Summary:

Manlius is a 5th C Roman patrician living in Provence who has studied with the wise, reclusive Sophia. He writes his understanding of her teaching in his essay, 'Dream of Scipio,' which trades on an essay by the great Roman orator, Cicero. Sensing that the Empire is gravely threatened, he makes a pact with barbarians, sells out his neighbors, slays his adopted son, and becomes a bishop of the Christian religion, which he has long despised. Late in this ruthless and doomed attempt to salvage what he values most in his world, Sophia makes it clear that he has misunderstood her teaching.

Olivier is an astonishingly gifted 14th century Provencal poet whose intolerant father tries to stifle his love of letters, among which is Manlius's 'Dream'; his father destroys the manuscript, but Olivier recopies it from memory. As plague advances on their region, Olivier finds a mentor in the high churchman, Ceccani, who is bent on keeping the papacy in Avignon. He plans to destroy Jews as symbolic expiation for plague, widely construed to be a form of divine punishment. Olivier befriends a Jewish scholar and falls in love with his beautiful heretic servant.

The 'Dream' and the imprisonment of his friends lead Olivier to question and then betray his mentor. Either because of his efforts to save them, or for his role in a murder, he is mutilated--his tongue and hands cut off to rob him of speech and writing. The brutal mutilation appears early in the book--it is not fully explained until the end.

Julien is a French historian who has studied the poet, Olivier, and the rendition of Manlius' manuscript. He finds solace in his erudition as his county falls to the Nazi occupation. An old school friend who is a collaborator, gives him work as a censor and tolerates Julien's Jewish lover, the artist Julia. In the end, Julien is forced to choose between saving either another school friend in the Resistance or Julia. He chooses Julia, looses her anyway, and commits suicide in a vain attempt to warn his friend.

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This story of one exceptionally accomplished family's discovery of their past and future relationships with Huntington's Disease (HD) is also the story of how the Wexler family changed the cultural narrative of HD for other families at risk for this genetically-transmitted and currently incurable disease. The HD diagnosis of Leonore Wexler (the author's mother) inspires Milton Wexler, a psychologist, to create a major foundation for HD research, which develops critical mass and influence as Leonore Wexler's condition deteriorates, and after her death. The book interweaves the story of the Wexlers' emotional and other negotiations with HD and the story of their efforts to create an HD community comprised of those with active symptoms of HD, family members, advocates, and researchers.

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A child dies in the hospital shortly after the infectious disease consultant, Dr. Michael Grant, evaluates her. The 35-year-old physician has cause to be troubled by the patient's death. He failed to perform a careful examination, did not check the results of her most recent lab tests, and held off on ordering antibiotics. Although an autopsy was not performed, it is believed she died of sepsis.

Divorced and recently relocated to North Carolina, Dr. Grant is already depressed. Now he must worry about the possibility of a malpractice lawsuit. Jonas Williams, the father of the dead child, is also ill. He complains of fatigue, visual disturbances, confusion, night sweats, and fever. Jonas has developed unusual lesions in his throat and retina--white threads in a serpentine pattern. A biopsy of his oral lesion demonstrates the presence of osteoblasts and new bone formation. Dr. Grant becomes convinced he has stumbled onto a completely new infectious illness even though he cannot identify the causative organism.

Jonas experiences gastrointestinal bleeding as a result of a low platelet count. He dies in a trailer that has caught on fire. Dr. Grant soon develops the same symptoms as his patient. He remembers coming into contact with some of Jonas's blood. He is admitted to the hospital with massive gastrointestinal bleeding. His physician attributes the bleeding to ulcers, gastritis, and thrombocytopenia. Dr. Grant, however, believes the bleeding is due to the same mysterious disease that Jonas had.

The body of Jonas's daughter is exhumed, and there is anatomic evidence of the same bizarre changes that occurred in her father. Dr. Grant visits a cabin in the woods where Jonas had lived. He is looking for clues to the puzzling new illness. What he finds, however, is not an answer. Instead, it is a renewed appreciation for his life as well as the world around him.

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Dr. Dymov is an earnest and rather boring young physician, who is preoccupied with his patients and his research. Olga, his wife, craves the excitement and gaiety of the artistic life. She discovers a new lease on romance with Ryabovsky, a colorful landscape artist, who takes her on a cruise on the Volga River. As they spoon under the stars, Olga and her lover make light of her bumptious stay-at-home husband.

