For Women Only!: Your Guide to Health Empowerment

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Summary: So Many Options
Review: "For Women Only" contains a wealth of information for women like myself who want to know their options.

When I face health problems or other dilemmas, I do not take the first solution presented because I have found by hard experience that many of the answers that the so-called experts offer do not work. I am grateful to the authors of this book for presenting so many valuable alternatives.

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Summary: A must read anthology!
Review: Barbara Seaman has done an excellent job collecting materials for her book FOR WOMEN ONLY. Topics range from breast cancer to domestic violence to pregnancy. There is also plenty of information about the women's movement, history and predictions for the future. Gary Null and Ms. Seaman, women's health advocate and author of such books as Doctors' Case Against the Pill and Lovely Me, the Story of Jacqueline Susann, have produced another informative and well written book. It's a must read for women of all ages!

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Summary: HANDS-ON HANDBOOK FOR WOMEN --- AND MEN
Review: Don't let the sexist title put you off -- this is an important book for women ... and the men (and women) who love 'em. Leading alternative health advocate Gary Null and Barbara Seaman have pulled together the first social history of its kind, a chunky, crammed-with-facts compendium that addresses women's health from a preventive/curative perspective as well as a historical/contextual one. It's as much a reference book as it is a hands-on activist's handbook, with advice, essays and interviews from the country's top alternative practitioners, thinkers, writers, doctors and sociologist. A weighty -- and welcome -- addition to everyone's library.

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Summary: For Women Only! Your Guide to Health Empowerment
Review: Thank you, Dr. Null, for holistically addressing the health concerns that are predominant in women. The politics behind female healthcare are shocking and frightening. You put it all into perspective within these covers. You also saved me from the quandary of what to buy all the women in my family for Christmas. You're insightful and have a wealth of helpful information. Bless you.

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Summary: Not just any guide to women's health
Review: The practice and politics of women's health come together in this unusual--and much needed--tome. I especially enjoyed the second section, which was edited by women's health crusader Barbara Seaman, and which contained heaps of fascinating, sometimes provocative, material for anyone interested not just in women's health, but also in the larger realm of women's issues.

Rating:
Summary: So Many Options
Review: This book blows away all the literature on the subject that I have come across.

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Summary: A must read anthology!
Review: This is a wonderful reference work for women who choose to take responsibility for their lives and for men who want to understand the realities that we females face.

I found the comprehensive coverage of health issues and alternative treatments especially helpful. Thank you, Gary Null and Barbara Seaman, for bringing together so much empowering information.

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Summary: Beware of this book - fact or fiction
Review: When I first picked up this book, my first inclination was to find/read the health information on uterine fibroids. In doing so, the misinformation presented (poor alternative health care advice based on erroneous fibroid information) disturbed me a great deal. Gary Null's attempt to push out yet another health care book -- this one beyond his true knowledge of ALL the subject matter included -- was not a "good" attempt at all. Although I too enjoy reading Prevention Magazine from time to time, I hardly think it a journal to quote from in support of presenting medical information regarding disease, diagnosis, and treatment options. Unfortunately, far too much of Null's "research" begins and ends with Prevention Magazine and there is no Bibliography whatsoever to support his many quotes of medical research. Whatever happened to reading the medical literature first hand before writing a work like this as well as listing those resources so others could read the information first hand as well?

However, while initially annoyed over the medical information presented in the first half of this book, my opinion quickly changed and I was won over by reading the "Health Empowerment for Women" writings pulled together by Barbara Seaman. What a collection. Incredible details regarding the history of the women's health care movement that includes excerpts/writings from Elizabeth Cady Stanton ("Motherhood"), Sojourner Truth ("Ain't I Woman"), Elizabeth Siegel Watkins ("Informed Consent"), Shere Hite ("The Sexuality Questionnaire"), Gloria Steinem ("If Men Could Menstruate" -- a true classic written in 1978 that I remember reading when I was in college!), and many, many more.

On fibroids and hysterectomy, check out page 1126: "So You're Going to Have a New Body!" by Lynne Sharon Schwartz. Gripping essay that is worth the price of the book alone. In fact, this essay is so powerful that I would firmly recommend you hit the bookstore or library to read it even if you can't afford the price tag of the book. It's an absolute "must read" for every woman diagnosed with uterine fibroids who has received the recommendation of hysterectomy.

There's more. Much much more. What I can't figure out, is why these ~900 pages pulled together by Barbara Seaman were ever published with Gary Null's ~600 pages. Doesn't make any sense at all to me. Quite frankly, if I could rip out the first 600 pages and keep the rest, I would. Maybe the publisher would consider a new edition containing just the collection of works pulled together by Ms. Seaman? I'd buy that version in a heartbeat -- and I'd definitely send my daughter a copy too. To sum Ms. Seaman's half of the book up, a quote from Sojourner Truth (p. 675):

"If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them."

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