Between Fitness and Death

Between Fitness and Death

Author: Stefanie Hunt-Kennedy

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2020-04-13

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 0252052072

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Long before the English became involved in the African slave trade, they imagined Africans as monstrous and deformed beings. The English drew on pre-existing European ideas about monstrosity and deformity to argue that Africans were a monstrous race, suspended between human and animal, and as such only fit for servitude. Joining blackness to disability transformed English ideas about defective bodies and minds. It also influenced understandings of race and ability even as it shaped the embodied reality of people enslaved in the British Caribbean. Stefanie Hunt-Kennedy provides a three-pronged analysis of disability in the context of Atlantic slavery. First, she examines the connections of enslavement and representations of disability and the parallel development of English anti-black racism. From there, she moves from realms of representation to reality in order to illuminate the physical, emotional, and psychological impairments inflicted by slavery and endured by the enslaved. Finally, she looks at slave law as a system of enforced disablement. Audacious and powerful, Between Fitness and Death is a groundbreaking journey into the entwined histories of racism and ableism.


The Death and Life of the Great Lakes

The Death and Life of the Great Lakes

Author: Dan Egan

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2017-03-07

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 0393246442

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New York Times Bestseller Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Award "Nimbly splices together history, science, reporting and personal experiences into a taut and cautiously hopeful narrative.… Egan’s book is bursting with life (and yes, death)." —Robert Moor, New York Times Book Review The Great Lakes—Erie, Huron, Michigan, Ontario, and Superior—hold 20 percent of the world’s supply of surface fresh water and provide sustenance, work, and recreation for tens of millions of Americans. But they are under threat as never before, and their problems are spreading across the continent. The Death and Life of the Great Lakes is prize-winning reporter Dan Egan’s compulsively readable portrait of an ecological catastrophe happening right before our eyes, blending the epic story of the lakes with an examination of the perils they face and the ways we can restore and preserve them for generations to come.


Sitting Kills, Moving Heals

Sitting Kills, Moving Heals

Author: Joan Vernikos

Publisher: Linden Publishing

Published: 2011-11-03

Total Pages: 205

ISBN-13: 1610351231

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This groundbreaking new medical work demonstrates how modern sedentary lifestyles contribute to poor health, obesity, and diabetes, and how health can be dramatically improved by continuous, low-intensity, movement that challenges the force of gravity. Citing her original NASA research on how weightlessness weakens astronauts' muscles, bones, and overall health, the author presents a simple and effective plan for maintaining good health throughout life by developing new lifestyle habits of frequent gravity-challenging movement. Written for everyone who spends most of their lives sitting in chairs, at desks, and in cars, this practical, easy-to-follow action plan outlines simple gravity-challenging activities such as standing up frequently, stretching, walking, and dancing that are more healthful and effective than conventional diet and exercise regimens.


Numbered Lives

Numbered Lives

Author: Jacqueline Wernimont

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2019-01-01

Total Pages: 239

ISBN-13: 0262039044

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A feminist media history of quantification, uncovering the stories behind the tools and technologies we use to count, measure, and weigh our lives and realities. Anglo-American culture has used media to measure and quantify lives for centuries. Historical journal entries map the details of everyday life, while death registers put numbers to life's endings. Today we count our daily steps with fitness trackers and quantify births and deaths with digitized data. How are these present-day methods for measuring ourselves similar to those used in the past? In this book, Jacqueline Wernimont presents a new media history of western quantification, uncovering the stories behind the tools and technologies we use to count, measure, and weigh our lives and realities. Numbered Lives is the first book of its kind, a feminist media history that maps connections not only between past and present-day “quantum media” but between media tracking and long-standing systemic inequalities. Wernimont explores the history of the pedometer, mortality statistics, and the census in England and the United States to illuminate the entanglement of Anglo-American quantification with religious, imperial, and patriarchal paradigms. In Anglo-American culture, Wernimont argues, counting life and counting death are sides of the same coin—one that has always been used to render statistics of life and death more valuable to corporate and state organizations. Numbered Lives enumerates our shared media history, helping us understand our digital culture and inheritance.


