About Book Marks
Recent Reviews
Thomas Fuller
Positive Booklist Thoroughly reported ... Fuller tucks in many fascinating tidbits about deafness and community past and present, he offers cautious optimism about the future.
Sarah Mandel
Rave Booklist Couples dealing with cancer, or any other major setback, will find comfort in Mandel’s beautifully written, moving memoir.
Jonathan Rosen
Positive Booklist Tragic ... Well-written, affecting.
Anthony Chin-Quee
Positive Booklist Frank ... Demanding ... His story will resonate, particularly with readers who feel as though they don’t quite fit in and those dealing with a family history of mental illness.
Leah Hazard
Positive Booklist In this homage to the womb, Hazard engagingly and unabashedly shares the fascinating, sometimes gory details of periods, conception, labor, menopause, and hysterectomies ... In all, Hazard presents a thought-provoking, information-packed celebration of the uterus.
Jasmine Brown
Rave Booklist ... well-researched reclamation of neglected yet invaluable history ... Brown, as remarkable as the pioneers she profiles, ends on a high note, vowing to become a \'changemaker.\'
F Perry Wilson
Positive Booklist Wilson comes across as a compassionate, empathetic physician who wants people to be able to trust medicine, which is both an \'imperfect science and the single greatest force for good in the world today.\'
Helen Rappaport
Positive Booklist A fascinating reclamation of the story of a remarkable woman.
Heather Radke
Positive Booklist Unique, thoroughly researched ... Radke presents a fascinating look at a sexualized yet underappreciated body part.
Rebecca Woolf
Positive Booklist Woolf skillfully and honestly foreshadows what’s to come when she confesses that she is \'not the first and certainly not the last wife to bury a husband she didn’t want to be married to anymore\' ... Readers grappling with feelings of both grief and liberation may find it comforting to hear Woolf talk so candidly about feeling \'relieved to be alone.\' Moms who believe in being open with their kids will find a kindred spirit, too.
Lynne Tillman
Positive Booklist Unvarnished, bracing, at times funny ... She deftly and candidly weaves together the facts about how too much fluid on her brain let to her mom’s memory loss with the conflicting emotions she feels about her.
Melissa Bond
Positive Booklist Bond’s story, with lines like \'the blood orange night turns red and screams through my eyes,\' is an eloquent cautionary tale.
Jazmina Barrera, trans. by Christina MacSweeney
Positive Booklist ... a refreshingly different take on traditional what-to-expect titles for mothers-to-be ... Barrera shares wise, often witty, insights into what it feels like to be going through the \'fruit bowl\' that is pregnancy as apps tell women the fetus resembles a blueberry one week and a lemon another ... Prepare to feel in awe of the female body and of Barrera’s way with words.
Chloe Caldwell
Positive Booklist Along with comic, sometimes infuriating interludes (Caldwell gets her period on her wedding day and then on their delayed honeymoon), Caldwell delves deeply into medical and social aspects of menstruation as well as complex aspects of women’s health, identity, marriage, and family, resulting in a fresh, intimate, and engaging chronicle.
Florence Williams
Positive Booklist Williams, a skillful writer, weaves together scientific findings with personal tales.
Koven Suzanne
Positive Booklist In this collection of funny, touching, and self-deprecating essays, physician Koven covers extensive ground: being a doctor’s daughter, becoming a doctor and a mom, dealing with family health issues, experiencing sexism in her profession, and coping with the impostor syndrome. It’s easy to root for likable, modest Koven, who, despite all her accomplishments—majoring in English literature at Yale, going to medical school at Johns Hopkins, joining the faculty at Harvard Medical School—worries about things like her weight and her natural chattiness ... a thought-provoking and inspiring memoir, which began as a series of letters to a friend.
Katie Engelhart
Positive Booklist ... haunting stories ... It can be disturbing, learning about the many ways people take their own lives ... Through exhaustive reporting, Engelhart unflinchingly captures unsettling exit scenes that force readers to think about whether people must fulfill a \'duty to live\' or whether they should be able to choose what they consider to be \'dignity in dying.\'
Lisa Feldman Barrett
Positive Booklist Barrett uses many helpful metaphors ... Barrett has crafted a well-written tribute to this wow-inducing organ.
Timothy Snyder
Positive Booklist Critics may take issue with whether a historian without a medical background is best qualified to argue for a single-payer healthcare policy, but he makes a compelling case for fixing a system that is so expensive that nearly half of Americans avoid medical treatment because they cannot afford it.
Vicki Laveau-Harvie
Positive Booklist Despite growing up with a narcissistic mother who seems like every child’s worst nightmare (and ends up institutionalized), Laveau-Harvie herself seems self-centered. She lets her younger sister take on the responsibility of cleaning out their parents’ house, holding an estate sale, and then for caring for her father. This well-written saga should inspire reflections on the mysteries and traumas of family dynamics.
Caitlin Myer
Positive Booklist ... disturbing ... [Myer] writes beautifully and with a sense of humor, even about traumatizing events. This candid chronicle can be exhausting, and it is haunting. Some of the content is graphic, including her account of a sex party involving masks and whips in a Victorian mansion in San Francisco ... Be prepared to reflect on feminism, family, fertility, solitude, and mental health with this record of one woman’s dramatic life.
