Since the land, the forests, the oceans, and the atmosphere have already been colonized, eroded, and polluted, she argues, Northern capital is now carving out new colonies to exploit for gain: the interior spaces of the bodies of women, plants and animals.

    Though referenced like a work of research, Brizedine's writing style is fully accessible. Brizendine provides a fascinating look at the life cycle of the female brain from birth ("baby girls will connect emotionally in ways that baby boys don't") to birthing ("Motherhood changes you because it literally alters a woman's brain-structurally, functionally, and in many ways, irreversibly") to menopause (when "the female brain is nowhere near ready to retire") and beyond. At the same time, Brizedine is not above reviewing the basics: "We may think we're a lot more sophisticated than Fred or Wilma Flintstone, but our basic mental outlook and equipment are the same." While this book will be of interest to anyone who wonders why men and women are so different, it will be particularly useful for women and parents of girls.

    Although necessary health care should be available to all who need it, he says, the current health-care debate assumes that everyone requires massive amounts of expensive care to stay healthy. Hadler urges that before we commit to paying for whatever pharmaceutical companies and the medical establishment tell us we need, American consumers need to adopt an attitude of skepticism and arm themselves with enough information to make some of their own decisions about what care is truly necessary. Each chapter of Worried Sick is an object lesson regarding the uses and abuses of a particular type of treatment, such as mammography, colorectal screening, statin drugs, or coronary stents. For consumers and medical professionals interested in understanding the scientific basis for Hadler's arguments, each topical chapter has an accompanying source chapter in which Hadler discusses the medical literature and studies that inform his critique. According to Hadler, a major stumbling block to rational health-care policy in the United States is contention over the very concept of what constitutes good health. By learning to distinguish good medical advice from persuasive medical marketing, consumers can make better decisions about their personal health and use that wisdom to inform their perspectives on health-policy issues.

    Beauty and pharmaceutical companies work overtime to convince people to purchase products that will retain their youthful appearance and vitality. Wrinkles are embarrassing. Gray hair should be colored and bald heads covered with implants. Older minds and bodies are too frail to keep up with the pace of the modern working world and olders should just step aside for the new generation. Ashton Applewhite once held these beliefs too until she realized where this prejudice comes from and the damage it does. Lively, funny, and deeply researched, This Chair Rocks traces her journey from apprehensive boomer to pro-aging radical, and in the process debunks myth after myth about late life. Explaining the roots of ageism in history and how it divides and debases, Applewhite examines how ageist stereotypes cripple the way our brains and bodies function, looks at ageism in the workplace and the bedroom, exposes the cost of the all-American myth of independence, critiques the portrayal of elders as burdens to society, describes what an all-age-friendly world would look like, and offers a rousing call to action. It’s time to create a world of age equality by making discrimination on the basis of age as unacceptable as any other kind of bias. Whether you’re older or hoping to get there, this book will shake you by the shoulders, cheer you up, make you mad, and change the way you see the rest of your life. Age pride!“Wow. This book totally rocks. It arrived on a day when I was in deep confusion and sadness about my age. Everything about it, from my invisibility to my neck. Within four or five wise, passionate pages, I had found insight, illumination, and inspiration. I never use the word empower, but this book has empowered me.”—Anne Lamott, New York Times bestselling author

    Seemingly overnight, a new, high-profile movement has emerged—one dedicated to bold activism, creative product innovation, and smart policy advocacy—to address the centrality of menstruation in relation to core issues of gender equality and equity. In Periods Gone Public, Jennifer Weiss-Wolf—the woman Bustle dubbed one of the nation's "badass menstrual activists"—explores why periods have become a prominent political cause. From eliminating the tampon tax, to enacting new laws ensuring access to affordable, safe products, menstruation is no longer something to whisper about. Weiss-Wolf shares her firsthand account in the fight for "period equity" and introduces readers to the leaders, pioneers, and everyday people who are making change happen. From societal attitudes of periods throughout history—in the United States and around the world—to grassroots activism and product innovation, Weiss-Wolf challenges readers to face stigma head-on and elevate an agenda that recognizes both the power—and the absolute normalcy—of menstruation.

