Autobiography Of A Disease

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Autobiography of a Disease

Author : Patrick Anderson
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1351720996
Total Pages : 315 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (517 download)

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Book Synopsis Autobiography of a Disease by : Patrick Anderson

Download or read book Autobiography of a Disease written by Patrick Anderson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-06-09 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Autobiography of a Disease documents, in experimental form, the experience of extended life-threatening illness in contemporary US hospitals and clinics. The narrative is based primarily on the author’s sudden and catastrophic collapse into a coma and long hospitalization thirteen years ago; but it has also been crafted from twelve years of research on the history of microbiology, literary representations of illness and medical treatment, cultural analysis of MRSA in the popular press, and extended autoethnographic work on medicalization. An experiment in form, the book blends the genres of storytelling, historiography, ethnography, and memoir. Unlike most medical memoirs, told from the perspective of the human patient, Autobiography of a Disease is told from the perspective of a bacterial cluster. This orientation is intended to represent the distribution of perspectives on illness, disability, and pain across subjective centers—from patient to monitoring machine, from body to cell, from caregiver to cared-for—and thus makes sense of illness only in a social context.

Autobiography of a Disease

Author : Patrick Anderson
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1351721003
Total Pages : 241 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (517 download)

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Book Synopsis Autobiography of a Disease by : Patrick Anderson

Download or read book Autobiography of a Disease written by Patrick Anderson and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-06-09 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- CONTENTS -- Foreword -- Prelude -- Part I -- Part II -- Part III -- Part IV -- Part V -- Part VI -- Coda -- Afterword -- Acknowledgments -- Index

Autobiography of a Disease

Author : Patrick Anderson
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 9781138744486
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (444 download)

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Book Synopsis Autobiography of a Disease by : Patrick Anderson

Download or read book Autobiography of a Disease written by Patrick Anderson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- CONTENTS -- Foreword -- Prelude -- Part I -- Part II -- Part III -- Part IV -- Part V -- Part VI -- Coda -- Afterword -- Acknowledgments -- Index

A Family History of Illness

Author : Brett L. Walker
Publisher : University of Washington Press
ISBN 13 : 0295743042
Total Pages : 281 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (957 download)

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Book Synopsis A Family History of Illness by : Brett L. Walker

Download or read book A Family History of Illness written by Brett L. Walker and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2018-03-15 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While in the ICU with a near-fatal case of pneumonia, Brett Walker was asked, “Do you have a family history of illness?”—a standard and deceptively simple question that for Walker, a professional historian, took on additional meaning and spurred him to investigate his family’s medical past. In this deeply personal narrative, he constructs a history of his body to understand his diagnosis with a serious immunological disorder, weaving together his dying grandfather’s sneaking a cigarette in a shed on the family’s Montana farm, blood fractionation experiments in Europe during World War II, and nineteenth-century cholera outbreaks that ravaged small American towns as his ancestors were making their way west. A Family History of Illness is a gritty historical memoir that examines the body’s immune system and microbial composition as well as the biological and cultural origins of memory and history, offering a startling, fresh way to view the role of history in understanding our physical selves. In his own search, Walker soon realizes that this broader scope is more valuable than a strictly medical family history. He finds that family legacies shape us both physically and symbolically, forming the root of our identity and values, and he urges us to renew our interest in the past or risk misunderstanding ourselves and the world around us.

Sick

Author : Porochista Khakpour
Publisher : HarperCollins
ISBN 13 : 0062428721
Total Pages : 230 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (624 download)

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Book Synopsis Sick by : Porochista Khakpour

