By All Means, Resuscitate

Rating:
Summary: A TRUE PAGE-TURNER
Review: Every moment of leisure that I have, I have been reading this wonderful book and have finally finished it, although like every other page turner that I have read, I did not want it to end! I vote for a sequel.

Rating:
Summary: A Rich and Rewarding Read!
Review: In this fascinating memoir, Dr. David Chamovitz comes across as a Renaissance man of many passions: medicine, music (he plays a mellow cello), family, Judaism, civil rights, Israel. Rescuer of many Russian Jews and compassionate cardiologist to countless patients in the U.S. and Israel, he poignantly relates how he could not save his own beautiful, manic-depressivedaughter from suicide. The author has been frank in revealing his personality, including even a couple of "warts." But that's what makes him, as a characterin his story, so appealing. I enjoy his humor, I empathize with his anguish, and I understand his rages. I was really impressed by the spirituality of a self-proclaimed "rationalist" that comes through in his book. This is a rich and rewarding read.

Rating:
Summary: A Rich and Rewarding Read!
Review: In this fascinating memoir, Dr. David Chamovitz comes across as a Renaissance man of many passions: medicine, music (he plays a mellow cello), family, Judaism, civil rights, Israel. Rescuer of many Russian Jews and compassionate cardiologist to countless patients in the U.S. and Israel, he poignantly relates how he could not save his own beautiful, manic-depressivedaughter from suicide. The author has been frank in revealing his personality, including even a couple of "warts." But that's what makes him, as a characterin his story, so appealing. I enjoy his humor, I empathize with his anguish, andI understand his rages. I was really impressed by the spirituality of a self-proclaimed "rationalist" that comes through in his book. This is a rich and rewarding read.

Rating:
Summary: Author's book summary
Review: So many times have I worked on a dying patient frantically trying to breathe life into a lifeless body. And many times have I questioned myself, "Why don't you give up?" The title of my memoir, "By All Means, Resuscitate," says, "no matter the consequences or the effort required, keep my life going with the caveat: that my intellectual capacity not be impaired." Though my life has not always been happy, it has been fascinating. Some of the high points of my story are:
the closing of a circle beginning with the journey of my grandfather from Europe and my parents to the U.S. and my eventual "aliyah" to Israel.
my Harvard Medical School education -- as the fourth brother in the family to be an M.D.
my evolution from a 'double-talking physician hiding fatal cancer diagnoses from patients to a proponent of assisted suicide to the terminally ill (with a deep bow of humility to the occasional terminal prognosis that mysteriously reverses itself.)
my courtship of my wife by playing duets, she on the violin, I, on the cello.
my delight in my family -- two daughters (one now an M.D.) and a son (now a micro-biologist) and my anguish in not being able to save my other beautiful daughter, a manic-depressive, from suicide.
my encouragement of -- and fear about -- my wife's decision to heal her niece by donating a kidney to her.
my fights against anti-Semitism and segregation in my small Pennsylvania town.
the efforts of my wife and myself to save Russian Jews.
our adaptation to life in Israel, including my often frustrating, sometimes comic, struggles to learn Hebrew, and our lives, and those of our children and grandchildren during the Gulf War -- and beyond ...

Rating:
Summary: Author's book summary
Review: So many times have I worked on a dying patient frantically trying to breathe life into a lifeless body. And many times have I questioned myself, "Why don't you give up?" The title of my memoir, "By All Means, Resuscitate," says, "no matter the consequences or the effort required, keep my life going with the caveat: that my intellectual capacity not be impaired." Though my life has not always been happy, it has been fascinating. Some of the high points of my story are:
the closing of a circle beginning with the journey of my grandfather from Europe and my parents to the U.S. and my eventual "aliyah" to Israel.
my Harvard Medical School education -- as the fourth brother in the family to be an M.D.
my evolution from a 'double-talking physician hiding fatal cancer diagnoses from patients to a proponent of assisted suicide to the terminally ill (with a deep bow of humility to the occasional terminal prognosis that mysteriously reverses itself.)
my courtship of my wife by playing duets, she on the violin, I, on the cello.
my delight in my family -- two daughters (one now an M.D.) and a son (now a micro-biologist) and my anguish in not being able to save my other beautiful daughter, a manic-depressive, from suicide.
my encouragement of -- and fear about -- my wife's decision to heal her niece by donating a kidney to her.
my fights against anti-Semitism and segregation in my small Pennsylvania town.
the efforts of my wife and myself to save Russian Jews.
our adaptation to life in Israel, including my often frustrating, sometimes comic, struggles to learn Hebrew, and our lives, and those of our children and grandchildren during the Gulf War -- and beyond ...