    From time immemorial, women were perceived as having the singular mission of bearing and raising children, says Rowland, who documents the consequences of this view: until the late 19th century, women's rights derived from husbands, fathers and sons. It was believed that their biology made women incapable of thinking rationally—hence they could not own property, vote or work as many hours or for as much pay as men. Nor could they have sex not aimed at procreation without social and legal opprobrium. Rowland documents how a legal "zone of privacy" granted men as far back as the 1620s didn't accrue to women until 1965, when the Supreme Court legalized contraception. Drawing on legal and historical sources as well as the Bible, the journals of Meriwether Lewis and Lolita, Rowland covers every imaginable aspect of women's legal lives, up to the present day. This massive and remarkable history is well written in smart yet accessible language and is thus the perfect book for the classroom as well as the family room. (From Publishers Weekly. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

    This book is published in partnership with the Skoll Foundation, dedicated to accelerating innovations from organizations like Tostan that address the world's most pressing problems.

    Some of these drugs are truly transformative, offering major improvements in how long patients live or how they feel--but what is often missing from the popular narrative is that, far too often, these new drugs have marginal or minimal benefits. Some are even harmful. In Malignant, hematologist-oncologist Dr. Vinayak K. Prasad writes about the many sobering examples of how patients are too often failed by cancer policy and by how oncology is practiced. Throughout this work, Prasad illuminates deceptive practices which- promote novel cancer therapies long before credible data are available to support such treatment; and- exaggerate the potential benefits of new therapies, many of which cost thousands and in some cases hundreds of thousands of dollars.Prasad then critiques the financial conflicts of interest that pervade the oncology field, the pharmaceutical industry, and the US Food and Drug administration.This is a book about how the actions of human beings--our policies, our standards of evidence, and our drug regulation--incentivize the pursuit of marginal or unproven therapies at lofty and unsustainable prices. Prasad takes us through how cancer trials are conducted, how drugs come to market, and how pricing decisions are made, asking how we can ensure that more cancer drugs deliver both greater benefit and a lower price. Ultimately, Prasad says,- more cancer clinical trials should measure outcomes that actually matter to people with cancer;- patients on those trials should look more like actual global citizens;- we need drug regulators to raise, not perpetually lower, the bar for approval; and- we need unbiased patient advocates and experts.This well-written, opinionated, and engaging book explains what we can do differently to make serious and sustained progress against cancer--and how we can avoid repeating the policy and practice mistakes of the past.

    You can't be a woman or girl (or, increasingly, a man or boy) in America today and not grapple with the size and shape of your body, your daughter's body, other women's bodies. Even the most confident people have to find a way through a daily gauntlet of voices and images talking, admonishing, warning us about what size we should be, how much we should weigh, what we should eat and what we shouldn't. Obsessing about weight has become a ritual and a refrain, punctuating our every relationship, including the ones with ourselves. It's time to change the conversation around weight. Harriet Brown has explored the conundrums of weight and body image for more than a decade, as a science journalist, as a woman who has struggled with weight, as a mother, wife, and professor. In this book, she describes how biology, psychology, metabolism, media, and culture come together to shape our ongoing obsession with our bodies, and what we can learn from them to help us shift the way we think. Brown exposes some of the myths behind the rhetoric of obesity, gives historical and contemporary context for what it means to be "fat," and offers readers ways to set aside the hysteria and think about weight and health in more nuanced and accurate ways.

    This is a summary and review of the original book. Available in a variety of formats, this summary offers you as a reader the opportunity to enjoy great writings.when you might not have the time to read the original book Being Mortal, by writer Atul Gawande focuses on several critical issues that include death, aging, mortality and critical and terminal illness. The writer has included vast research and has chronicled stories and experiences of his own patients, patients of other doctors and stories of his members of the family. The story based on these experiences provides information to readers regarding various circumstances, life situations and scenarios, which can facilitate people to find an optimum journey through the final days of their own lives or the lives of their family members. Key Takeaways 1. Nursing homes neither have been created for assisting elderly persons to reduce their level of dependency on another person nor to provide better options than the poorhouses. The purpose for creating nursing homes is clearing hospital beds. 2. Assisted living therefore has risen from the requirement to provide alternative solution to nursing homes, which can make patients more independent and have a better grip over their own lives. 3. Most people, in the later years of their own lives want something more than survival and that is where nursing homes, medical institutions and assisted living fail. 4. People must question what makes life worth living at the time when they get old, are frail, ill and have to depend on another person for their daily care.

    Worse, as they failed to cure her, they hinted that her devastating symptoms were psychological.The Lady's Handbook for Her Mysterious Illness is a memoir with a mission, to help the millions of (mostly) women who suffer from unnamed or misunderstood conditions.Ramey's pursuit of a diagnosis and cure for her own mysterious illness is a medical mystery that she says reveals a new understanding of today's chronic illnesses as ecological in nature, driven by modern changes to the basic foundations of health, from the quality of our sleep, diet, and social connection to the state of our microbiomes.

