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The Truth and Lies Early Medicine Taught Us About Women's Bodies and Why It Matters Today
by Elizabeth Comen
A surprising, groundbreaking, and fiercely entertaining work of narrative nonfiction, this medical history is both a collective narrative of women's bodies and a call to action for a new conversation around women's health.
For as long as medicine has been a practice, women's bodies have been treated like objects to be practiced on: examined and ignored, idealized and sexualized, shamed, subjugated, mutilated, and dismissed. The history of women's healthcare is a story in which women themselves have too often been voiceless—a narrative instead written from the perspective of men who styled themselves as authorities on the female of the species, yet uninformed by women's own voices, thoughts, fears, pain and experiences. The result is a cultural and societal legacy of gender bias in medicine that continues to shape the (mis)treatment and care of women.
While the modern age has seen significant advancements in the medical field, the notion that female bodies are flawed inversions of the male ideal lingers on—as do the pervasive societal stigmas and lingering ignorance that shape women's health and relationships with their own bodies.
In a feat of compelling science writing, Memorial Sloan Kettering oncologist and medical historian Dr. Elizabeth Comen draws back the curtain on the collective medical history of women to reintroduce us to our whole bodies—how they work, the actual doctors and patients whose perspectives and experiences laid the foundation for today's medical thought, and the many oversights that still remain unaddressed. With a physician's knowledge and empathy, Dr. Comen follows the road map of the eleven organ systems to share unique and untold stories, drawing upon medical texts and journals, interviews with expert physicians, as well as her own experience treating thousands of women.
Empowering women to better understand ourselves and encouraging patient advocacy for care that prioritizes healthy and joyful lives— for us and generations to come—All in Her Head is written with humor, wisdom, and deep scientific and cultural insight. Eye-opening, sometimes enraging, yet always captivating, this shared memoir of women's medical history is an essential contribution to a holistic understanding and much-needed reclaiming of women's history and bodies.
"Meticulously researched and conveyed in lucid prose, this fascinates and outrages in equal measure." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Wow! This book will upend everything you thought you knew about your body while empowering you to make better decisions moving forward. