The Medical Casebook of Adolf Hitler: His Illnesses, Doctors, and Drugs Review

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(More customer reviews)There are many theories as to what made Hitler the way he was, especially the apparent personality changes after about 1942. These include psychoanalytic theories, Adlerian theories, as well as theories of diseases including encephalitis and Parkinson's disease, etc. The Hestons discuss the pros and cons of all of these theories, and then offer one of their own. They are very thorough in their reasearch and presentation and give a very compelling case for their theory. Albert Speer, in introducing the book states that, after comparing their study with his own notes on Hitler, he believes their theory to be accurate.

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Nothing so much as my own descriptions from that period convinced me that Professor Heston and his wife have come to the correct conclusion.--Albert Speer--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide Review

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(More customer reviews)This book explores the question of how doctors, who are sworn to do no harm, became the integral organizers and managers of the Nazi death camps. Through exhaustive interviews with these doctors, people who knew them, and camp survivors, Lifton arrives at more than just individual psychological profiles of these professional killers. He presents us rather with a dense, psychosocial exploration of the dynamics of state-organized terror, along with enough history to describe the milieu in which these dynamics evolved. (Many people will be surprised to discover that the eugenics movement, which fueled the Nazi terror, had a large following in the United States during the 1930's.)
The book reads like a novel in parts (especially the chapter on Josef Mengele). However, I found the introduction one of the most interesting sections; in it Lifton describes the process he went through to gather and analyze his data. This included interviewing ex-Nazi doctors, who suspected or knew outright that Lifton himself is Jewish. Lifton's descriptions of the verbal dances he and these doctors did around the German/Jewish conflict are fascinating.....For obvious reasons this book is not an "easy read," despite the quality of the writing. It will literally give you bad dreams. But it serves to instruct us about demons which still inhabit the collective human psyche, demons which we fail to acknowledge only at our peril. For this reason, if no other, it demands our attention.

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Breakthrough: Elizabeth Hughes, the Discovery of Insulin, and the Making of a Medical Miracle Review

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(More customer reviews)When I was a mere eleven years old, my parents noticed my brother attempting to smuggle a pitcher of water up to his bedroom. He admitted that he had been drinking a lot of late, and my parents became alarmed. Rushing him off to the hospital he was quickly diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. It was a strange and frightening time for the whole family, and I read everything I could on the disease to get an understanding of what was happening to my brother.
This book, takes the reader back in time to that amazing transitional time in 1922 when the diagnosis of diabetes changed from being a sentence of death, when the discovery of insulin gave so many people world-wide back their lives. It looks at the victims of the disease, focusing primarily on Elizabeth Hughes, daughter of the Secretary of State of the United States, and looks at the researchers whose activities resulted in the most important breakthrough in the treatment of the disease.
First off, I must agree that this book does take the barebones story of what happened in 1922 and before, fleshes it out with a good deal of "imagined" detail. Therefore this book is probably not terribly useful to someone who wants a reliable and scholarly history.
What this book is is more of what I would call a "popular history," that is, a book written to tell the story of the discovery of insulin, but in an entertaining and engaging manner. I for one found this to be a very informative and entertaining book. The early part that dealt with what families went through before the discovery of insulin was quite literally heartbreaking. And I must admit that when I got to the part where peoples lives were being returned to them (as opposed to living in a concentration camp-like sanitarium), I quite literally got tears in my eyes.
Yes, I really enjoyed this book, and am very glad that I read it. As someone at least somewhat knowledgeable about diabetes, I was interested to learn about what diabetes was like before there was insulin, and how much better things are today. I don't hesitate to recommend this book.

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