Award-winning journalist Liza Mundy captures the human narratives, as well as the science, behind the controversial, multibillion-dollar fertility industry, and examines how this huge social experiment is transforming our most basic relationships and even our destiny as a species.Skyrocketing infertility rates and dizzying technological advances are revolutionizing American families and changing the way we think about parenthood, childbirth, and life itself. Using in-depth reporting and riveting anecdotal material from doctors, families, surrogates, sperm and egg donors, infertile men and women, single and gay and lesbian parents, and children conceived through technology, Mundy explores the impact of assisted reproduction on individuals as well as the ethical issues raised and the potentially vast social consequences. The unforgettable personal stories in Everything Conceivable run the gamut from joyous to tragic; all of them raise questions we dare not ignore.
Every Conceivable Way recounts one couple’s nine-year quest to become parents, while giving an inside peek into the IVF and surrogacy industries, the fertility merry-go-round, and what it’s like to live for years with uncertainty. After relocating to Australia from New York, Despina Meris and her husband, Bill, settle down to baby-making. What they never expect is a string of heartbreaking unexplained miscarriages, even with the help of IVF. They turn to surrogacy – first in India, then in the Ukraine and finally in Thailand, where their baby is conceived. But more drama unfolds when, overnight, they are caught up in the Thai government crackdown on commercial surrogacy, leaving them with no way of contacting their pregnant surrogate. Every Conceivable Way, a real-life story that is stranger than fiction, asks how far you would go before you call it quits, when it seems like all the odds are stacked against you.
Back Cover: "I just know there's a baby there... I just know it!... These words are ever familiar to Board Certified Hypnotherapist and Instructor Lynsi Eastburn. Edana Lynne was conceived naturally in 2003, after her mom, Jennifer Harris, underwent just one hypnotherapy session with Eastburn. Even after 11 years of infertility marked by dozens of medical procedures and drugs, Edie's mom "knew there was a baby there." Eastburn believed her. Today, 2-year-old Edie is eagerly awaiting the arrival of her baby brother, due in November 2006. (2nd Edition Update: Edie's little brother Evan arrived safely into the world; the two are now 14 and 11-years-old.) This book was written to provide hope to those struggling with the heartbreaking issue of infertility. The efficacy of hypnosis and hypnotherapy for fertility has only recently come to light, with the first edition of this book (2006) contributing to the expansion of awareness on a global level. It's Conceivable! is not a self-hypnosis book, in that it is not designed to teach self-hypnosis techniques. Nor is it a "how-to" manual for therapists. This book addresses what hypnosis really is, and the many ways it can help with fertility issues. The power of the mind is enormous, and hypnosis is the most direct and rapid route to unlocking its potential. Gain insight into hypnosis and hypnotherapy, the interrelation of the conscious and subconscious minds, the roles of the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches of the autonomic nervous system, subconscious blocks, etc., in specific regard and application to infertility. Firsthand accounts of client cases provide a "fly-on-the-wall" experience. To realize the strength and capacity of your own mind is to discover how it can help (or hinder) you to conceive. Hypnosis helps to get your mind on your side.
The major essays of Dan Diner, who is widely read and quoted in Germany and Israel, are finally collected in an English edition. They reflect the author’s belief that the Holocaust transcends traditional patterns of historical understanding and requires an epistemologically distinct approach. One can no longer assume that actors as well as historians are operating in the same conceptual universe, sharing the same criteria of rational discourse. This is particularly true of victims and perpetrators, whose memories shape the distortions of historical narrative in ways often diametrically opposed. The essays are divided into three groups. The first group talks about anti-Semitism in the context of the 1930s and the ideologies that drove the Nazi regime. The second group concentrates on the almost unbelievably different perceptions of the "Final Solution," with particularly illuminating discussions of the Judenrat, or Jewish council. The third group considers the Holocaust as the subject of narrative and historical memory. Diner focuses above all on perspectives: the very notions of rationality and irrationality are seen to be changeable, depending on who is applying them. And because neither rational nor irrational motives can be universally assigned to participants in the Holocaust, Diner proposes, from the perspective of the victims, the idea of the counterrational. His work is directed toward developing a theory of Holocaust historiography and offers, clearly and coherently, the highest level of reflection on these problems.
"This reassuring consideration of a deeply personal matter teams seamlessly with a reasoned, emphatic call to action." - Booklist, Starred Review • ABooklist Top 10 Book on the Environment & Sustainability 2024 Explore the ways in which the climate crisis is affecting our personal decisions about family planning, parenting, and political action. In The Conceivable Future, authors Meghan Elizabeth Kallman and Josephine Ferorelli explore the ways in which the climate crisis is affecting our personal decisions about family planning, parenting, and political action. This book offers fresh, timely answers to questions such as: How do I decide to have a baby when there's the threat of environmental collapse? How do I parent a child in the middle of the climate crisis? What can I actually do to help stop global warming? Drawing from their decade of work with the organization Conceivable Future, Kallman, a sociologist and Rhode Island State Senator, and Ferorelli, an activist and former Climate Bureau editor, offers both informed perspective and practical steps for taking meaningful action in combating the climate crisis, while also making smart, balanced decisions when it comes to starting and maintaining a family. First, The Conceivable Future explores what the real threats are to reproductive, gestational, and infant health (spoiler: it's inequality, heat, and fossil fueled pollution), and debunks the myths of personal carbon footprint, and the harmful legacy of population control. The authors examine the successes and impediments of women-led movements around the world and share what they've learned through ten years of organizing to bring attention to the reproductive crisis that is climate change. Finally, the book looks at what can be done about the climate crisis today. By taking these steps, we can both understand the crisis on its own terms, and stay rooted in the human scale, where our lives retain their full meaning. The Conceivable Future is a must-read for all who want to make a difference in the world--and secure a sustainable future for all our families.
In those lonely, darkest moments of infertility when nothing seems to be going right and nobody seems to "get it," it's time for our sense of humor to kick in. What? Laugh at a time like this? Yep.
Details events surrounding atomic testing at Maralinga, including role of Patrol Officers W. MacDougall and R. Macaulay, and effects of testing on the Milpuddie family, D. Stevens, Y. Lester and others.
“Consent” is a Molotov cocktail, flung at the face of the French establishment, a work of dazzling, highly controlled fury...By every conceivable metric, her book is a triumph.” -- The New York Times Already an international literary sensation, an intimate and powerful memoir of a young French teenage girl’s relationship with a famous, much older male writer—a universal #MeToo story of power, manipulation, trauma, recovery, and resiliency that exposes the hypocrisy of a culture that has allowed the sexual abuse of minors to occur unchecked. Sometimes, all it takes is a single voice to shatter the silence of complicity. Thirty years ago, Vanessa Springora was the teenage muse of one of the country’s most celebrated writers, a footnote in the narrative of a very influential man in the French literary world. At the end of 2019, as women around the world began to speak out, Vanessa, now in her forties and the director of one of France’s leading publishing houses, decided to reclaim her own story, offering her perspective of those events sharply known. Consent is the story of one precocious young girl’s stolen adolescence. Devastating in its honesty, Vanessa’s painstakingly memoir lays bare the cultural attitudes and circumstances that made it possible for a thirteen-year-old girl to become involved with a fifty-year-old man who happened to be a notable writer. As she recalls the events of her childhood and her seduction by one of her country’s most notable writers, Vanessa reflects on the ways in which this disturbing relationship changed and affected her as she grew older. Drawing parallels between children’s fairy tales and French history and her personal life, Vanessa offers an intimate and absorbing look at the meaning of love and consent and the toll of trauma and the power of healing in women’s lives. Ultimately, she offers a forceful indictment of a chauvinistic literary world that has for too long accepted and helped perpetuate gender inequality and the exploitation and sexual abuse of children. Translated from the French by Natasha Lehrer "...One of the belated truths that emerges from [Consent] is that Springora is a writer. [...]Her sentences gleam like metal; each chapter snaps shut with the clean brutality of a latch." -- The New Yorker "Consent [is] rapier-sharp, written with restraint, elegance and brevity." -- The Times (London) "[Consent] has something steely in its heart, and it departs from the typical American memoir of childhood abuse in exhilarating ways." -- Slate "Lucid and nuanced...[Consent] will speak to trauma survivors everywhere." -- Los Angeles Review of Books ”A piercing memoir about the sexually abusive relationship she endured at age 14 with a 50-year-old writer...This chilling account will linger with readers long after the last page is turned.” -- Publishers Weekly "Springora's lucid account is a commanding discussion of sexual abuse and victimization, and a powerful act of reclamation." -- Booklist "A chilling story of child abuse and the sophisticated Parisians who looked the other way...[Springora] is an elegant and perceptive writer." -- Kirkus
During the last 25 years, life expectancy at age 50 in the United States has been rising, but at a slower pace than in many other high-income countries, such as Japan and Australia. This difference is particularly notable given that the United States spends more on health care than any other nation. Concerned about this divergence, the National Institute on Aging asked the National Research Council to examine evidence on its possible causes. According to Explaining Divergent Levels of Longevity in High-Income Countries, the nation's history of heavy smoking is a major reason why lifespans in the United States fall short of those in many other high-income nations. Evidence suggests that current obesity levels play a substantial part as well. The book reports that lack of universal access to health care in the U.S. also has increased mortality and reduced life expectancy, though this is a less significant factor for those over age 65 because of Medicare access. For the main causes of death at older ages-cancer and cardiovascular disease-available indicators do not suggest that the U.S. health care system is failing to prevent deaths that would be averted elsewhere. In fact, cancer detection and survival appear to be better in the U.S. than in most other high-income nations, and survival rates following a heart attack also are favorable. Explaining Divergent Levels of Longevity in High-Income Countries identifies many gaps in research. For instance, while lung cancer deaths are a reliable marker of the damage from smoking, no clear-cut marker exists for obesity, physical inactivity, social integration, or other risks considered in this book. Moreover, evaluation of these risk factors is based on observational studies, which-unlike randomized controlled trials-are subject to many biases.
