by Clarence G. Lasby (1997)
Previous Eisenhower biographers have touched on his heart condition, but Clarence Lasby is the first to examine the impact of the president's health on the nation. He offers a dramatic revisionist account of the events surrounding the president's 1955 heart attack and subsequent efforts by the president and his staff to minimize its political impact. Drawing on newly opened medical records and personal papers of Eisenhower's physicians, Lasby challenges virtually everything we have believed about the president's heart attack. Most disturbingly, he has discovered that the president's personal physician, Dr. Howard Snyder, misdiagnosed the attack as a gastrointestinal problem and waited ten hours before sending Eisenhower to the hospital. Lasby also sets the record straight on how the president and his aides "managed" the public's understanding of events, and he offers evidence that Eisenhower, Dr. Snyder, and press secretary James Hagerty withheld and recast information to serve the president's political priorities. Equally important, Lasby's book offers a touching portrait of a proud man faced with a debilitating disease. It examines Ike's private struggle to lead a full life despite his condition and analyzes his decision to seek a second term even against the advice of cardiologist Paul Dudley White. It also shows how a man who had always carefully joked after his health now became obsessed with it.
Marc Elliot
The author, an inspirational speaker who voices a message of tolerance, further illustrates his perspective in this autobiography, sharing his experiences growing up with Hirschsprung's disease as well as being diagnosed at age 9 with Tourette syndrome.
Richard K. Baer
A psychiatrist describes his work with Karen Overhill, a patient complaining of acute depression who turned out to have been a victim of horrific childhood sexual abuse and had developed seventeen distinct and separate personalities.
Sandra Butler and Barbara Rosenblum
Cancer in Two Voices is the remarkable and deeply inspiring collaboration between Barbara Rosenblum and Sandra Butler which began when Barbara was diagnosed with breast cancer. Through journal entries and letters. they share the experience of living with cancer and being the partner who survives.
Nicole Johns
Purge is a beautifully crafted memoir that has a Girl, Interrupted feel. In this raw and engaging account of her months in rehab, Nicole Johns documents her stay in a residential treatment facility for eating disorders. Her prose is lucid and vivid, as she seamlessly switches verb tenses and moves through time. She unearths several important themes: body image and sexuality, sexual assault and relationships, and the struggle to piece together one's path in life. While other books about eating disorders and treatment may sugarcoat the harsh realities of living with and recovering from an eating.