1 comments about An Angel at My Side: Surviving Leukemia Through Love.

1. An Angel At My Side: Surviving Leukemia through Love is the powerful, life-affirming testimony of author Frances Schindler, who had been twice diagnosed with leukemia and confronted her tremendous personal battle for recovery with courage, honesty, and humor. Schindler attributes her victory over cancer to faith, an upbeat, optimistic attitude, and the kindness of an angel of her own. This gentle, positive, candid, and highly recommended memoir concludes with a short list of support group resources and alternative therapies in addition to aggressive medical treatment, and is enhanced with a handful of black-and-white photographs.

5 comments about Contact Wounds: A War Surgeon's Education.

1. This is the story of an education that few would choose. Dr. Kaplan tells the story of a life spent as a real life MASH surgeon. Not even though in as good a set of conditions as on the film/TV show.
   
   He began his life in South Africa at the time the black Africans were beginning to demand rights from the white Government. From there it seems that he went from one hot spot to another. Israel at fourteen, just after the Six-Day War. He says he became a doctor because it took a long time in school and he enjhoyed school. It was after that that his real education began. Instead of allowing himself to be drafted into the apartheid army he began a self-exile from his home country. Since then he has been in one war after another.
   
   Surprisingly there are few moments of philosophy or anger at a system that has given him plenty of places to practice his specialty of war sugery. So many that the Royal College of Surgeons in London has set up a course to prepare surgeons for future conflict. This is not a good sign for mankind.
   
   As a book, it has its funny moments, it is excellently written. It is only in the overall image that the consumate tragedy comes through. The last sentence in the book: 'But every day I read the war news like job-vacancy ads, looking for peace.'



2. Jonathan Kaplan has written a book that imerses the reader in a world that could be straight out of a Hollywood script, and should be a Hollywood script. I couldn't put it down. Nobody could ever call this man's life mundane. Growing up in a Country struggling to find itself, then travelling to some of the worlds worst places, all the while helping others in desperate need, and sometimes getting himself into hot water. A "naughty" guy who has a zest for life and adventure. I loved it, a great read.



3. Kaplan has written a marvellous prequel to his "Dressing Station" - from his childhood to the present day. The book is compelling, and I guzzled it down in a single sitting. It is authentic, humorous, poignant, intelligent, and uncompromising. He manages to flip into history and politics and back again, without losing the thread of his story. As the book progresses, the relevance of everything to everything else becomes evident. A far better book than his aclaimed first book, in my view.



4. Jonathan Kaplan is a soldier in his own private war. Expatriate by choice from his home in South Africa, he wanders the world looking for other people's wounds to stitch. He has spent time in the battlefields of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, Angola and Iraq being primary among them.
   
   What does a war surgeon on temporary assignment do? "Acute war surgery is crude but straightforward: stop the bleeding, cut away the lacerated tissue." Seems simple enough, and Kaplan continually stresses that he is no genius, a man who became a doctor, he claims, because med school was a long course and he figured he'd enjoy college life. Much of what has happened in his thrown together life has been the result, to hear him tell it, of serendipity or mischance. But his modesty is an obvious cover-up. The man is brilliant, dedicated and brave. His excellent writing style is icing on the cake.
   
   The book takes us through Kaplan's journey as a teenager to an Israel wracked by recent war, his first experience of trying to live sane in a landscape of chaos. Exploring the underground bunkers in the kibbutz below the Golan Heights, the young Kaplan saw medical supplies laid out and understood "the truth at the heart of the practice of medicine: that there was no mystery, that learning and skill turned these ordered bits of equipment into the means of stopping bleeding and bringing together shattered tissue to make a greater order, to save a life."
   
   Kaplan got his medical education in South Africa during the apartheid years when dedicated whites practiced their craft in deprived and dreary township clinics under haphazard conditions. His residencies included an aborted stay in the Seychelles, where a casual affair with a girl linked to the dictatorial president "Jimmy" Mancham sent him to ground. Returning to Cape Town he barely squeaked through his finals. Feeling less than confident in his ability to actually practice medicine, he was advised by a friend to "listen a lot, look sympathetic, and nod slowly."
   
   From Kaplan's adventures, you get the impression that medical temping may be a final frontier for people who need to live on the edge. Everywhere he goes he finds broken bodies and heart-rending human wreckage. He deals with each case as it comes before him and leaves with some regret to move on to the next crisis. The MASH-side humor glues the tragedies together: the dog that ate the condom, the incident of the piece of finger among the shrimp. Somewhere along the way, without drawing much attention to it, Kaplan became an expert consultant as well as a surgeon. "I worked on an investigative documentary in Japan about the hunting of dolphins on an industrial scale for their meat...then as a doctor in an embattled Burma's Shan State." He spent a relaxing and generally exhilarating time as medical adviser to an English doctor series on the telly. "Doubts that stalked my career progression were forgotten."
   
   One of the sadder portions of the memoir concerns Kaplan's companion Andrew, who went on a mission that he himself had deferred, ending with the discovery of his friend's corpse in the jungles of Madagascar. Though Kaplan could easily overcome fear, queasiness, and the big questions as he skimmed from war zone to war zone, he had lingering sorrow and guilt concerning Andrew's loss that continued to haunt him.
   
   This is a book for realists, graveyard comedians and armchair saw-bones. Maybe it will inspire someone to get out of their chair and follow in Kaplan's intrepid and erratic footsteps. But one suspects that when they made Kaplan, they broke the mold.
   
   --- Reviewed by Barbara Bamberger Scott. BBS write a monthly book review column, "Carolina Connections," for the Greensboro, NC, News and Record.



5. While Kaplan isn't self-aggrandizing in any way, I couldn't help but admire him after I finished this utterly absorbing memoir. It has the same kind of appeal as the movie The Year of Living Dangerously-- only, he's a doctor, not a journalist, and the experiences he has are real. From growing up Jewish in South Africa during apartheid, to living on a militant kibbutz in Israel to being a war surgeon in shockingly primitive conditions in an Angolan field hospital, the stories he tells are gripping. I really couldn't put this one down.

No comments about Ruth Jackson, MD: A Life on the Leading Edge.

5 comments about Imagining Robert: My Brother, Madness and Survival : A Memoir.

1. I learned alot about the life of someone with a non-trivial emothional problem(s) and how society (and families) treats them. I also experienced an absorbing personal story that made it hard for me to put the book down. Well written, highly absorbing, educational, and highly recommeneded.



2. I absolutely loved this book. Reviewers here have complained that it's not just about Robert, but about the author and his life. I loved that fact. I too have a brother w/ a mental illness, and I too am a teacher and I like to write. I found all of these stories -- the story of Robert, Jay's connection to him, Jay's struggle to tell Robert's story, and Jay's life as a father -- all equally compelling. I finished the book in 2 days and sent an effusive email to the author, who sent me a kind email back that very same day. This book moved me deeply, made me think and want to write.



3. This book was terrible, it was an expolitation of his brother, and a shameless way to promote his other books. No matter the situation, the author found a way to make a reference to another book he had wrote. It was poorly written, and jumps around quite a bit. Don't waste your time or money on this book, or any book of this author's.



4. As someone who has made a career of helping the mentally ill, This book broke my heart. Yet I believed the problems existed as stated.

   As the parent of a child who, as a teen, developed the need for the safety of psychiatric hospitals, I cried for Jay and his family.

   As someone who became clinically depressed after my child's serious suicide attempt, I easily understood the need for what sometimes seemed like unrealistic optimism.

   This book offers something for anyone involved with people who are mentally ill. Read it. Keep it. Learn from it.




5. First, the good things: it must have taken courage to write the book, because of the possibility of betraying the privacy of the family. At the same time, the writing process must have been immensely satisfying. I imagine Jay finishing it, sitting back, smiling, and saying "If God takes me tomorrow, that's ok; the story has been told." In fact, Jay came to visit my college English class, and he told us that's exactly what he was thinking. I know how difficult it is to tell a true story about oneself in such remarkable detail, which is why the book earns three stars. But based on its execution, I'd rather only give it two. Here's why...