Download or read book Sick written by Porochista Khakpour and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2018-06-05 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Best Book of the Year: Real Simple, Entropy, Mental Floss, Bitch Media, The Paris Review, and LitHub. Time Magazine's Best Memoirs of 2018 • Boston Globe's 25 Books We Can't Wait to Read in 2018 • Buzzfeed's 33 Most Exciting New Books • GQ Best Non Fiction Book of 2018 • Bustle’s 28 Most Anticipated Nonfiction Books of 2018 list • Nylon’s 50 Books We Can’t Wait to Read in 2018 • Electric Literature’s 46 Books to Read By Women of Color in 2018 “Porochista Khakpour’s powerful memoir, Sick, reads like a mystery and a reckoning with a love song at its core. Humane, searching, and unapologetic, Sick is about the thin lines and vast distances between illness and wellness, healing and suffering, the body and the self. Khakpour takes us all the way in on her struggle toward health with an intelligence and intimacy that moved, informed, and astonished me.” — Cheryl Strayed, New York Times bestselling author of Wild A powerful, beautifully rendered memoir of chronic illness, misdiagnosis, addiction, and the myth of full recovery. For as long as author Porochista Khakpour can remember, she has been sick. For most of that time, she didn't know why. Several drug addictions, some major hospitalizations, and over $100,000 later, she finally had a diagnosis: late-stage Lyme disease. Sick is Khakpour's grueling, emotional journey—as a woman, an Iranian-American, a writer, and a lifelong sufferer of undiagnosed health problems—in which she examines her subsequent struggles with mental illness and her addiction to doctor prescribed benzodiazepines, that both aided and eroded her ever-deteriorating physical health. Divided by settings, Khakpour guides the reader through her illness by way of the locations that changed her course—New York, LA, Santa Fe, and a college town in Germany—as she meditates on the physiological and psychological impacts of uncertainty, and the eventual challenge of accepting the diagnosis she had searched for over the course of her adult life. A story of survival, pain, and transformation, Sick candidly examines the colossal impact of illness on one woman's life by not just highlighting the failures of a broken medical system but by also boldly challenging our concept of illness narratives.

Life in the Balance

Author : Thomas B. Graboys
Publisher : Union Square Press
ISBN 13 : 1402753411
Total Pages : 228 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (27 download)

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Book Synopsis Life in the Balance by : Thomas B. Graboys

Download or read book Life in the Balance written by Thomas B. Graboys and published by Union Square Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chronicles the author's descent from a top cardiologist to a patient slowly succumbing to Parkinson's disease and dementia, including how he struggles with the feelings he experiences daily and the impact of the diseases in his life.

Elegy for a Disease

Author : Anne Finger
Publisher : St. Martin's Press
ISBN 13 : 1466852968
Total Pages : 357 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (668 download)

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Book Synopsis Elegy for a Disease by : Anne Finger

Download or read book Elegy for a Disease written by Anne Finger and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2013-09-17 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the first half of the twentieth century, epidemics of polio caused fear and panic, killing some who contracted the disease, leaving others with varying degrees of paralysis. The defeat of polio became a symbol of modern technology's ability to reduce human suffering. But while the story of polio may have seemed to end on April 12, 1956, when the Salk vaccine was declared a success, millions of people worldwide are polio survivors. In this dazzling memoir, Anne Finger interweaves her personal experience with polio with a social and cultural history of the disease. Anne contracted polio as a very young child, just a few months before the Salk vaccine became widely available. After six months of hospitalization, she returned to her family's home in upstate New York, using braces and crutches. In her memoir, she writes about the physical expansiveness of her childhood, about medical attempts to "fix" her body, about family violence, job discrimination, and a life rich with political activism, writing, and motherhood. She also writes an autobiography of the disease, describing how it came to widespread public attention during a 1916 epidemic in New York in which immigrants, especially Italian immigrants, were scapegoated as being the vectors of the disease. She relates the key roles that Franklin Roosevelt played in constructing polio as a disease that could be overcome with hard work, as well as his ties to the nascent March of Dimes, the prototype of the modern charity. Along the way, we meet the formidable Sister Kenny, the Australian nurse who claimed to have found a revolutionary treatment for polio and who was one of the most admired women in America at mid-century; a group of polio survivors who formed the League of the Physically Handicapped to agitate for an end to disability discrimination in Depression-era relief projects; and the founders of the early disability-rights movement, many of them polio survivors who, having been raised to overcome obstacles and triumph over their disabilities, confronted a world filled with barriers and impediments that no amount of hard work could overcome. Anne Finger writes with the candor and the skill of a novelist, and shows not only how polio shaped her life, but how it shaped American cultural experience as well.

The Sanctuary of Illness

Author : Thomas Larson
Publisher : Hudson Whitman/ ECP
ISBN 13 : 1626526370
Total Pages : 160 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (265 download)

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Book Synopsis The Sanctuary of Illness by : Thomas Larson

Download or read book The Sanctuary of Illness written by Thomas Larson and published by Hudson Whitman/ ECP. This book was released on 2014-01-02 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “…a series of jazz-master riffs on illness.” — TriQuarterly Review “…graceful and engaging…” — Rain Taxi We all know someone who has suffered a heart attack. But, how often do we learn the intimate, potentially life-saving details that accompany coronary disease? In The Sanctuary of Illness, Thomas Larson (The Memoir and the Memoirist; The Saddest Music Ever Written) gives a powerful and personal inside tour of what happens when our arteries fail. He chronicles the three heart attacks in five years that he survived, and the emergency surgeries that saved his life each time. Slowly waking up to the genetic legacy and dangerous diet that pushed him to the brink, he reveals a path to healing that he and his partner, Suzanna, discovered together. Told with urgency and sensitivity, The Sanctuary of Illness is a subtle reminder that heart disease seldom affects just one heart.

