Memoir of an Iraqi Woman Doctor

Memoir of an Iraqi Woman Doctor PDF Author: Saniha Amin Zaki
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781501077982
Category : Women physicians
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
As a girl of thirteen in Baghdad, Saniha Amin Zaki, whenever she was outside her house was covered, head to foot, with a black robe and was accompanied by a member of her family. But at sixteen she was enrolled in the Medical College, not wearing the veil and attending classes with male students. Six years later, she was Iraq's first Muslim female doctor. This courageous break with cultural tradition was the first independent step in her long rich life. This is the fascinating personal account of a woman who grew up in Iraq in the 1920's, the early years of the country's freedom from the Ottoman Empire and British Mandate rule. She lived through the unsettled years of Iraq's development into a modern state, with all its opposing factions and political upheavals, plots and betrayals. We learn of the intense discussions that took place within her circle of liberal-minded young friends, deeply concerned with social issues and the political status quo; among her friends were those who were tempted by the easy answers offered by Communism. Because the men of her family were part of the ruling class and the intelligensia, she is able to give us unique insights into the growing clash between the British-backed monarchists and the underground communists who fomented the discontent that led to the murder of the royal family during the military coup of 1958. Seldom has such a fateful progression of a country from freedom to tyranny been revealed from this intimate point of view. Iraq's struggle to emerge from an almost medieval past to the optimistic and vibrant 1950's makes a riveting and immensely informative tale, rich with cultural and historical detail. It is written with honesty and special sensitivity by an extraordinary woman who was at the forefront of the emergence of Arab women into modern public life.

What the Eyes Don't See

What the Eyes Don't See PDF Author: Mona Hanna-Attisha
Publisher: One World
ISBN: 0399590846
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • The dramatic story of the Flint water crisis, by a relentless physician who stood up to power. “Stirring . . . [a] blueprint for all those who believe . . . that ‘the world . . . should be full of people raising their voices.’”—The New York Times “Revealing, with the gripping intrigue of a Grisham thriller.” —O: The Oprah Magazine Here is the inspiring story of how Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, alongside a team of researchers, parents, friends, and community leaders, discovered that the children of Flint, Michigan, were being exposed to lead in their tap water—and then battled her own government and a brutal backlash to expose that truth to the world. Paced like a scientific thriller, What the Eyes Don’t See reveals how misguided austerity policies, broken democracy, and callous bureaucratic indifference placed an entire city at risk. And at the center of the story is Dr. Mona herself—an immigrant, doctor, scientist, and mother whose family’s activist roots inspired her pursuit of justice. What the Eyes Don’t See is a riveting account of a shameful disaster that became a tale of hope, the story of a city on the ropes that came together to fight for justice, self-determination, and the right to build a better world for their—and all of our—children. Praise for What the Eyes Don’t See “It is one thing to point out a problem. It is another thing altogether to step up and work to fix it. Mona Hanna-Attisha is a true American hero.”—Erin Brockovich “A clarion call to live a life of purpose.”—The Washington Post “Gripping . . . entertaining . . . Her book has power precisely because she takes the events she recounts so personally. . . . Moral outrage present on every page.”—The New York Times Book Review “Personal and emotional. . . She vividly describes the effects of lead poisoning on her young patients. . . . She is at her best when recounting the detective work she undertook after a tip-off about lead levels from a friend. . . . ‛Flint will not be defined by this crisis,’ vows Ms. Hanna-Attisha.”—The Economist “Flint is a public health disaster. But it was Dr. Mona, this caring, tough pediatrican turned detective, who cracked the case.”—Rachel Maddow

She Went to War

She Went to War PDF Author: Rhonda Cornum
Publisher: Thorndike Press
ISBN: 9780783885162
Category : Large type books
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Rhonda Cornum was a soldier, a surgeon, a helicopter pilot, a wife, a mother - and a prisoner of war during the Gulf War. Not only does this book explore Major Cornum's fears during her capture, but it gives us a unique insight into Middle Eastern culture. Major Cornum is a woman of immense courage, competence and conviction, and her performance helps convince us that women can, indeed, be warriors.