After she returns from the cruise, Dymov forgives her infidelity, but in Olga's mind, his forgiveness proves to be another strike against the poor slob, since she just can't stand his complaisant devotion. She runs back to Ryabovsky for a while, until he makes it clear that he is bored with her.

Then one day Dymov develops diphtheria, evidently contracted by "sucking up the mucus through a pipette from a boy with diphtheria. And what for? It was stupid . . . just from folly." Dymov soon becomes delirious, and then dies. Suddenly, Olga is overcome with guilt and grief. Too late, Olga realizes that her husband was a hero.

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This is a selection of very early Chekhov tales, dating from his years in medical school (1879-1884). These nine examples of the work Chekhov churned out during those years to support himself and his family have never previously been published in English. They are all quite short. Of most interest are "How I Came to Be Lawfully Wed," "A Hypnotic Seance," "Intrigues," "In Autumn," and "At the Pharmacy."

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This is the story of Siddalee Walker's desperate search to understand the life of her outrageous, melodramatic, beautiful, alcoholic mother, Vivi. Now a 40-year-old successful director, Sidda is estranged from Vivi because of a too-frank newspaper interview that characterized Vivi as a loving, outrageously creative, abusive mother. Putting her engagement on hold, Sidda hides away in a cabin in the northwest with the only thing her mother concedes in Sidda's efforts to make up: a scrapbook that chronicles Vivi's life with three other spirited Southern belle renegades, the Ya-Yas.

Thus, the story unfolds with scrapbook versions of Vivi's rigid Catholic upbringing and the beginnings of the Ya-Ya sisterhood, through their adolescence and bayou debutante years, through their marriages and mothering the Petites Ya-Yas. Living her mother's life through the scrapbook and with a little help from the now 60-something Ya-Yas, Sidda comes to understand her mother's character with all its lavish, passionate, sorrowful, and always humorous dimensions.

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The new interns, Roy Basch (Tim Matheson), Chuck (Howard Rollins, Jr.) and Wayne Potts (Michael Sacks), begin their year of internal medicine training in a busy city hospital under construction. After initial introductions led by the vague staff man and vapid chief resident, they become the specific charges of the cynical resident doctor "Fats" (Charles Haid). Fats teaches them attitude and language: how to "buff" (improve) and "turf" (transfer) "gomers" (Get Out of My Emergency Room)--the words used to describe management of incurable, hateful patients who "never die," regardless of the abuse the clumsy housestaff might inflict. But Fats has heart.

Soon, they fall under the command of the militaristic and lonely woman resident, Jo Miller (Lisa Pelikan), who cannot bring herself to withhold treatment, even at a patient's request. She blames underlings for the failings of medicine and nature, as well as herself.

Wayne throws himself from the hospital roof because of a misplaced sense of guilt over a patient's demise. Roy falls in love with the nurse, Molly (Kathryn Dowling), but nearly loses her as he begins to emulate Jo's cold, calculating style. He is "rescued" in the nick of time by his friends, Fats, and the death of a physician patient (Ossie Davis) whom he admires. With recovered equanimity and renewed anger over the suicide of his fellow intern, Roy refuses to go on with his residency.

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This book, a sequel to It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life, chronicles five-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong's personal and professional triumphs and agonies from late 1999 (after he won his first Tour and after the birth of his son Luke) to mid-2003, the 100th anniversary of the Tour. Armstrong defines himself by his cancer experience and survival; he devotes himself to both one-on-one connections with fellow cancer patients as well as his public persona to raise awareness and funds for cancer programs and survivors' needs.

There are many medically related themes in the book. Descriptions of cycling sports injuries and illnesses include a severe concussion, a broken cervical vertebra, dehydration, road rash, tendonitis and exhaustion. Armstrong experiences the loss of friends and acquaintances to cancer and trauma. He is the subject of an intense investigation into the possible use of recombinant erythropoietin and finally cleared of suspicion after nearly two years. As a world class athlete, he is subject to frequent, random drug testing.