The Emperor of All Maladies

Author : Siddhartha Mukherjee
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1439170916
Total Pages : 624 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (391 download)

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Book Synopsis The Emperor of All Maladies by : Siddhartha Mukherjee

Download or read book The Emperor of All Maladies written by Siddhartha Mukherjee and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-08-09 with total page 624 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a documentary from Ken Burns on PBS, this New York Times bestseller is “an extraordinary achievement” (The New Yorker)—a magnificent, profoundly humane “biography” of cancer—from its first documented appearances thousands of years ago through the epic battles in the twentieth century to cure, control, and conquer it to a radical new understanding of its essence. Physician, researcher, and award-winning science writer, Siddhartha Mukherjee examines cancer with a cellular biologist’s precision, a historian’s perspective, and a biographer’s passion. The result is an astonishingly lucid and eloquent chronicle of a disease humans have lived with—and perished from—for more than five thousand years. The story of cancer is a story of human ingenuity, resilience, and perseverance, but also of hubris, paternalism, and misperception. Mukherjee recounts centuries of discoveries, setbacks, victories, and deaths, told through the eyes of his predecessors and peers, training their wits against an infinitely resourceful adversary that, just three decades ago, was thought to be easily vanquished in an all-out “war against cancer.” The book reads like a literary thriller with cancer as the protagonist. Riveting, urgent, and surprising, The Emperor of All Maladies provides a fascinating glimpse into the future of cancer treatments. It is an illuminating book that provides hope and clarity to those seeking to demystify cancer.

Eat to Beat Disease

Author : William W Li
Publisher : Balance
ISBN 13 : 1538714639
Total Pages : 371 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (387 download)

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Book Synopsis Eat to Beat Disease by : William W Li

Download or read book Eat to Beat Disease written by William W Li and published by Balance. This book was released on 2019-03-19 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eat your way to better health with this New York Times bestseller on food's ability to help the body heal itself from cancer, dementia, and dozens of other avoidable diseases. Forget everything you think you know about your body and food, and discover the new science of how the body heals itself. Learn how to identify the strategies and dosages for using food to transform your resilience and health in Eat to Beat Disease. We have radically underestimated our body's power to transform and restore our health. Pioneering physician scientist, Dr. William Li, empowers readers by showing them the evidence behind over 200 health-boosting foods that can starve cancer, reduce your risk of dementia, and beat dozens of avoidable diseases. Eat to Beat Disease isn't about what foods to avoid, but rather is a life-changing guide to the hundreds of healing foods to add to your meals that support the body's defense systems, including: Plums Cinnamon Jasmine tea Red wine and beer Black Beans San Marzano tomatoes Olive oil Pacific oysters Cheeses like Jarlsberg, Camembert and cheddar Sourdough bread The book's plan shows you how to integrate the foods you already love into any diet or health plan to activate your body's health defense systems-Angiogenesis, Regeneration, Microbiome, DNA Protection, and Immunity-to fight cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular, neurodegenerative autoimmune diseases, and other debilitating conditions. Both informative and practical, Eat to Beat Disease explains the science of healing and prevention, the strategies for using food to actively transform health, and points the science of wellbeing and disease prevention in an exhilarating new direction.

The Next Pandemic

Author : Ali Khan
Publisher : Public Affairs
ISBN 13 : 1610395913
Total Pages : 290 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (13 download)

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Book Synopsis The Next Pandemic by : Ali Khan

Download or read book The Next Pandemic written by Ali Khan and published by Public Affairs. This book was released on 2016-05-24 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An inside account of the fight to contain the world’s deadliest diseases--and the panic and corruption that make them worse Throughout history, humankind’s biggest killers have been infectious diseases: the Black Death, the Spanish Flu, and AIDS alone account for over one hundred million deaths. We ignore this reality most of the time, but when a new threat--Ebola, SARS, Zika--seems imminent, we send our best and bravest doctors to contain it. People like Dr. Ali S. Khan. In his long career as a public health first responder--protected by a thin mask from infected patients, napping under nets to keep out scorpions, making life-and-death decisions on limited, suspect information--Khan has found that rogue microbes will always be a problem, but outbreaks are often caused by people. We make mistakes, politicize emergencies, and, too often, fail to imagine the consequences of our actions. The Next Pandemic is a firsthand account of disasters like anthrax, bird flu, and others--and how we could do more to prevent their return. It is both a gripping story of our brushes with fate and an urgent lesson on how we can keep ourselves safe from the inevitable next pandemic.

