beating of emotionally disturbed children and teens? I mean if he was being beaten by Bettelheim in the name of a very distorted theory (namely that beating and shaming children will help them overcome their fear of inner aggression), would he so easily rationalize that abuse was good for him?
   
   2) Why is this guy so impressed by how beautiful the Orthogenic School looks? Why does this prove that Bettelheim has the best interests of children at heart? I sure didn't care about fine china or pretty tiles while someone was repeatedly pounding on my body to get me to eat...and by the way depriving me of seeing anyone privately in sessions for the first 4 years of my stay there.
   
   I think Theron Raines needs a course in how to relate compassionately to children.
   
   Also, I want to offer an alternative explanation for why Bettelheim created the Orthogenic School. Raines includes Bettelheim's explanation at face value. First a look at Bettelheim's explanation. Bettelheim says he based his idea for the O.S. on his stay in a Nazi concentration camp. When Bettelheim saw how this sadistic milieu so completely destroyed personalities of sane people, he realized that he could rebuild destroyed personalities by creating a nurturing, understanding milieu. Well, this explanation sounds so nice at face value. However my sense of the underlying truth is that Bettelheim hid his deeper motives possibly from himself and certainly from others. He actually created an environment with certain rather horrific similarities to the concentration camps. Of course, not nearly as horrific. But, remember, the population that came to the O.S. already had weakened or damaged or destroyed personalities, plus they were children...so the Orthogenic School's cruel, sadistic side didn't have to be so blatant to wreak havoc on these emotionally fragile people. I think Bettelheim was enraged when he saw weakness or vulnerability in children. In fact, I think he was drawn to autistic children because he admired how disconnected they were from their feelings. But, for those children who actually still showed some vulnerability, well they got the smacks and the whacks and the beltings and the nasty cracks. I think Bettleheim created the O.S. as an outlet for his own rage at being made to feel powerless and abused at the camps. He used his brilliance to hide his true intentions. And I guess for many reasons, no one ever said boo to him about his thirty years of abusing children. Maybe some staff just assumed he must be right because the University of Chicago supported his work. Maybe some staff were too intimidated by him to question what he said or to report his terrible abuse of children. Maybe some staff got off on being cruel to children themselves. Maybe some staff were dumb.
   
   Now, Raines tries to prop up his idealized picture of Bettelheim with reports of children with "Good Leavings". And he focuses on one "success story" in particular. But, from reading this "success story's" own version of events (in a book entitled The Thing I Was), it appears that one of the MOST successful graduates was practically overcome with ambivalence about what Bettelheim did to him. Even this person describes Bettelheim as capable of terrible physical cruelty and shaming. And even this person clarifies that the main reason he was able to feel better about himself was because of a compassionate counselor who did her best to protect him from Bettelheim.
   
   But, somehow, in Theron Raines' heart of hearts, the abuse seems to mean nothing to him. He doesn't seem to care about all the children who suffered terribly during Bettelheim's reign. So, please read this book with a grain of salt.



2. After all the angry attacks that followed Bettelheim's death and after the unmerited smearing of his reputation as a thinker, it is a relief to read his balanced biography. Raines wrote book worthy of its subject, a book that does justice to Bettelheim as an educator and therapist. The book does not delve into many details of Bettelheim's private life and because of that is very cogent. On the other hand, none of the important events are omitted, none of the difficulties and contradictions glossed over. The portrait that emerges is of a man who, like Maria Montessori and Janusz Korczak, transformed his own personal tragedy into a life-restituting effort for those who are most vulnerable: children. A most helpful book to read for anyone who would like to understand Bettelheim's attitude to children is "A Good Enough Parent."



3. That Theron Raines was Bettelheim's friend and literary agent makes one understand that this will not be a critical biography. And Raines is an elderly man who cannot be expected to overturn his longheld beliefs. But I was still deeply shocked and offended that Raines scarcely addressed the major issue of Bettelheim's life.
   
   Bettelheim's entire career was based on his "expertise" in autism. But in fact, Bettelheim lied all the way through his career about his experience and his results. His "success" with autistic children blew away like dust the second anyone from the outside world took a good hard look at it. His Refrigerator Mother theory of autism has harmed and is still harming countless families around the globe-- because even though scientifically discredited, Bettelheim's writings were so widely promoted that they are still in print around the world. Mothers in France are still being told today, in 2007! that they caused their child's autism-- why? because the brilliant Dr. Bettelheim said so. But Raines never mentions the harm Bettelheim did and is still doing. It looks like deliberate blindness.
   
   Raines mentions autism only a few times in the book and obviously knows nothing whatever about it; he even calls people with autism "autists"-- that says it all. His feeble attempt at defending Bettelheim's lack of happy results at the Orthogenic School amounts to quoting Karen Zelan, a psychoanalyst who worked with Bettelheim there and who still believes mothers cause autism, as saying that providing any kind of follow-up results would go against Bettelheim's therapy for the children. (How convenient.) But then Freudian thinking cannot be disproven, as it is faith-based.
   
   For a true look at Bettelheim, read Richard Pollak's thoroughly well-researched book instead.