   Is this book really about Robert? How many times does Jay congratulate himself on rising above a background that was out to get him? He went to Columbia, you know. And did he mention he's a writer? He throws that in so many times, you just KNOW he views being a writer as the noblest and most enviable profession in the world. The phrase "my accomplishments" crops up an awful lot, especially in a book supposedly dedicated to a mentally ill brother. Also, did Jay mention he's a writer?

   And yes, the sentence structure was maddening (pun intended). A sentence can go on for an entire page, sometimes to such ridiculous lengths that I'd walk down the hall and read it aloud to my friends, just to show them with what I was dealing. I understand this problem a bit, though. I imagine Jay sitting at his desk with so much to say, afraid that if he doesn't put as much down as possible, as soon as it comes into his head, he'll lose it. So he erects a quick parenthetical fence and sends it down.

   Basically, when I'd finished reading the book for my English class, I wished that Robert could come to visit instead of Jay. Much as Jay tries to overshadow him, Robert is the star of this book and a truly fascinating character. I realize that I only know about Robert through Jay's writing, so I respect Jay for that. But the book irritated me to no end. I guess I'm just not sensitive enough.

2 comments about Letting Go: A Memoir.

1. This book creates a journey in your own heart and mind as you travel with Dr. Gruber through his. This book touched my heart in ways I didn't expect. It is a tale worth telling and a book worth giving. If you cried when you read Tuesdays with Morrie, you will cry when you read this book.



2. I am actually directly related to Mark Smetko--he is my uncle. This was a pretty good book. Knowing how our family actually lived through it, I think it was a little romanticized but for the most part quite realistic. The medical terms at the beginning added understanding and interest, and helped build up to the devastating shock when Dr. Gruber developed Hepatitis C and had to quit his job as a surgeon.

   This story might have a couple of editing things that need to be revised a little bit. Otherwise, it is a pretty touching story and it was very sad for those of us actually living it. My uncle Mark was a very interesting person and it is good to read about the lives of these three people--Dr. Gruber, Mark, and Mark's mother Zita, my grandmother.

5 comments about At Face Value: My Triumph Over a Disfiguring Cancer.

1. This book is a great read for anyone who wants to know just how indomitable the human spirit can be. Terry's story is written in a refreshingly candid style, giving us access to places that many authors seemingly avoid. By showing us his deepest fears and greatest challenges, he ultimately takes us on a journey of touching triumph.
   
   While there are several amazing aspects to this book, I found the most moving and enlightening area to be his description of re-inventing himself "from the inside out." Virtually all of us have made up stories about ourselves that keep us separate from others. Terry 's illumination of this process can help each and every one of us to dispel those myths and ultimately enjoy much closer relationships - both with others and ourselves.



2. "At Face Value" details author Terry Healey's brush with death and his conversion from a focus on the externals of life to the fabric that makes up the human spirit. Healey, diagnosed with a fibrosarcoma while a college student, is a cancer survivor today. In "At Face Value," Healey chronicles his years-long journey from the initial, agonizing diagnosis through more than thirty surgical procedures and radiation treatments he endured.
   
   Healey was not sure if he would survive the cancer, as it reoccurred. Once survival was a real possibility, he had to deal with having to never look "normal" as the fibrosarcoma radically disfigured his appearance, particularly his face. Thoughts of death and stares by friends and strangers were constant companions.
   
   The author says "the book is not about cancer disfigurement but a much broader issue, society's quick judgment of people based on the superficial" and "our need to look beyond appearances." We need to look deeper, and focus on the internal fabric that makes up the human spirit.
   
   The book explores the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual challenges faced by those forced on people faced with a serious life-threatening and disfiguring illness (or accident). These challenges are not unique to Healey. For example, a spiritual challenge most of us can identify with is our daily relationship with God. "I felt guilty about wanting to ask God for good health and favorable pathology results...why I only paid special visits to church when I needed help. Why couldn't I stop by church to say a few thanks now and then?...We all get caught up in our lives and tend to pray only when we're facing a major obstacle or illness ...eventhough (sic) I knew prayer always helps."
   
   Today, Healey is a board member of the Wellness Community - helping others facing a life threatening illness - and is a highly sought after motivational speaker.