    By bridging the gap between feminist hashtags and scholarly texts, these essays bring feminism into clear focus.Published in partnership with Girl Up, the UN Foundation's adolescent girl campaign, contributors include Hollywood superstars like Saoirse Ronan, activists like Alicia Garza, a founder of Black Lives Matter, and even fictional icons such as Bridget Jones.Every woman has a different route to their personal understanding of feminism. This empowering collection shows how a diverse group of women found their voice, and it will inspire others to do the same.

    She did.Sophie navigates being the only black scientist in her lab while studying the very disease, HIV, that she hides from her coworkers.For Victoria, coming out as a transgender woman was less difficult than coming out as bipolar.Author Michele Lent Hirsch knew she couldn't be the only woman who's faced serious health issues at a young age, as well as the resulting effects on her career, her relationships, and her sense of self. What she found while researching Invisible was a surprisingly large and overlooked population with important stories to tell.Though young women with serious illness tend to be seen as outliers, young female patients are in fact the primary demographic for many illnesses. They are also one of the most ignored groups in our medical system--a system where young women, especially women of color and trans women, are invisible.And because of expectations about gender and age, young women with health issues must often deal with bias in their careers and personal lives. Not only do they feel pressured to seem perfect and youthful, they also find themselves amid labyrinthine obstacles in a culture that has one narrow idea of womanhood.Lent Hirsch weaves her own harrowing experiences together with stories from other women, perspectives from sociologists on structural inequality, and insights from neuroscientists on misogyny in health research. She shows how health issues and disabilities amplify what women in general already confront: warped beauty standards, workplace sexism, worries about romantic partners, and mistrust of their own bodies. By shining a light on this hidden demographic, Lent Hirsch explores the challenges that all women face.

    This cannot be simply explained by economic factors, with poorer women lacking resources or access to care. Even professional, middle-class black women are at a much higher risk of premature birth than low-income white women in the United States. D�na-Ain Davis looks into this phenomenon, placing racial differences in birth outcomes into a historical context, revealing that ideas about reproduction and race today have been influenced by the legacy of ideas which developed during the era of slavery.While poor and low-income black women are often the "mascots" of premature birth outcomes, this book focuses on professional black women, who are just as likely to give birth prematurely. Drawing on an impressive array of interviews with nearly fifty mothers, fathers, neonatologists, nurses, midwives, and reproductive justice advocates, D�na-Ain Davis argues that events leading up to an infant's arrival in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), and the parents' experiences while they are in the NICU, reveal subtle but pernicious forms of racism that confound the perceived class dynamics that are frequently understood to be a central factor of premature birth.The book argues not only that medical racism persists and must be considered when examining adverse outcomes--as well as upsetting experiences for parents--but also that NICUs and life-saving technologies should not be the only strategies for improving the outcomes for black pregnant women and their babies. Davis makes the case for other avenues, such as community-based birthing projects, doulas, and midwives, that support women during pregnancy and labor are just as important and effective in avoiding premature births and mortality.

    Communities where heroin had never been seen before—from Charlotte, NC and Huntington, WVA, to Salt Lake City and Portland, OR—were overrun with it. Local police and residents were stunned. How could heroin, long considered a drug found only in the dense, urban environments along the East Coast, and trafficked into the United States by enormous Colombian drug cartels, be so incredibly ubiquitous in the American heartland? Who was bringing it here, and perhaps more importantly, why were so many townspeople suddenly eager for the comparatively cheap high it offered?With the same dramatic drive of El Narco and Methland, Sam Quinones weaves together two classic tales of American capitalism: The stories of young men in Mexico, independent of the drug cartels, in search of their own American Dream via the fast and enormous profits of trafficking cheap black-tar heroin to America’s rural and suburban addicts; and that of Purdue Pharma in Stamford, Connecticut, determined to corner the market on pain with its new and expensive miracle drug, Oxycontin; extremely addictive in its own right. Quinones illuminates just how these two stories fit together as cause and effect: hooked on costly Oxycontin, American addicts were lured to much cheaper black tar heroin and its powerful and dangerous long-lasting high. Embroiled alongside the suppliers and buyers are DEA agents, local, small-town sheriffs, and the US attorney from eastern Virginia whose case against Purdue Pharma and Oxycontin made him an enemy of the Bush-era Justice Department, ultimately stalling and destroying his career in public service.Dreamland is a scathing and incendiary account of drug culture and addiction spreading to every part of the American landscape.