No comments about The Friendship of Florence Nightingale and Mary Clare Moore (Studies in Health, Illness, and Caregiving).

No comments about Doctors' Work: The Legacy of Sir William Osler.

No comments about The Psychology of B F Skinner.

5 comments about The Village Horse Doctor.

1. GREEN HAS A BIG COW COUNTRY FOLLOWING. IN OTHER BOOKS HE TELLS OF VIRTUOSO PERFORMANCES IN AUCTION HOUSES, BRUSHY PASTURES, AND SMALL TOWNS WITH FIRST MONDAY HORSE SALES. NOW WE FIND GREEN ALL GROWN UP AND WORKING IN WEST TEXAS AS A VET. WITH LABORATORY EQUIPMENT AVAILABLE DURING WORLD WAR II, HE ANALYSES NOXIOUS WEEDS, FINDS SPECIFICALLY TOXIC SUBSTANCES, AND COMPOUNDS CURES RIGHT THERE. THIS IS PROBABLY NOT POSSIBLE WITH TODAY'S RESOURCES, SO THE ACCOUNTS IN THIS BOOK DO NOT RING TRUE TO ME. I'VE WORKED CATTLE IN A BRUSHY COUNTRY AND I'VE DONE SOME ORGANIC CHEMISTRY AND THE MORE I READ OF GREEN'S DOINGS, THE MORE SKEPTICAL I BECOME. I THINK GREEN MAY HAVE WORKED US TEXAS BOYS THE WAY CARLOS CASTENADA WORKED HIPPIES.



2. I like the Ben K Green from Wild Cow Tales and 1000 Miles of Mustangin' (one of my favorite books) - funny, low key, and highly descriptive of people and experiences. This book just follows him from call to call, solving mysteries and lacking (for the most part) the sense of humor evidenced in his other books. The Village Horse Doctor reads like Ben is Quincy M.E. without the "charm."



3. Interesting and often funny, sometimes a little far fetched. Not as good reading as Wild Cow Tales or Hoss Trading.



4. I have read The Village Horse Doctor a couple of times since the early 1970's. It is among my favorite books. I've lent the book to old timers who grew up in OK and Texas during the depression have told me that The Village Horse Doctor is one of the best books about the west they've ever read. I lent the book to the veterinarians I worked for, they loved it. (No James Harriett in Fort Stockton!)
   
   I do not have the book handy to skim it to refresh my memory and evaluate how much Dr. Green may be pulling our leg. After reading the book the first time, it made perfect sense to me why Mr. Green would retire all the way across Texas after publishing The Village Horse Doctor.
   
   Perhaps some of the stories are exagerated. But, the point of the loco weed story is NOT what he detected in the lab. It's his observations in the field. As far as the loco weed goes, the lab and the pills were a deception so that he'd recover for his time spent on the field work.
   Like O Henry, the sense of humor often involves a bit of chicanery.
   (For example, O. Henry's The Gentle Grafter).
   
   I would rate this book higher than Wild Horse Tails although it is also a fine book.



5. Ben Green's veterinary tales from the war years of the 1940's are an entertaining and at the same time realistic glimpse into ranch life on the drought stricken Texas range.
   
   Humorous, straightforward and most of all full of common sense approaches to doctoring and playing detective in solving the many medical dilemmas to the thousands and thousands of horses, cattle and sheep in this region.
   
   The man was totally committed and worked tirelessly in his profession, a trait which is somewhat wanting nowadays in all walks of life.

No comments about ER Vet : Diary of an Animal Doctor.

1 comments about Facing Cancer With God's Help: A Personal Journey.

1. This was a great book - small and easy to read! Jeanne Martin shares the fears, anxiety, anger, and emotions she and her family face while she is battling cancer - and she wraps it all in a spiritual package. She truly 'speaks' to cancer warriors, as well as those battling other serious illnesses. You really feel you know the author intimately and marvel at her humor, her ability to trust in God, and to experience peace while going through various treatments. Reading this book is an uplifting experience - everyone who suffers from cancer or has a family member with cancer should read this book. It is a great spiritual resource to keep in a briefcase or purse.

1 comments about Charcot: Constructing Neurology (Contemporary Neurology).

1. The more research one does into the history of psychotherapy, neurology, psychoanalysis, hypnotism, and conversion disorders (a.k.a. hysteria) the more one bumps up against the enigmatic and larger than life Charcot. This is certainly the best english language biography of his career, providing a thorough accounting of his various professional accomplishments, and his significance within the contemporary 19th Century French medical establishment.
   
   Don't look to this book for any overwhelming insight into the "epistemes" powering Charcot's work, for that you will need to look to the more critical appraisals of Charcot's work (Jan Goldstein, Elain Showalter, Henri Ellenberger, etc.) but as far as getting a thorough telling of some of the fascinating features of this man's career, this book has no substitute. It also closes with a fantastic literature review of the current status of Charcot studies to send one off to learn more about any particular details that fascinate them.
   
   I highly recommend this book for anyone trying to fill in some crucial historical gaps in their understanding in modern medicine of the mind.

No comments about Stealing Second Base: A Breast Cancer Survivor's Experience and Breast Cancer Expert's Story.