Better Than Well: American Medicine Meets the American Dream

Better Than Well: American Medicine Meets the American Dream PDF Author: Carl Elliott
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393346668
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
"Elliott's absorbing account will make readers think again about the ways that science shapes our personal identities."—American Scientist Americans have always been the world's most anxiously enthusiastic consumers of "enhancement technologies." Prozac, Viagra, and Botox injections are only the latest manifestations of a familiar pattern: enthusiastic adoption, public hand-wringing, an occasional congressional hearing, and calls for self-reliance. In a brilliant diagnosis of our reactions to self-improvement technologies, Carl Elliott asks questions that illuminate deep currents in the American character: Why do we feel uneasy about these drugs, procedures, and therapies even while we embrace them? Where do we draw the line between self and society? Why do we seek self-realization in ways so heavily influenced by cultural conformity?

Better Than Well: American Medicine Meets the American Dream

Better Than Well: American Medicine Meets the American Dream PDF Author: Carl Elliott
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393346668
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 384

Get Book Here

Book Description
"Elliott's absorbing account will make readers think again about the ways that science shapes our personal identities."—American Scientist Americans have always been the world's most anxiously enthusiastic consumers of "enhancement technologies." Prozac, Viagra, and Botox injections are only the latest manifestations of a familiar pattern: enthusiastic adoption, public hand-wringing, an occasional congressional hearing, and calls for self-reliance. In a brilliant diagnosis of our reactions to self-improvement technologies, Carl Elliott asks questions that illuminate deep currents in the American character: Why do we feel uneasy about these drugs, procedures, and therapies even while we embrace them? Where do we draw the line between self and society? Why do we seek self-realization in ways so heavily influenced by cultural conformity?

White Coat, Black Hat

White Coat, Black Hat PDF Author: Carl Elliott
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 0807061441
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
By New Yorker and Atlantic writer Carl Elliott, a readable and even funny account of the serious business of medicine. A tongue-in-cheek account of the changes that have transformed medicine into big business. Physician and medical ethicist Carl Elliott tracks the new world of commercialized medicine from start to finish, introducing the professional guinea pigs, ghostwriters, thought leaders, drug reps, public relations pros, and even medical ethicists who use medicine for (sometimes huge) financial gain. Along the way, he uncovers the cost to patients lost in a health-care universe centered around consumerism.

A Philosophical Disease

A Philosophical Disease PDF Author: Carl Elliott
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131782802X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
Drawing on the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein and novelists such as Walker Percy, Paul Auster and Graham Greene, A Philosophical Disease brings to the bioethical discussion larger philosophical questions about the sense and significance of human life. Carl Elliott moves beyond the standard menu of bioethical issues to explore the relationship of illness to identity, and of mental illness to spiritual illness. He also examines the treatment of children born with ambiguous genitalia, the claims of Deaf culture, and the morality of self-sacrifice. This book focuses on a different sensibility in bioethics; how we use concepts, and how they relate to our own particular social institutions.

Prozac as a Way of Life

Prozac as a Way of Life PDF Author: Carl Elliott
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 9780807855515
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
In this collection of eleven essays, leading doctors and bioethicists discuss the pros and cons of Prozac and America's culture of self-enhancement.

Over Here

Over Here PDF Author: Edward Humes
Publisher: Diversion Books
ISBN: 1626812578
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 359

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Book Description
Extraordinary stories of ordinary men and women whose lives were changed forever by landmark legislation—and how they went on to change the country. Inspiring war stories are familiar. But what about after-the-war stories? From a Pulitzer Prize–winning author, Over Here is the Greatest Generation’s after-the-war story—vivid portraits of how the original G.I. Bill empowered an entire generation and reinvented the nation. The G.I. Bill opened college education to the masses, transformed America from a nation of renters into a nation of homeowners, and enabled an era of prosperity never before seen in the world. Doctors, teachers, engineers, researchers, and Nobel Prize winners who had never considered college an option rewrote the American Dream thanks to this most visionary legislation. “Vivid . . . Deeply moving, alive with the thrill of people from modest backgrounds discovering that the opportunities available to them were far greater than anything they had dreamed of.” —Los Angeles Times “Poignant . . . The human dramas scattered throughout the narrative are irresistible.” —The Denver Post “Fascinating . . . The book’s statistics are eye-opening, but it’s the numerous personal vignettes that bring this account to life. . . . At its best, these passages are reminiscent of Studs Terkel’s Depression-era and World War II oral histories.” —The Plain Dealer

City Schools and the American Dream 2

City Schools and the American Dream 2 PDF Author: Pedro A. Noguera
Publisher: Teachers College Press
ISBN: 0807778559
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
Over a decade ago, the first edition of City Schools and the American Dream debuted just as reformers were gearing up to make sweeping changes in urban education. Despite the rhetoric and many reform initiatives, urban schools continue to struggle under the weight of serious challenges. What went wrong and is there hope for future change? More than a new edition, this sequel to the original bestseller has been substantially revised to include insights from new research, recent demographic trends, and emerging political realities. In addition to surveying the various limitations that urban schools face, the book also highlights programs, communities, and schools that are making good on public education’s promise of equity. With renewed commitment and sense of urgency, this new edition provides a clear-eyed vision of what it will take to ensure the success of city schools and their students. “City schools continue to play one of the most important roles in our quest to restore democracy. This is a must-read . . . again!” —Gloria Ladson-Billings, University of Wisconsin–Madison “The authors provide concrete examples of innovative strategies and practices employed by urban schools that are succeeding against all odds.” —Betty A. Rosa, chancellor, New York State Board of Regents “This is the book every teacher, parent, policymaker, and engaged citizen should read.” —Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco, UCLA