James Hamblin
Positive Booklist When it comes to skin care, less—much, much less—is more ... Hamblin...convincingly makes the case for relying on just plain soap and water.
Wendy Moore
Positive Booklist This well-researched, well-written story makes a strong case for how British suffering during the Great War would have been even worse if not for the heroic female physicians who previously were allowed to operate only on women and children ... Moore provides fresh insights by viewing WWI via hospitals, not battlefields, and by focusing on female physicians, not male soldiers.
Susan J. Douglas
Positive Booklist Motivated and empowered by her own life, too, Douglas, a master at powerfully marshalling anecdotes, statistics, and words, asks women to push back and support each other.
Chavi Eve Karkowsky
Positive Booklist As Karkowsky notes, rather than providing an exhaustive guide, she is sharing a collection of stories (with details changed to protect confidentiality) that are loosely organized to follow the chronology of a pregnancy. Just the same, she provides a great deal of helpful information, carefully explaining an alphabet soup of acronyms, such as VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean) and TOLAC (trial of labor after cesarean). And in nonmedical terms, she spells out why some pre-existing conditions in pregnant moms can lead to problems ... It’s reassuring to know that maternal deaths are rare and that doctors try so hard to help at-risk moms and their babies beat the odds.
Susannah Cahalan
Positive Booklist Cahalan’s compelling and provocative investigation raises many questions about our attitudes toward mental illness and psychiatry.
Tom Mueller
Positive Booklist In this hefty account, Mueller at times overdoes the descriptive details, but overall this is a fascinating history of the self-deputized referees who blow the whistle on illicit activities that put Americans’ freedom, money, health, and lives at risk.
Marty Makary
Rave Booklist ... thoroughly reported ... Makary authoritatively and conversationally explains the money games of medicine ... Makary uses anecdotes liberally and effectively ... Consider this book a powerful call to action for more information about health costs and for restoring the \'noble mission\' of treating everyone with fairness and dignity.
Candace Bushnell
Positive Booklist Candace keeps her wits and her wit about her ... Bushnell is still plenty edgy, funny, and entertaining.
Bassey Ikpi
Rave Booklist ...gripping tales ... heartbreaking ... this collection is raw, courageous, and unsettling. People struggling with mental-health issues will appreciate Ikpi as a talented kindred spirit as she raises such universal questions as: What does it mean to be crazy anyway? Haunting and affirming.
Mike Magee
Positive Booklist Hospitals use \'code blue\' for medical emergencies; longtime physician Magee argues convincingly that the U.S. itself is in one ... What’s the solution? Among other things, Magee recommends suspending FDA-approved direct-to-consumer advertising and giving basic universal coverage to everyone. Will his seemingly wise wishes ever come true? Stay tuned.
Sunita Puri
Positive Booklist This thoughtful treatise on life, death, and medicine should make readers feel more grateful for every day they have because, as Puri and her colleagues come to realize, no one knows what’s coming, or when, to their loved ones or themselves.
Judith Grisel
Positive Booklist Many scientists write about addiction, but how many are former addicts? Psychology professor Grisel mixes coverage of brain research with the warts-and-all story of her addictions, beginning with alcohol in seventh grade and progressing to marijuana, LSD, cocaine, and IV drug use ... Powerful stuff.
Jordan Shapiro
Positive Booklist Skeptics may be less than bullish about his rosy view of the \'New Childhood.\' Still, they will find much food for thought about how video games may unite people even if they live largely in the equivalent of a digital gated community.
Chris McGreal
Rave Booklist \"McGreal goes on to successfully address the question of how the greatest drug epidemic in history grew largely unchecked for nearly two decades, becoming the leading killer of Americans under age 50 ... McGreal paints an unflattering picture of the billionaire Sacklers, the family behind Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin. Their heavily marketed prescription drug so severely hooked users, many continued to feed their habits with illicit drugs, including heroin. What can be done to reverse this? McGreal’s powerfully stated indictment is a start.\
Linda D. Dahl
Positive Booklist Online \"Dahl makes funny observations about the macho ringside crowd ... Dahl reveals that she worked her last match a decade ago, that she runs her own practice, that she rearranged the chronology of some fights, changed many names, and omitted her daughter from the story. Still, though it lacks a knockout punch, this is one fascinating tale.\
Amanda Stern
Positive Booklist Don’t expect a traditional happily-ever-after ending; but don’t expect a gloomy one, either. Stern’s story is a good reminder that all people, including those who \'learn differently,\' need empathy and human connection.
Maya Dusenbery
Positive Booklist In this medical manifesto, Dusenbery, editorial director of Feministing.com, empowers women, telling them to trust their instincts, get second opinions, and refuse to settle for one-size-fits-all health care ... Good advice that may be easier said than done.
Abby Norman
Positive Booklist She has a dark sense of humor ... A book lover, she starts each chapter with quotes, including this from Susan Sontag ... In the end, the young science writer advocates for patients to trust their instincts and for doctors to practice the art, not just the science, of medicine.
Elisabeth Rosenthal
Rave Booklist In this in-depth analysis of a malfunctioning system, Rosenthal makes a compelling case against the hospital and pharmaceutical executives behind the 'money chase,' and it’s hard to imagine a more educated, credible guide ... After laying out the problem, Rosenthal presents solutions both personal and societal in this commanding and necessary call to arms.