3. As a fellow sarcoma survivor, my journey with a different type of sarcoma, in a different location, was similar. Terry's recounting of his journey was helpful for me. It reinforced that the numerous emotions that one goes through both during and after the battles, however different are part of the process of healing. Like Terry, part of me is disfigured, but I have accepted the scars as battle wounds, as a reminder that I have won and life goes on. Terry put into words the very emotions that I encountered these past few years. Unless one goes down this dark path firsthand, it is very difficult to understand what living with cancer is like. I highly recommend this book for everyone, not just therapists, patients and caregivers. Terry wrote the book like he is telling his tale to his friends. His message is a great wake-up call to all, to not pre-judge others on appearances. There is a story behind every scar. Read the book, then pass it on to a friend. Thank you, Terry, for writing your story.



4. Inspiring. If I ever feel sorry for myself I will just pick up this book. Quite a story. Quite a personality. (I felt I got to know Terry personally.) And, I was thoroughly entertained with the story he was telling. Most of all....his book will help me face life with a better attitude.
   
   JIM RICE



5. This book is excellent; an outstanding inspiration! I found myself laughing and crying in the span of 15 seconds and applauding his bravery with each turn of the page. Terry is a wonderful example of how positive thinking, coupled with a strong faith, are instrumental in the healing process. But we also see his many other raw emotions, and how they're hard to fight in the thick of battle. Terry, thank you for being extra transparent, allowing us to identify with your story (even if we don't have cancer) and apply it to our own challenges.

5 comments about My American Life: From Rage to Entitlement.

1. A single correction in response to the representation of the book on this site: the excerpt from page 56 alludes to the absence of German and Italian internment camps during WW II. This is the enduring public impression, but not actual fact. People of European origin were interned. See, for example the historic record of Crystal City, Texas for a better understanding of that time period.
   
   Note: my response is to the excerpt, and not to the rest of the book, which I have not read, thus the above 1 star rating is posted only so I can gain release from this Review section...



2. For those of us who know and are friends/colleagues of Price Cobbs, and speaking for myself as a writer, being objective will not be easy...like Mom saying how terrific her son is. But I'll try objectivity.
   
   This book really ought to be entitled, "READ THIS BOOK !!" - bold, underscored and 2 exclamation points. As a long-time friend of Price and his family, there were no differences - well, perhaps a few, but to the point that differences are and should be treasured. So here I am in 2006 discovering a whole other Price Cobbs I thought I knew. And for the reader who has no personal knowledge of the author, it will be an adventure, an eye opener. In a word - riveting. His writing has evolved from the "Black Rage" days - it's crystal clear, concise and slam dunk. He writes eloquently yet simply and straight forward. His life is our lives if you think about it.
   
   So. READ THIS BOOK. Whether you are a young white liberal or old white ultra-conservative, an upwardly mobile black, Hispanic, Asian or whomever, or a stay-at-home parent - you will relate - and most likely be deeply touched by passages that ring true, that perhaps are on a par with your own experiences in this life.
   There is, or should be, great kinship in the human experience, and if more of us would adopt that mantra, the world as it is today would turn into a more peaceful place.
   
   Once, back in the 1960s when I headed public relations and media for Esalen Institute, Price asked me how I had managed to be this open, tolerant, understanding and relatively non-prejudiced person. I answered, "well, number one, I've always admired and been fascinated by other cultures since at least first grade; but number two, I do have prejudices. I hate cauliflower and bigots."
   
   But even coming out of the civil rights years, the Esalen racial confrontation experiences, this new book brings a whole new perspective about others'(and Price's in particular) pain and rage in dealing with the hurtful actions of others toward their fellow man. Like many readers, I would think, I get tired of all the "me me me" books out there today - growth, get rich, and other do-it books, and so I tend to read less and less. However, "My American Life" was one I could not put down. It has all the makings of a literary prize winner, and many of my friends and I feel strongly that it has the makings of a darned good feature length movie.
   So, strongly recommended; great reading.



