A Pulitzer Prize Finalist The medusa is a tiny jellyfish that lives on the ventral surface of a sea slug found in the Bay of Naples. Readers will find themselves caught up in the fate of the medusa and the snail as a metaphor for eternal issues of life and death as Lewis Thomas further extends the exploration of man and his world begun in The Lives of a Cell. Among the treasures in this magnificent book are essays on the human genius for making mistakes, on disease and natural death, on cloning, on warts, and on Montaigne, as well as an assessment of medical science and health care. In these essays and others, Thomas once again conveys his observations of the scientific world in prose marked by wonder and wit.
A Pulitzer Prize Finalist The medusa is a tiny jellyfish that lives on the ventral surface of a sea slug found in the Bay of Naples. Readers will find themselves caught up in the fate of the medusa and the snail as a metaphor for eternal issues of life and death as Lewis Thomas further extends the exploration of man and his world begun in The Lives of a Cell. Among the treasures in this magnificent book are essays on the human genius for making mistakes, on disease and natural death, on cloning, on warts, and on Montaigne, as well as an assessment of medical science and health care. In these essays and others, Thomas once again conveys his observations of the scientific world in prose marked by wonder and wit.
Elegant, suggestive, and clarifying, Lewis Thomas's profoundly humane vision explores the world around us and examines the complex interdependence of all things. Extending beyond the usual limitations of biological science and into a vast and wondrous world of hidden relationships, this provocative book explores in personal, poetic essays to topics such as computers, germs, language, music, death, insects, and medicine. Lewis Thomas writes, "Once you have become permanently startled, as I am, by the realization that we are a social species, you tend to keep an eye out for the pieces of evidence that this is, by and large, good for us."
This magnificent collection of essays by scientist and National Book Award-winning writer Lewis Thomas remains startlingly relevant for today’s world. Luminous, witty, and provocative, the essays address such topics as “The Attic of the Brain,” “Falsity and Failure,” “Altruism,” and the effects the federal government’s virtual abandonment of support for basic scientific research will have on medicine and science. Profoundly and powerfully, Thomas questions the folly of nuclear weaponry, showing that the brainpower and money spent on this endeavor are needed much more urgently for the basic science we have abandoned—and that even medicine’s most advanced procedures would be useless or insufficient in the face of the smallest nuclear detonation. And in the title essay, he addresses himself with terrifying poignancy to the question of what it is like to be young in the nuclear age. “If Wordsworth had gone to medical school, he might have produced something very like the essays of Lewis Thomas.”—TIME “No one better exemplifies what modern medicine can be than Lewis Thomas.”—The New York Times Book Review
The author's insights about a variety of natural phenomena contribute to our understanding of some of the great medical puzzles of the era. -- Back cover.
From the 1920s when he watched his father, a general practitioner who made housecalls and wrote his prescriptions in Latin, to his days in medical school and beyond, Lewis Thomas saw medicine evolve from an art into a sophisticated science. The Youngest Science is Dr. Thomas's account of his life in the medical profession and an inquiry into what medicine is all about--the youngest science, but one rich in possibility and promise. He chronicles his training in Boston and New York, his war career in the South Pacific, his most impassioned research projects, his work as an administrator in hospitals and medical schools, and even his experiences as a patient. Along the way, Thomas explores the complex relationships between research and practice, between words and meanings, between human error and human accomplishment, More than a magnificent autobiography, The Youngest Science is also a celebration and a warning--about the nature of medicine and about the future life of our planet.
An army is on the horizon sending forth a warrior's cry. Its mission is indestructible. Are you one of those warriors? An indestructible daughter stepping forth in full revelation of all God created you to be? In Indestructible Daughters, author Karen Schagunn guides women into overcoming the most vulnerable and prevalent challenges they are facing today. With a powerful life story interwoven with biblical wisdom and a down-to-earth bootcamp approach, Karen breaks through the barriers of culture, religion, fear and unbelief to shine a light of truth into the hearts of women about their rightful place in the world. Indestructible Daughters reveals the global vision of a woman's role in the kingdom of God and the power of the gospel that will set you free from bondage and brokenness and equip you to live life as a warrior-chosen, loved, and indestructible. This book embodies the ripple effect of one woman; set free in God's power and healing, mobilizing an army of unshakable women. Her story, woven into practical biblical teaching, empowers those reading it to go forth boldly in faith and confidence; it is a message all generations need to hear! -Whitney Bunker, Executive Director/Co-founder at City Without Orphans Karen's personal story is so powerful . . . the most compelling part of the book/study. This is a good guidebook for Christian women. -Liz Harrison, Co-anchor, ABC30 News, and Emmy-winning reporter With Biblical authority and straightforward reasoning, Karen Schagunn lays out the roadmap for women of God to overcome the past, empower the present, and propel into the future. You will be challenged and emancipated for personal growth and entitlement of all God's desires for your life. Ladies, there will be no excuses left as we work to finish God's work. -Bonna Rogers-Neufeld, MD
Shakespeare's Spiral aims to explore a figure forgotten in the dramatic texts of Shakespeare and in Renaissance painting: the snail. Taking as its point of departure the emergence of the gastropod object/subject in the text of King Lear as well as its iconic interface in Giovanni Bellini's painting Allegory of Falsehood (circa 1490), this study sets out to follow the particular path traced by the snail throughout the Iuvre. From the central scene in which the metaphor of the snail and of its shell is specifically made manifest when Lear discovers, in a raging storm, the spectacle of Edgar disguised as Poor Tom coming out of his shelter (III.3.6-9) to the monster, this fiend, displaying on the cliffs of Dover, 'horms whelked and waved like the enridg_d sea' (IV.6.71), this work is the trace of a narrative - of a journey of the gaze - during the course of which the cryptic question of the gastropod - 'Why a Snail [_]?' (I.5.26) - does not cease to be developed and transformed. Incorporating a wide-ranging post-structuralist critique, the study aims to bring to light the particular functions of this 'revealing detail' in both its textual and visual dimension so as to put forward a new and innovatory understanding of the tragedy of King Lear.