Ungovernable Life

Ungovernable Life PDF Author: Omar Dewachi
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 1503602699
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
Iraq's healthcare has been on the edge of collapse since the 1990s. Once the leading hub of scientific and medical training in the Middle East, Iraq's political and medical infrastructure has been undermined by decades of U.S.-led sanctions and invasions. Since the British Mandate, Iraqi governments had invested in cultivating Iraq's medical doctors as agents of statecraft and fostered connections to scientists abroad. In recent years, this has been reversed as thousands of Iraqi doctors have left the country in search of security and careers abroad. Ungovernable Life presents the untold story of the rise and fall of Iraqi "mandatory medicine"—and of the destruction of Iraq itself. Trained as a doctor in Baghdad, Omar Dewachi writes a medical history of Iraq, offering readers a compelling exploration of state-making and dissolution in the Middle East. His work illustrates how imperial modes of governance, from the British Mandate to the U.S. interventions, have been contested, maintained, and unraveled through medicine and healthcare. In tracing the role of doctors as agents of state-making, he challenges common accounts of Iraq's alleged political unruliness and ungovernability, bringing forth a deeper understanding of how medicine and power shape life and how decades of war and sanctions dismember projects of state-making.

Crossings

Crossings PDF Author: Jon Kerstetter
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 1101904399
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
A searing, beautifully told memoir by a Native American doctor on the trials of being a doctor-soldier in the Iraq War, and then, after suffering a stroke that left his life irrevocably changed, his struggles to overcome the new limits of his body, mind, and identity. Every juncture in Jon Kerstetter’s life has been marked by a crossing from one world into another: from civilian to doctor to soldier; between healing and waging war; and between compassion and hatred of the enemy. When an injury led to a stroke that ended his careers as a doctor and a soldier, he faced the most difficult crossing of all, a recovery that proved as shattering as war itself. Crossings is a memoir of an improbable, powerfully drawn life, one that began in poverty on the Oneida Reservation in Wisconsin but grew by force of will to encompass a remarkable medical practice. Trained as an emergency physician, Kerstetter’s thirst for intensity led him to volunteer in war-torn Rwanda, Kosovo, and Bosnia, and to join the Army National Guard. His three tours in the Iraq War marked the height of the American struggle there. The story of his work in theater, which involved everything from saving soldiers’ lives to organizing the joint U.S.–Iraqi forensics team tasked with identifying the bodies of Saddam Hussein’s sons, is a bracing, unprecedented evocation of a doctor’s life at war. But war was only the start of Kerstetter’s struggle. The stroke he suffered upon returning from Iraq led to serious cognitive and physical disabilities. His years-long recovery, impeded by near-unbearable pain and complicated by PTSD, meant overcoming the perceived limits of his body and mind and reimagining his own capacity for renewal and change. It led him not only to writing as a vocation but to a deeper understanding of how healing means accepting a new identity, and how that acceptance must be fought for with as much tenacity as any battlefield victory.

Angels Among Us. . .Even in Iraq

Angels Among Us. . .Even in Iraq PDF Author: Diane Hassan
Publisher: Xulon Press
ISBN: 160477178X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
In a highly entertaining fashion, the American wife of a prominent member of Saddam Hussein's political hierarchy chronicles her life in Iraq until she and her family dramatically escape after an attempted assassination of her husband during Saddam's purge following Desert Storm. (Motivation)

Rule Number Two

Rule Number Two PDF Author: Heidi Squier Kraft
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0316022977
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 182

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Book Description
When Lieutenant Commander Heidi Kraft's twin son and daughter were fifteen months old, she was deployed to Iraq. A clinical psychologist in the US Navy, Kraft's job was to uncover the wounds of war that a surgeon would never see. She put away thoughts of her children back home, acclimated to the sound of incoming rockets, and learned how to listen to the most traumatic stories a war zone has to offer. One of the toughest lessons of her deployment was perfectly articulated by the TV show M*A*S*H: "There are two rules of war. Rule number one is that young men die. Rule number two is that doctors can't change rule number one." Some Marines, Kraft realized, and even some of their doctors, would be damaged by war in ways she could not repair. And sometimes, people were repaired in ways she never expected. Rule Number Two is a powerful firsthand account of providing comfort admidst the chaos of war, and of what it takes to endure.