3. Did Cobbs forget Freud's Admonition about the value of self-Analysis?
   
   While it is true that Mr. Cobbs is the same guy full of rage in the 60s, who helped change the way America looked at racism, it is also true from these pages, that all along we had misunderstood the true nature of Mr.Cobbs' rage, and of his real life quest. Apparently, it was not the same cause as that of most oppressed people. A careful review of this book will reveal that Mr. Cobbs' goal all along was the same as that of the racist whites who had been oppressing him and us: the goal of entitlement.
   
   Most of us never saw, nor have we been pursuing, entitlement as the ultimate object of our freedom and independence - and even if we had been, few of us would have been so brazen to openly admit it. For no matter how artfully it is re-defined, entitlement has been, and remains the primary tool of those who continue to oppress the weak, the disenfranchised, the marginal, and those who have no one to speak for them -- in our increasingly mean-spirited and mismanaged "democratic society."
   
   Undoubtedly, Mr. Cobbs would call that wallowing in one's own victimhood, and in some, but not all cases, he would be correct. However, he seems to have erred on the wrong side of this debate and thereby missed an important fact: there is more than one way to graduate from victimhood.
   
   One way to throw off the yolk of victimhood is that which he has chosen, and which is the object of this book. It is about how some blacks, who have always felt they had a right to the same bankrupt values and entitlements and way of life that racists whites claim exclusively for themselves, have freely chosen "the ways of entitlement" as their life project. Cobbs seems completely unembarrassed by this pursuit to gain the right to unfair advantages, illicitly acquired gains, perks, prerogatives, special privileges and access, covenants, the right to exclude others, etc. -- all of which were used against him as a young man.
   
   All along it seems that Mr. Cobbs has been nothing but a closet elitist, wanting nothing more than to become a member of the "its WHO you know rather than WHAT you know club." Mr. Cobbs' fight for freedom has been little more than a disguised fight to become a mean-spirited honorary white, and nothing more. Apparently, like Jessie Lee Peterson, he has achieved this goal and is justifiable proud of it. And wants to pass it own as his most important legacy.
   
   Touché to Dr. Cobbs!
   
   But Dr. Cobbs is not the only one who has given up his victimhood. There are others of us who have done so as well, perhaps in much less creative ways. But most of us did not turn in our victimhood card for the right only to use the same old Billy club once used to keep us in our "place." We did not graduate from being a victim only to assume the posture of the oppressor. Few of us ever saw adopting the values of "entitled whites (racists or not) as a virtue." If a sense of entitlement was wrong when used against Cobbs as a young man, it is surely just as wrong when Cobbs and other members of his so called "Talented Tenth," seek to use it against others.
   
   However, from the book one can see that Cobbs acquired this pedigree honestly, and not from his father, who was a hard working Doctor not in search of such entitlements. His father was an exemplary example of a servant to the people he administered medicine to. No, Cobbs admits that he acquired this unholy penchant from his mother. Who through her own pain and rage "over-learned" the petty ways of the white racists who oppressed her. She learned how to transform self-hatred into a sense of entitlement, and through social osmosis past it unerringly on to her son who was anointed "the Bishop," at birth.
   
   Having read Black Rage when it first appeared in print, I was anxious to see what one of the authors had to say a generation later. And although I am by now used to "so called" successful blacks reciting their bios as if it is some kind of Holy Grail for the rest of us, I was greatly disappointed it what Cobbs had to say.
   
   He after all is a Psychiatrist. But apparently is one similar to the bus driver who never took a bus trip. Rather incongruously, he alluded to the "Stockholm syndrome" without being aware that it aptly applies to his own life of seven decades of sublimated rage and pain. Cobbs apparently lacks the vision and awareness to see that his dreams have finally matured from the incubator of his rage. But instead of taking on a fully adult form, they have been taken over and commandeered by those who caused him so much pain as a young man, and while he would readily see this kind of transformation in others, he has failed to see that his own mind has been slowly but inexorably colonized. This book is nothing if not a roadmap into Cobbs own subconscious--his desperate attempt to escape the pain, fear and rage acquired from seven decades of racism. What we see behind the screen is less rage, but still much pain, and many unfulfilled yearnings.
   