Social Disease

Author : Paul Rudnick
Publisher : Macmillan
ISBN 13 : 9780312156596
Total Pages : 216 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (565 download)

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Book Synopsis Social Disease by : Paul Rudnick

Download or read book Social Disease written by Paul Rudnick and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 1997-06-15 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this comic novel by one of America's funniest writers, "the travails of (the) protagonist, a trust-funded trendoid named Guy, his ditzy clubland bride Venice, and their transvestite housekeeper, Licky Barnes, are very perky indeed. . . . "Social Disease" . . . is really about the three major issues of our time: sex, hair, and the telephone" (Paul Rudnick, "New York Magazine").

Chasing My Cure

Author : David Fajgenbaum
Publisher : Ballantine Books
ISBN 13 : 1524799629
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (247 download)

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Book Synopsis Chasing My Cure by : David Fajgenbaum

Download or read book Chasing My Cure written by David Fajgenbaum and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2019-09-10 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: LOS ANGELES TIMES AND PUBLISHERS WEEKLY BESTSELLER • The powerful memoir of a young doctor and former college athlete diagnosed with a rare disease who spearheaded the search for a cure—and became a champion for a new approach to medical research. “A wonderful and moving chronicle of a doctor’s relentless pursuit, this book serves both patients and physicians in demystifying the science that lies behind medicine.”—Siddhartha Mukherjee, New York Times bestselling author of The Emperor of All Maladies and The Gene David Fajgenbaum, a former Georgetown quarterback, was nicknamed the Beast in medical school, where he was also known for his unmatched mental stamina. But things changed dramatically when he began suffering from inexplicable fatigue. In a matter of weeks, his organs were failing and he was read his last rites. Doctors were baffled by his condition, which they had yet to even diagnose. Floating in and out of consciousness, Fajgenbaum prayed for a second chance, the equivalent of a dramatic play to second the game into overtime. Miraculously, Fajgenbaum survived—only to endure repeated near-death relapses from what would eventually be identified as a form of Castleman disease, an extremely deadly and rare condition that acts like a cross between cancer and an autoimmune disorder. When he relapsed while on the only drug in development and realized that the medical community was unlikely to make progress in time to save his life, Fajgenbaum turned his desperate hope for a cure into concrete action: Between hospitalizations he studied his own charts and tested his own blood samples, looking for clues that could unlock a new treatment. With the help of family, friends, and mentors, he also reached out to other Castleman disease patients and physicians, and eventually came up with an ambitious plan to crowdsource the most promising research questions and recruit world-class researchers to tackle them. Instead of waiting for the scientific stars to align, he would attempt to align them himself. More than five years later and now married to his college sweetheart, Fajgenbaum has seen his hard work pay off: A treatment he identified has induced a tentative remission and his novel approach to collaborative scientific inquiry has become a blueprint for advancing rare disease research. His incredible story demonstrates the potency of hope, and what can happen when the forces of determination, love, family, faith, and serendipity collide. Praise for Chasing My Cure “A page-turning chronicle of living, nearly dying, and discovering what it really means to be invincible in hope.”—Angela Duckworth, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Grit “[A] remarkable memoir . . . Fajgenbaum writes lucidly and movingly . . . Fajgenbaum’s stirring account of his illness will inspire readers.”—Publishers Weekly

A Sick Life

Author : Tionne "T-Boz" Watkins
Publisher : Rodale
ISBN 13 : 162336860X
Total Pages : 274 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (233 download)

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Book Synopsis A Sick Life by : Tionne "T-Boz" Watkins