The End of Your Life Book Club

The End of Your Life Book Club PDF Author: Will Schwalbe
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307961117
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
A profoundly moving memoir of caregiving, mourning, and love between a mother and her son—and about the joy of reading, and the ways that joy is multiplied when we share it with others. “A graceful, affecting testament to a mother and a life well lived.” —Entertainment Weekly, Grade A During her treatment for cancer, Mary Anne Schwalbe and her son Will spent many hours sitting in waiting rooms together. To pass the time, they would talk about the books they were reading. Once, by chance, they read the same book at the same time—and an informal book club of two was born. Through their wide-ranging reading, Will and Mary Anne—and we, their fellow readers—are reminded how books can be comforting, astonishing, and illuminating, changing the way that we feel about and interact with the world around us.

Yeah, I Said It

Yeah, I Said It PDF Author: Wanda Sykes
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1416505571
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
Wanda Sykes reduces people to tears -- tears of laughter. She's done so as a stand-up comic, a sitcom star, and a sports commentator for years now, and in the process she's gained a huge fan base nationwide. Now that she's conquered television, she's applying her genius to her first book, Yeah, I Said It. Here, Wanda presents hilarious and uncensored commentary on sex, family, politics, celebrities, and much more than she could ever say in a sound bite. But then again, she's a genius with a sound bite too. Here's what she says about men and football. "I used to think that football took place in this overbearing male-only environment that bled masculine domination. But the more I attend, the more I realize these football fans could actually be experiencing the straight man's gay pride parade. You see men painting each other's faces in bright colors. You see men proud to wear another man's last name on their shirt. You see some men wear no shirt at all....Hot wieners on every corner as you walk up to the main competition. Men open the back of their trunks for a little tailgating." Here's what she says about women: "Women are taking stripper classes in hopes their men will stop going to strip clubs....You can't compete with those strippers....You gotta have...the stripper mentality. In other words, the ability to lie like a dog for a measly buck. A stripper will tell your man anything for a dollar. 'Oow, I thought you were Brad Pitt.' " An uproarious and irreverent collection from one of today's foremost comedic talents, Yeah, I Said It is Wanda Sykes at her uncensored best. Here, she channels her sharp wit into funny bits on the truth as she sees it from the halls of government in Washington, D.C., to the red carpets and boardrooms of Hollywood. Imbued with her razor-sharp voice, these essays showcase Sykes's sidesplitting candor and her trademark brand of comedy.

Your Heart Is the Size of Your Fist

Your Heart Is the Size of Your Fist PDF Author: Martina Scholtens
Publisher: TouchWood Editions
ISBN: 1927366690
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 136

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Book Description
An absorbing and touching read, this collection of true stories is the first book by a Canadian doctor on the topic of refugee health. Your Heart Is the Size of Your Fist draws readers into the complicated, poignant, and often-overlooked daily happenings of a busy urban medical clinic for refugees. An Iraqi journalist whose son has been been murdered develops post-traumatic stress disorder and mourns his loss of vocation. A Congolese woman refuses antiretroviral treatment for her new HIV diagnosis, and instead places her trust in Jesus. Two conservative Muslim Iraqi women are inadvertently exposed to pornography when a doctor uses Google Images to supplement a medical discussion. By turns humorous, distressing, and moving, these stories offer insight into the people seeking a new life while navigating poverty, language barriers, and neighbours who aren’t always friendly. This riveting collection of true stories from Dr. Martina Scholtens is filled with hope and humour, and together make up a deeply moving portrait of how one doctor attempts to provide quality care and advocacy for patients while remaining culturally sensitive, even as she wrestles with guilt, awareness of her own privilege, the faith she was raised with, and vicarious trauma after hearing countless stories of brutality and suffering. In the spirit of Louise Aronson and Atul Gawande, Scholtens’ writing is based on her personal experiences and explores the transformative moments in which a clinical doctor-patient relationship becomes a profound human-human connection.