   Like Uncle C. Thomas and Aunt C. Rice, unconsciously and ever-so-slowly, Dr. Cobbs has redefined the parameters of his humanity and his worldview so that they are now in perfect alignment with the racist values that oppressed him as a young man. He refuses to see this transformation for what it is - a slow generational process of cooptation. Never once did he try to impose his terms and values on the world, because slowly, they were wrung out of him through his pain and rage and - through a social lobotomy, in situ - were replaced with the oppressor's own values. With this mental substitution, the reality across the Bay Bridge, which is everyday equal to the devastation in New Orleans, or anything we, or Cobbs saw in the deep segregated South, can no longer be seen. Cobbs is wilfully and morally blind to it. In Cobbs' mind Oakland is not there.
   
   From the safety of the high (and dry) ground on Nobb Hill in San Francisco, which in social distance, is as far away from Oakland as it is from New Orleans, Dr. Cobbs has learned what side of his bread is buttered. He knows how to give great undue weight to the mostly cosmetic changes made since the Civil Rights Movement and since he wrote Black Rage. Yes, yes, we all know about Rosa Parks and MLK, but that an buck fifty will not get you a cup of coffee at Fishersman's Wharf. He obviously has not been across the Oakland Bay Bridge lately to talk with its ex-Mayor Jerry Brown.
   
   Cobbs' success is sad and pyrrhic: Like Bush in Iraq, he has had his head in the sand and has declared a private and mostly unconscious victory for himself and his mom, while Rome burns both inside and all around him. He too will be "shocked and awed" when the real war in American society, which is all but inevitable, begins. He has used a now well-worn tactic for black success: When you can't defeat the bankrupt values that oppress you, adopt them as your own and call it a lifetime victory. Patty Hearst would reconize that for what it is: The Stockholm syndrome.
   
   Cobbs' goal all along was not to defeat racist oppression, but to get in bed with it. It is like Jews wanting nothing more than to try on an SS uniform. Cobbs has gone from rage in the 60s to being comfortable today in the uniform of the oppressor, and calling his version of entitlement "giving up victimhood." "If only all those victims would voluntarily give up their victimhood, how nice could America really become?" Can an authentic Black man actually be saying such as this?
   
   Now "the Bishop" has the rarified vantage point he always sought: consorting in the boardrooms high above the "wretched of the Earth," with an adopted set of bankrupt values that he can pretend are his own. From that perch, he can lord over "the new wretched of the Earth" in the same way that the racists whites lorded over him in the 60s. I guess,in a grotesque sort of way that is a kind of success. His mother would be proud. Two stars.



4. As a black and white couple married for over 45 years, we are fortunate to experience the very excellently articulated story, "My American Life," by Dr. Cobbs. He has provided us with a better understanding of our rage and the importance of entitlement in our lives. It is truly a book to be read by all Americans.
   
   Byron and Ann Barker



5. As a white American, I found this book to be invaluable in educating me about the African-American experience in this country during the 20th century.
   
   I was completely unaware of the dynamics that shaped current racial issues in our country, and I found that the way Price Cobbs described his early childhood experiences and beliefs, as well as those of his parents, to be incredibly insightful.
   
   His training as a psychiatrist has certainly enabled him to describe the subtleties and nuances that I have often found lacking in other autobiographies. I also found that his self-disclosure was extremely helpful in bringing this to life.
   
   I wish that more Americans of every racial and ethnic background would read this as it provides such meaningful insight into our increasingly multi-ethnic society. Well done, Dr. Cobbs!

5 comments about The Hand of God.

1. Being a pro-life college student in a liberal university has its challenges. But after reading Dr. Nathanson's book I am no longer at a loss for words when it comes to arguing the abortion issue. I have written many 15-20 page papers on this issue ranging from its moral significance to its relationship with our government, (federal & state). I used much of the information that was in this book. Nathanson gave so much insight and honesty to the history of the issue that it would be impossible not to question any pro-choice stance. I challenge any pro-choicer to read this book. You might find that it is much more challenging to agrue with Nathanson; if it weren't for him you wouldn't have an argument.