His wife experiences a failed in vitro fertilization cycle, though a subsequent successful treatment leads to the birth of healthy twin girls. The Red Cross invites Armstrong to visit NYC firefighters soon after the devastation of September 11, 2001 in a successful effort to boost morale. Armstrong, though, describes encounters with some cancer patients in which he felt he did not succeed in providing the desired inspiration.

Despite reaching his five-year cancer-free milestone, Armstrong, like many other cancer survivors, wonders if the cancer will return. He is hyper-vigilant of his body not only because of his elite athlete status, but also because of his cancer history. Nonetheless, he is reckless and jumps from a steep cliff to sense the rush of fear and freedom.

Armstrong trusts and believes in modern medicine and technology, as well as the physicians, nurses and other health care practitioners dedicated to cancer treatments and health care. He also lauds complementary practices, particularly the team chiropractor who uses a variety of techniques to support the riders during the grueling Tour.

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This is a new collection of poetry and short prose by nurses, edited by Cortney Davis and Judy Schaefer, whose remarkable first anthology, Between the Heartbeats: Poetry and Prose by Nurses [see annotation in this database], may be the founding document of "nurse writing" as a recognizable genre. In the Foreword, Cortney Davis comments on the process of selection and sketches the similarities and differences between this and the previous volume.

One of the interesting similarities is that nurses write more often about birth than death; one of the differences is the wider range of topics, including nurses who reveal their own experiences as patients (see Amy Haddad, "Conversations with Wendy," pp. 100-102) and others whose fatigue and frustration cause them to step away from nursing (see Pamela Mitchell, "A Nurse's Farewell," pp., 149-151)

As in Between the Heartbeats, the authors of Intensive Care appear in alphabetical order, which favors variety and surprise over categorization. In "Medical Ward," the first poem (pp. 1-2), Krys Ahlman captures many of the themes of the anthology. "I was wearing a thousand tiny failures," Ahlman writes, and concludes: "I held out my hand, I said / I am not afraid to cry."

Intensive Care is full of delights. As advertised, there is much about bringing children into the world and caring for them; for example, Lynn Bernardini's reminiscence, "Does This Day Mean Anything to You?" about having given up her own baby for adoption (pp. 11-16); Celia Brown's poem "Forget-Me-Nots" (pp. 35-36); and the powerful but ambiguous hope of "Neonatal ICU" (Leigh Wilkerson, p.247). There are the painful memories of dying children and adolescents, especially Jeanne Bryner's amazing, "Breathless" (p. 42) and "Car Spotting, " (pp. 173-184), a story by Christine Rahn about a terminally ill adolescent. In "Car Spotting" the head nurse criticizes the young narrator because, "You become too personally involved with the patients . . . Nurses must make decisions based on objective data. Becoming too attached can cloud professional judgment." (p. 175) I found this an interesting statement coming from a nursing instructor--it could well have been made by a professor of medicine to a third year medical student.

Other major themes include the humor of nursing (see "RX for Nurses: Brag!" by Kathleen Walsh Spencer, p. 203; and "What Nurses Do on Their Day Off," Judy Schaefer, p. 188); women's health (see "Every Day, the Pregnant Teenagers," Cortney Davis, p 69; and "Redemption at the Women's Center," Jeanne Lavasseur, pp. 132-133); nursing the elderly (see "Home Visits," Paula Sergi, pp. 195-196); and the wonderful narratives of patient care (see "Sarah's Pumpkin Bread," Terry Evans, pp. 87-90; "Edna's Star," Chris Grant," pp. 95-99; and "That Mystique," Madeline Mysko, pp. 158-167). Finally, Intensive Care looks back thoughtfully in a number of pieces to nursing in military settings.

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Physician, poet, artist, parent, astute observer of his environment, Dr. Schneiderman gives us a wide vision of the things that inform his personal world. This collection of poems and pen and ink sketches spans almost four decades of its creator's life and life experiences. The author has collated his work around nine key foci, roughly but not totally, temporal in sequence. Through his eyes we meet his history related to New York City, his profound love for and attachment to his beloved wife and son, his humbleness before the labors of his chosen profession and the persons he meets in this context, and, finally, his tributes to the bravery of the men and women who responded to the horrendous assault of 9/11/01 upon his birthplace, the Great City.

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