Archives de catégorie : Current Issues

WHAT’S WRONG? d’Erin Williams

A gorgeously illustrated critique of how the American healthcare system fails women, people of color, and nonbinary individuals—perfect for fans of Invisible Women.

WHAT’S WRONG?
by Erin Williams
Abrams ComicArts, January 2024

WHAT’S WRONG? is author, illustrator, and scientific researcher Erin Williams’s graphic exploration of how the American healthcare system has failed both her and the rest of us. Focusing on poignant, raw, and complex firsthand accounts from four patients, plus Williams’ own personal story, this book addresses identifiable illnesses such as bladder cancer, alcoholism, postpartum depression, abuse, and endometriosis. More broadly, it peels back the layers on the invisible illnesses that come from trauma, often perpetuated by the broken healthcare system.
Western medicine, which is intended to cure illness and pain, often causes more loss, abuse, and suffering, especially for those Americans who do not fit within the narrow definition of “normal,” meaning white, male, and heterosexual. The book explores the many ways in which those receiving medical treatments are often overlooked, unseen, and doubted by their doctors due to their race, gender, and unconventional social circumstances. Despite this, WHAT’S WRONG? remains a beautiful celebration of and declaration by those who were able to find various ways of healing and receiving care, ways where they were not just viewed as collections of parts to be taken apart and reassembled but as people.

Erin Williams is a writer, illustrator, and researcher living in New York. She is the author of Commute and co–author of The Big Fat Activity Book for Pregnant People and The Big Activity Book for Anxious People.

LONG COVID de Martin Korte

Covid’s serious neurological after-effects: causes, treatments, and your chance of recovery, by one of Germany’s best-known brain researchers, specializing in how inflammatory processes influence brain performance. Based on the latest research findings

LONG COVID
by Prof. Dr. Martin Korte
DVA, October 2022

Exhaustion, breathlessness, loss of taste, brain fog, problems concentrating: about ten percent of Covid patients report these and other similar symptoms, months after first catching the virus. It doesn’t matter if their original symptoms were mild, and even the young and usually fit and healthy are affected. Not only that, but the latest studies show that Covid can accelerate brain ageing, meaning that the number of people suffering from dementia could rise sharply in the next few years. This alarming discovery suggests that long Covid really is the new endemic disease, and doctors and scientists have issued warnings about the long-term consequences for both individual patients and society at large.
In his new book, Martin Korte, who is researching long Covid at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research and Braunschweig Technical University, reveals how viral infections can damage our brains and cause lifelong conditions affecting people of all ages. He also explains how we can minimise the risk of long Covid, what treatments are available, and what we can do to regain our physical and mental fitness.

Martin Korte is one of Germany’s foremost neuroscientists. He is Professor of Neurobiology at Braunschweig Technical University and head of the Neuroinflammation and Neurodegeneration research group at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research in Braunschweig. He specialises in the cellular basis of learning and memory, and the interaction between the immune and nervous systems in the context of Alzheimer’s. He and his research group were among the first to show that viral respiratory diseases can cause the immune system to overreact, causing long-term damage to the brain. He is currently involved in research into long Covid. Korte is a much sought-after expert, and will be familiar to many from his frequent talks and TV appearances.

ON BELONGING de Kim Samuel

In an age of social isolation, what does it mean to belong?

ON BELONGING:
Finding Connection in an Age of Isolation
by Kim Samuel
‎ Abrams Press, September 2022

Humanity is at an inflection point. Stress, disconnection, and increasing environmental degradation have people yearning for more than just material progress, personal freedom, or political stability. We are searching for deeper connection. We are longing to belong.
ON BELONGING is an exploration of the crisis of social isolation and of the fundamental human need to belong. It considers belonging across four core dimensions: in our relationships with other people, in our rootedness in nature, in our ability to influence political and economic decision-making, and in our finding of meaning and purpose in our lives, with lessons on how to create communities centered on human connection.
A trailblazing advocate and thought leader on questions of social connectedness, Kim Samuel introduces readers to leaders around the world who are doing the work to cultivate belonging. Whether through sports, medicine, music, business, culture, or advocacy, the people and programs in this book offer us meaningful lessons on building a world where we all feel at home.

“Kim Samuel dives deeply into one of the most complex issues of twenty-first-century human existence, the results of which can be discovered in this compelling book. ON BELONGING draws narratives from profound life experiences, timeless literature, and cutting-edge academic research. The key to finding potential solutions to so many of the social, ecological, economic, and political challenges we face will be revealed within these pages. Find inspiration and even hope right here!”―Annie Lennox, singer-songwriter and global feminist activist

Kim Samuel is an activist, educator, and movement builder. She is the founder of the Samuel Centre for Social Connected-ness and an academic lecturer at institu-tions including Oxford, Harvard, and McGill Universities. Samuel was recently named the first-ever Fulbright Canada ambassador for diversity and social connectedness. She lives in Toronto.