2. I think that this is a great and true story by an abortion doctor. It would be good for all, pro-life and pro-choice.



3. As the title explains, Dr. Nathanson was once a bona fide abortion doctor. In fact, as the back cover explains, he "was co-founder in 1969 of the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws (NARAL, later renamed the National Abortion Rights Action League), and was director of the Center for Reproductive and Sexual Health, then the largest abortion clinic of the world. In the late 1970's he turned against abortion to become a prominent pro-life advocate."
   
   
   
   This semi-autobiographical work provides a look behind the sterile abortion clinic doors that populate our country. He openly talks of how the abortion movement intentionally manipulated the public to repeal the once restrictive laws concerning this barbaric practice. This included providing bogus statistics to the media and exaggerating existing reproductive problems. He carefully details the history of abortion, explains the many different techniques of performing abortions, and explains what convinced him to forsake his livelihood and give up his lucrative work.
   
   
   
   What to like: Nathanson is intimately familiar with the abortion industry and goes into great detail about what actually goes on at a clinic. He also provides an insider's view on the machinations behind the early abortion movement.
   
   
   
   As I was writing my extensive series on abortion, his book proved to be invaluable. He systematically explores each and every credible pro-choice argument and points out their faulty logic and shortcomings. Believing himself to be a man of science, he increasingly found himself questioning his abortion practice as ultrasound and sonogram technology developed. Soon these fledgling concerns grew to absolute horror as the overwhelming evidence that life begins at conception and not birth, convinced him to abandon his position as the director of New York's largest abortion clinic.
   
   
   
   Nathanson carefully explores the scientific data that clearly shows life begins at conception, not at birth. He also works through the different definitions which philosophy has given to personhood, and details the dangers behind "endowing" a more exclusive group to "personhood". At the end of the book he also talks about proper and improper responses to abortion.
   
   
   
   What not to like: The book starts out a little tedious. I am pretty sure the readers of this book are going to be interested in Nathanson's story only as far as it relates to abortion. Yet the first three and a half chapters of the book barely breach the subject. Instead he goes into painstaking detail on his childhood and upbringing. These do help us understand why he first entered the medical field and later started performing abortions, but they do not warrant the attention he gives them.
   
   
   
   Memorable Quote: "It was ultrasound, which for the first time threw open a window into the womb. We also began to observe the fetal heart on electronic fetal heart monitors. For the first time, I began to think about what we really had been doing at the clinic. Ultrasound opened up a new world. For the first time, we could really see the human fetus, measure it, observe it, watch it, and indeed bond with it and love it. I began to do that."
   
   
   
   Conclusion: For the American grieved by abortion, this book is a valuable resource. Its chronicles of the early abortion rights movement help the reader understand how the practice was legalized in the first place. Nathanson's arguments for the pro-life cause are damning to the abortion movement. His clear scientific analysis of the beginning of life is, perhaps, the best I've ever read and leaves the reader with no doubt that life does, indeed, begin at conception. This book is essential for anyone who wants to learn more about the abortion debate embroiling our country today.



4. This book is a truly fascinating account of one mans journey from the heights (if indeed it can be called that) of abortion fame as a well known abortionis who performed many, many abortions in his time as well as one of those who was instrumental in helping make abortion legal. Now, to see that turnaround, that has to be something. I was interested to see how he began to change his mind and just how difficult that in itself can be when your fame and career (not to mention your self-esteem) is built on it. I admire this man for his courage in coming out and speaking up.



5. Many people, mostly pro-life advocates, see the abortion issue as the modern equivalent of the fight to put an end to slavery. Dr. Bernard N. Nathanson, a founder of NARAL and once one of America's premier abortion providers until he saw the light and changed sides, draws parallels between pre-Civil War America, specifically the Dred Scott decision, and Roe v. Wade in "The Hand of God: A Journey from Death to Life by the Abortion Doctor Who Changed His Mind." Those are heady claims indeed. To argue that abortion could bring the country to civil war seems a bit melodramatic. Certainly the other side, the pro-abortion advocates, don't see the issue this way. To them Roe v. Wade and subsequent court rulings expanding the ability of a woman to terminate her pregnancy is a right, pure and simple. It's a right that grows out of the Supreme Court's recognition of an inherent privacy right guaranteed by many of the amendments contained in the Bill of Rights. Any effort to curtail or roll back abortion, they argue, would not only allow the government to exercise control over a woman's body, it would also strike at the heart of the gender equality feminists have worked so hard to achieve over the past four decades.
   