Sick from Freedom

Sick from Freedom

Author: Jim Downs

Publisher: OUP USA

Published: 2012-05-14

Total Pages: 279

ISBN-13: 0199758727

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Sick from Freedom provides the first study of the health conditions of emancipated slaves and reveals the epidemics, illnesses, and poverty that former slaves suffered from when slavery ended and freedom began.


The Mark of Slavery

The Mark of Slavery

Author: Jenifer L. Barclay

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2021-04-13

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 0252052617

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Exploring the disability history of slavery Time and again, antebellum Americans justified slavery and white supremacy by linking blackness to disability, defectiveness, and dependency. Jenifer L. Barclay examines the ubiquitous narratives that depicted black people with disabilities as pitiable, monstrous, or comical, narratives used not only to defend slavery but argue against it. As she shows, this relationship between ableism and racism impacted racial identities during the antebellum period and played an overlooked role in shaping American history afterward. Barclay also illuminates the everyday lives of the ten percent of enslaved people who lived with disabilities. Devalued by slaveholders as unsound and therefore worthless, these individuals nonetheless carved out an unusual autonomy. Their roles as caregivers, healers, and keepers of memory made them esteemed within their own communities and celebrated figures in song and folklore. Prescient in its analysis and rich in detail, The Mark of Slavery is a powerful addition to the intertwined histories of disability, slavery, and race.


The Culture of Death: The Assault on Medical Ethics in America (Large Print 16pt)

The Culture of Death: The Assault on Medical Ethics in America (Large Print 16pt)

Author: Wesley J. Smith

Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com

Published: 2010-10-06

Total Pages: 474

ISBN-13: 145877841X

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When his teenaged son Christopher, brain-damaged in an auto accident, developed a 106-degree fever following weeks of unconsciousness, John Campbell asked the attending physician for help. The doctor refused. Why bother? The boy's life was effectively over. Campbell refused to accept this verdict. He demanded treatment and threatened legal action. The doctor finally relented. With treatment, Christopher's temperature subsided almost immediately. Soon afterwards he regained consciousness and today he is learning to walk again. This story is one of many Wesley Smith recounts in his groundbreaking new book, The Culture of Death. Smith believes that American medicine ''is changing from a system based on the sanctity of human life into a starkly utilitarian model in which the medically defenseless are seen as having not just a 'right' but a 'duty' to die.'' Going behind the current scenes of our health care system, he shows how doctors withdraw desired care based on Futile Care Theory rather than provide it as required by the Hippocratic Oath. And how ''bioethicists'' influence policy by considering questions such as whether organs may be harvested from the terminally ill and disabled. This is a passionate, yet coolly reasoned book about the current crisis in medical ethics by an author who has made ''the new thanatology'' his consuming interest.


The Unwinding of the Miracle

The Unwinding of the Miracle

Author: Julie Yip-Williams

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2019-02-05

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 0525511369

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Read with Jenna Book Club Pick as Featured on Today • As a young mother facing a terminal diagnosis, Julie Yip-Williams began to write her story, a story like no other. What began as the chronicle of an imminent and early death became something much more—a powerful exhortation to the living. “An exquisitely moving portrait of the daily stuff of life.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice) NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • Time • Real Simple • Good Housekeeping That Julie Yip-Williams survived infancy was a miracle. Born blind in Vietnam, she narrowly escaped euthanasia at the hands of her grandmother, only to flee with her family the political upheaval of her country in the late 1970s. Loaded into a rickety boat with three hundred other refugees, Julie made it to Hong Kong and, ultimately, America, where a surgeon at UCLA gave her partial sight. She would go on to become a Harvard-educated lawyer, with a husband, a family, and a life she had once assumed would be impossible. Then, at age thirty-seven, with two little girls at home, Julie was diagnosed with terminal metastatic colon cancer, and a different journey began. The Unwinding of the Miracle is the story of a vigorous life refracted through the prism of imminent death. When she was first diagnosed, Julie Yip-Williams sought clarity and guidance through the experience and, finding none, began to write her way through it—a chronicle that grew beyond her imagining. Motherhood, marriage, the immigrant experience, ambition, love, wanderlust, tennis, fortune-tellers, grief, reincarnation, jealousy, comfort, pain, the marvel of the body in full rebellion—this book is as sprawling and majestic as the life it records. It is inspiring and instructive, delightful and shattering. It is a book of indelible moments, seared deep—an incomparable guide to living vividly by facing hard truths consciously. With humor, bracing honesty, and the cleansing power of well-deployed anger, Julie Yip-Williams set the stage for her lasting legacy and one final miracle: the story of her life. Praise for The Unwinding of the Miracle “Everything worth understanding and holding on to is in this book. . . . A miracle indeed.”—Kelly Corrigan, New York Times bestselling author “A beautifully written, moving, and compassionate chronicle that deserves to be read and absorbed widely.”—Siddhartha Mukherjee, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies


Move Yourself

Move Yourself

Author: Tedd Mitchell

Publisher: Turner Publishing Company

Published: 2010-12-14

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 1118038916

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Praise for Move Yourself "Move Yourself is a timely and user-friendly guide to better health. I could go on, but it's time for me to get up and get moving!" --Tom Brokaw "The science is clear: staying healthy means moving our bodies more, choosing more of the right foods in the proper portions, and avoiding unsafe behaviors like smoking. In Move Yourself, you'll find the kind of sound advice and strong motivation you'd expect from an expert personal coach." --Richard H. Carmona, M.D., M.P.H., F.A.C.S., 17th Surgeon General of the United States and Vice Chairman of Canyon Ranch "Being fit has always been important in my career, both as a martial artist and as an actor. But what I learned long ago is that a physically active lifestyle also improves every aspect of living. The good news is that you don't have to train like an athlete to receive these tremendous benefits; you just have to make it a priority. In Move Yourself, Drs. Mitchell and Church explain just how easy it can be. With just a little commitment and a little know-how, you too can make yourself feel like a champ!" --Chuck Norris "Move Yourself shows that you don't have to become a gym rat--here's everything you need to get moving at your own reasonable pace." --Jack Challem, author of Stop Prediabetes Now and The Food-Mood Solution Think you don't have the time--or the energy--to do what it takes to look and feel better? Now you can take control of your health and be happier and stronger--and you don't need to join a gym to do it! Move Yourself is the breakthrough program you've been waiting for. Based on cutting-edge research from the medical director of the world-renowned Cooper Clinic, this practical, easy-to-follow guide gives you the strategies and advice you need to improve your strength, flexibility, mood, weight, and overall health. All it takes is a few minutes of low-dose physical activity each day to start seeing results.


Death Grip

Death Grip

Author: Matt Samet

Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Published: 2013-02-12

Total Pages: 287

ISBN-13: 1250022363

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Death Grip chronicles a top climber's near-fatal struggle with anxiety and depression, and his nightmarish journey through the dangerous world of prescription drugs. Matt Samet lived to climb, and craved the challenge, risk, and exhilaration of conquering sheer rock faces around the United States and internationally. But Samet's depression, compounded by the extreme diet and fitness practices of climbers, led him to seek professional help. He entered the murky, inescapable world of psychiatric medicine, where he developed a dangerous addiction to prescribed medications—primarily "benzos," or benzodiazepines—that landed him in institutions and nearly killed him. With dramatic storytelling, persuasive research data, and searing honesty, Matt Samet reveals the hidden epidemic of benzo addiction, which some have suggested can be harder to quit than heroin. Millions of adults and teenagers are prescribed these drugs, but few understand how addictive they are—and how dangerous long-term usage can be, even when prescribed by doctors. After a difficult struggle with addiction, Samet slowly makes his way to a life in recovery through perseverance and a deep love of rock climbing. Conveying both the exhilaration of climbing in the wilderness and the utter madness of addiction, Death Grip is a powerful and revelatory memoir.