Download or read book A Sick Life written by Tionne "T-Boz" Watkins and published by Rodale. This book was released on 2017-09-12 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A candid memoir of fame, strength, family, and friendship from the lead singer of TLC As the lead singer of Grammy-winning supergroup TLC, Tionne "T-Boz" Watkins has seen phenomenal fame, success, and critical acclaim. But backstage, she has lived a dual life. In addition to the balancing act of juggling an all-consuming music career and her family, Tionne has struggled since she was a young girl with sickle-cell disease--a debilitating and incurable condition that can render her unable to perform, walk, or even breathe. A Sick Life chronicles Tionne's journey from a sickly young girl from Des Moines who was told she wouldn't live to see 30 through her teen years in Atlanta, how she broke into the music scene, and became the superstar musician and sickle-cell disease advocate she is today. Through Tionne's tough, funny, tell-it-like-it-is voice, she shares how she found the inner strength, grit, and determination to live her dream, despite her often unpredictable and debilitating health issues. She dives deep into never-before-told TLC stories, including accounts of her friendship with Lisa "Left-Eye" Lopes and her tragic death. Tionne's unvarnished discussion of her remarkable life, disease, unending strength, and ability to power through the odds offers a story like no other.

Vaccines: A Biography

Author : Andrew W. Artenstein
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN 13 : 1441911081
Total Pages : 402 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (419 download)

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Book Synopsis Vaccines: A Biography by : Andrew W. Artenstein

Download or read book Vaccines: A Biography written by Andrew W. Artenstein and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2009-12-11 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why another book about vaccines? There are already a few extremely well-written medical textbooks that provide comprehensive, state-of-the-art technical reviews regarding vaccine science. Additionally, in the past decade alone, a number of engrossing, provocative books have been published on various related issues ra- ing from vaccines against specific diseases to vaccine safety and policy. Yet there remains a significant gap in the literature – the history of vaccines. Vaccines: A Biography seeks to fill a void in the extant literature by focusing on the history of vaccines and in so doing, recounts the social, cultural, and scientific history of vaccines; it places them within their natural, historical context. The book traces the lineage – the “biography” – of individual vaccines, originating with deeply rooted medical problems and evolving to an eventual conclusion. Nonetheless, these are not “biographies” in the traditional sense; they do not trace an individual’s growth and development. Instead, they follow an idea as it is conceived and dev- oped, through the contributions of many. These are epic stories of discovery, of risk-takers, of individuals advancing medical science, in the words of the famous physical scientist Isaac Newton, “by standing on the shoulders of giants. ” One grant reviewer described the book’s concept as “triumphalist”; although meant as an indictment, this is only partially inaccurate.

Bite Me

Author : Ally Hilfiger
Publisher : Center Street
ISBN 13 : 1455567078
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (555 download)

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Book Synopsis Bite Me by : Ally Hilfiger

Download or read book Bite Me written by Ally Hilfiger and published by Center Street. This book was released on 2016-05-10 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ally was at a breaking point when she woke up in a psych ward at the age of eighteen. She couldn't put a sentence together, let alone take a shower, eat a meal, or pick up a phone. What had gone wrong? In recent years, she had produced a feature film, a popular reality show for a major network, and had acted in an off-Broadway play. But now, Ally was pushed to a psychotic break after struggling since she was seven years old with physical symptoms that no doctor could explain; everything from joint pain, to night sweats, memory loss, nausea, and brain fog. A doctor in the psych ward was finally able to give her the answers her and her family had desperately been searching for, and the diagnosis that all the previous doctors had missed. She learned that she had Lyme disease-and finally had a breakthrough. What she didn't know was that this diagnosis would lead her down some of the most excruciating years of her life before beginning her journey to recovery from eleven years of misdiagnosis and physical pain. She would need to find her courage to heal physically, mentally, and emotionally, and become the survivor she is today. Set against the backdrop of the fast-paced fashion and entertainment industries, BITE ME shares the heartbreaking and hilarious stories that moved Ally forward on her journey from sickness to health. Its themes will be familiar to more than 300,000 Americans diagnosed with Lyme disease each year, many of whom, like Ally, wondered for years what was wrong with them. BITE ME offers readers hope and ideas for how one can transition from victim to survivor, and shares the spiritual principles and actions that have contributed to her wholeness as a human, mother, and international spokesperson against Lyme disease.

A History of English Autobiography

Author : Adam Smyth
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1107078415
Total Pages : 455 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (7 download)

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Book Synopsis A History of English Autobiography by : Adam Smyth

Download or read book A History of English Autobiography written by Adam Smyth and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-04-04 with total page 455 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This History explores the genealogy of autobiographical writing in England from the medieval period to the digital era.