Jackquie Gordon cannot cure her daughter Christine's cystic fibrosis, but she can teach her to follow life's gifts wherever they lead so that she grows up eager to discover the world and her place in it. This entrhalling book gives us the intimate chronicle of a teenage girl growing up in the late 70s and early 80s. It gives us a model of courage and love under pressure. It tells the healing story of a mother and daughter who never stop trying to understand and help each other, and who succeed beyond all expectation.A selection of the Literary Guild.

    But humans are not machines. When we are ill, we experience our illness: we become scared, distressed, tired, weary. Our illnesses are not just biological conditions, but human ones. It was Arthur Kleinman, a Harvard psychiatrist and anthropologist, who saw this truth when most of his fellow doctors did not. Based on decades of clinical experience studying and treating chronic illness, The Illness Narratives makes a case for interpreting the illness experience of patients as a core feature of doctoring.Before Being Mortal, there was The Illness Narratives. It remains today a prescient and passionate case for bridging the gap between patient and practitioner.

    Jean Vanier examines the roots of brokenness withing the Jewish and Christian traditions and the meaning of the Good News of Jesus for our twentieth-century world.

    Due to a tragedy at birth, Oliver de Vinck was born severely handicapped—blind, mute, crippled, helpless. Despite the doctors' bleak prognosis, his loving parents took him home, where they and their children cared for him. He lived for thirty-three years.

    Arthur Kleinman, M.D., examines how the prevalence and nature of disorders vary in different cultures, how clinicians make their diagnoses, and how they heal, and the educational and practical implications of a true understanding of the interplay between biology and culture.

    The author describes how polio changed his life, explains how he developed a positive outlook, and discusses the nature of disability.