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DIGITAL MADNESS de Nicholas Kardaras

From the author of the provocative and influential Glow Kids, this is revolutionary research that reveals technology’s damaging effect on mental illness and suicide rates—and offers a way out.

DIGITAL MADNESS:
How Big Tech Is Driving Our Mental Health Pandemic—and the Ancient Prescription for Sanity
by Nicholas Kardaras
St. Martin’s Press, September 2022

Dr. Nicholas Kardaras is at the forefront of researchers sounding the alarm about the impact of excessive technology on younger brains. In Glow Kids, he described what screen time does to children, calling it “digital heroin”. Now, in DIGITAL MADNESS, Dr. Kardaras turns his attention to our teens and young adults.
For them, the digital world is a bubble of content you’re meant to “like” or “dislike.” Two choices might be considered easy, but just how detrimental is this binary thinking to mental health? From body image to politics to personal relationships to decisions, the world doesn’t exist in an “up or down,” “black or white,” “good or bad” dynamic, and social media shouldn’t either. DIGITAL MADNESS explores how technology promotes sedentary isolation, polarization, rewards extremes on both sides, and has spawned a mental health and suicide pandemic from which enormous corporations profit.
Dr. Kardaras offers a path out of our crisis, using examples from classical philosophy that encourage resilience, critical thinking, concentration, and other beneficial habits of mind. DIGITAL MADNESS is a crucial book for parents, educators, therapists, public health professionals, and policy makers who are searching for ways to restore our young people’s mental and physical health.

Dr. Nicholas Kardaras is one of the country’s foremost addiction experts. He was a professor at Stony Brook Medicine and has developed clinical treatment programs all over the country. He is the founder and Chief Clinical Officer of Maui Recovery in Hawaii, Omega Recovery in Austin and the Launch House in New York. He is also a frequent contributor to Psychology Today and FOX News, and has appeared on Good Morning America, ABC’s 20/20, CNN, the CBS Evening News, PBS, NPR and FOX & Friends.

THE CASE FOR CANCEL CULTURE d’Ernest Owens

From a Forbes 30 Under 30 award-winning journalist comes a critical and nuanced look at the topic of cancel culture, arguing that cancel culture has been a fundamental means of democratic expression throughout history and is a timely necessity aimed at combating systems of oppression.

THE CASE FOR CANCEL CULTURE:
Why Uncensored Accountability Liberates
by Ernest Owens
‎ St. Martin’s Press, February 2023

Cancel culture. Chances are you’ve heard about this a lot lately, but what really is it? Blacklisting celebrities? Censorship? Up until this point, this has been the general consensus in the media. But it’s time to raise the bar on our definition—to think of cancel culture less as scandal or suppression and more as an essential means of democratic expression and accountability. THE CASE FOR CANCEL CULTURE offers a fresh progressive lens in favor of cancel culture as a tool for activism and change. It will help readers reflect on and learn the long history of canceling (the Boston Tea Party was cancel culture); how the left and right uniquely equip it as part of their political toolkits; how intersections of society wield it for justice; and ultimately how it levels the playing field for the everyday person’s voice to matter. Why should we care? Because in a world where protest and free speech are being challenged by the most powerful institutions, those without power deserve to understand the nuance and importance of this democratic tool available to them. Rather than seeing cancel culture as a nasty byproduct of the digital age, it should be seen as a powerful instrument for change. Ernest Owens shows readers exactly how with examples from politics, pop culture, and his own personal experience. Readers will walk away from this first-of-its-kind exploration not despising cancel culture but embracing it as a form of democratic expression that’s always been leading the charge in liberating us all.

Ernest Owens is an award-winning journalist and CEO of Ernest Media Empire, LLC. He is the Editor at Large for Philadelphia Magazine and President of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists. He hosts the hit podcast « Ernestly Speaking! ». As an openly Black gay journalist, he has made headlines for speaking frankly about intersectional issues in society regarding race, LGBTQ, and pop culture. In 2018, he launched his growing media company that specializes in multimedia production, consulting, and communications. His versatile talent has taken him from Ghana to the White House, where he’s interviewed countless political leaders (such as Vice President Kamala Harris) to Hollywood where he’s interviewed industry heavyweights (such as Oprah Winfrey and Academy Award winning screenwriter Tarell Alvin McCraney). His work has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, MTV, NBC, NPR, and other prominent media outlets.