Nickel and Dimed

Nickel and Dimed PDF Author: Barbara Ehrenreich
Publisher: Metropolitan Books
ISBN: 1429926643
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
The New York Times bestselling work of undercover reportage from our sharpest and most original social critic, with a new foreword by Matthew Desmond, author of Evicted Millions of Americans work full time, year round, for poverty-level wages. In 1998, Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. She was inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that a job—any job—can be the ticket to a better life. But how does anyone survive, let alone prosper, on $6 an hour? To find out, Ehrenreich left her home, took the cheapest lodgings she could find, and accepted whatever jobs she was offered. Moving from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, she worked as a waitress, a hotel maid, a cleaning woman, a nursing-home aide, and a Wal-Mart sales clerk. She lived in trailer parks and crumbling residential motels. Very quickly, she discovered that no job is truly "unskilled," that even the lowliest occupations require exhausting mental and muscular effort. She also learned that one job is not enough; you need at least two if you int to live indoors. Nickel and Dimed reveals low-rent America in all its tenacity, anxiety, and surprising generosity—a land of Big Boxes, fast food, and a thousand desperate stratagems for survival. Read it for the smoldering clarity of Ehrenreich's perspective and for a rare view of how "prosperity" looks from the bottom. And now, in a new foreword, Matthew Desmond, author of Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, explains why, twenty years on in America, Nickel and Dimed is more relevant than ever.

After the Ivory Tower Falls

After the Ivory Tower Falls PDF Author: Will Bunch
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0063077019
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 359

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Book Description
From Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Will Bunch, the epic untold story of college—the great political and cultural fault line of American life Winner of the Athenaeum of Philadelphia Literary Award | Longlisted for the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction | "This book is simply terrific." —Heather Cox Richardson | "Ambitious and engrossing." —New York Times Book Review | "A must-read." —Nancy MacLean, author of Democracy in Chains Today there are two Americas, separate and unequal, one educated and one not. And these two tribes—the resentful “non-college” crowd and their diploma-bearing yet increasingly disillusioned adversaries—seem on the brink of a civil war. The strongest determinant of whether a voter was likely to support Donald Trump in 2016 was whether or not they attended college, and the degree of loathing they reported feeling toward the so-called “knowledge economy" of clustered, educated elites. Somewhere in the winding last half-century of the United States, the quest for a college diploma devolved from being proof of America’s commitment to learning, science, and social mobility into a kind of Hunger Games contest to the death. That quest has infuriated both the millions who got shut out and millions who got into deep debt to stay afloat. In After the Ivory Tower Falls, award-winning journalist Will Bunch embarks on a deeply reported journey to the heart of the American Dream. That journey begins in Gambier, Ohio, home to affluent, liberal Kenyon College, a tiny speck of Democratic blue amidst the vast red swath of white, post-industrial, rural midwestern America. To understand “the college question,” there is no better entry point than Gambier, where a world-class institution caters to elite students amidst a sea of economic despair. From there, Bunch traces the history of college in the U.S., from the landmark GI Bill through the culture wars of the 60’s and 70’s, which found their start on college campuses. We see how resentment of college-educated elites morphed into a rejection of knowledge itself—and how the explosion in student loan debt fueled major social movements like Occupy Wall Street. Bunch then takes a question we need to ask all over again—what, and who, is college even for?—and pushes it into the 21st century by proposing a new model that works for all Americans. The sum total is a stunning work of journalism, one that lays bare the root of our political, cultural, and economic division—and charts a path forward for America.

Songs of the Doomed

Songs of the Doomed PDF Author: Hunter S. Thompson
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0743240995
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
A collection of essays by Hunter Thompson that chart the high and low moments of his thirty-year career as a journalist

Me Medicine vs. We Medicine

Me Medicine vs. We Medicine PDF Author: Donna Dickenson
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231534418
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Book Description
Personalized healthcare—or what the award-winning author Donna Dickenson calls "Me Medicine"—is radically transforming our longstanding "one-size-fits-all" model. Technologies such as direct-to-consumer genetic testing, pharmacogenetically developed therapies in cancer care, private umbilical cord blood banking, and neurocognitive enhancement claim to cater to an individual's specific biological character, and, in some cases, these technologies have shown powerful potential. Yet in others they have produced negligible or even negative results. Whatever is behind the rise of Me Medicine, it isn't just science. So why is Me Medicine rapidly edging out We Medicine, and how has our commitment to our collective health suffered as a result? In her cogent, provocative analysis, Dickenson examines the economic and political factors fueling the Me Medicine phenomenon and explores how, over time, this paradigm shift in how we approach our health might damage our individual and collective well-being. Historically, the measures of "We Medicine," such as vaccination and investment in public-health infrastructure, have radically extended our life spans, and Dickenson argues we've lost sight of that truth in our enthusiasm for "Me Medicine." Dickenson explores how personalized medicine illustrates capitalism's protean capacity for creating new products and markets where none existed before—and how this, rather than scientific plausibility, goes a long way toward explaining private umbilical cord blood banks and retail genetics. Drawing on the latest findings from leading scientists, social scientists, and political analysts, she critically examines four possible hypotheses driving our Me Medicine moment: a growing sense of threat; a wave of patient narcissism; corporate interests driving new niche markets; and the dominance of personal choice as a cultural value. She concludes with insights from political theory that emphasize a conception of the commons and the steps we can take to restore its value to modern biotechnology.