   Don't expect Bernard Nathanson to resolve the issue in this slim book. This is no "Uncle Tom's Cabin" for the pro-life crowd. It's close, though. "The Hand of God" tells the story of how a lowly physician came to embrace abortion, how he began to question what he did for a living, and how he found God when he embraced the pro-life movement. According to the author, his early life played a big role in his later decision to become an abortionist. His father, a Jewish physician with misanthropic tendencies, dominated most aspects of his son's life until his death at the age of ninety-four. An imposing presence with a keen intellect and a hardscrabble background, Nathanson's father passed on to his son a suspicion of the Jewish religion and a distrust of women. For example, he encouraged his son to disrespect his mother. The father also dominated Bernard's sister, interfering in her marriage and all other aspects of her life until she committed suicide in her forties. It's obvious we're not dealing with a kindly soul here, yet Nathanson's father did do a few things to help his son. He secured him a place in medical school, for instance, and passed on a love of learning that, if this book is any indication, served Bernard Nathanson well.
   
   Unfortunately, the Hippocratic Oath Nathanson took after completing medical school didn't quite make the desired impression. His specialization in obstetrics and gynecology coupled with the tumult of the 1960s soon brought the good doctor into contact with several physicians interested in overturning the nation's abortion laws. The author plunged in with both feet, and soon found himself overseeing a clinic in New York that performed tens of thousands of abortions. Before his conversion to the pro-life movement, Nathanson went through a couple of marriages and even personally performed an abortion on a woman pregnant with his own child. The last several chapters of the book move beyond the personal into philosophical and medical discussions on life, death, and the ethics of the abortion debate. Nathanson convincingly argues that new medical techniques prove that life begins much earlier than previously believed. He also contends that abortion is a gateway that could, if it continues to be the law of the land, lead to legalized euthanasia and the establishment of third world "fetus farms" that would supply stem cells and organs for those suffering from various diseases in this country. "The Hand of God" paints a pretty bleak picture of the abortion scene.
   
   By far the most effect part of "The Hand of God" deals with Nathanson's discussions of the types of medical doctors that inhabit abortion clinics. Think alcoholics, drug users, quacks, and bottom of the class physicians. It's ugly beyond belief. He provides a few names and cases concerning doctors who had their licenses yanked for maiming and/or killing patients while performing abortions. One surgeon actually quit performing the procedure at the halfway point and sent the woman home because her husband didn't have enough money to pay for the operation. She later died. We tend to think of these things happening in the bad old days before Roe v. Wade turned the back alley butcher into a white coat wearing surgeon in a licensed clinic, but Nathanson's carefully documented accounts show the fallacy of that sort of thinking. Abortion clinics still draw the bottom feeders because of the morals involved. Most doctors don't want anything to do with terminating pregnancies unless the mother's life is in imminent danger. Perhaps most physicians still take the Hippocratic Oath seriously. Whatever the case, ethics still play a big role in who will or will not perform abortions in the nation's clinics.
   
   I decided to read Nathanson's book after reading about his conversion to Roman Catholicism in Dave Shiflett's "Exodus: Why Americans Are Fleeing Liberal Churches for Conservative Christianity." I'm glad I did. I've never been a knee jerk pro-lifer despite being a strident conservative, but this book has moved me further in that direction. There is something seriously wrong with a culture that endorses abortion as a means of birth control, and there is definitely something amiss about allowing a minor to terminate a pregnancy without parental consent. I won't even get into the immorality of partial-birth abortion; I was against that procedure long before I read this book. I heartily recommend "The Hand of God." Prepare yourself, however. You might just find yourself agreeing with the good doctor by the time you turn the final page.

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3 comments about New American Streamline Destinations - Advanced: Destinations Workbook B (Units 41-80): B (New American Streamline).

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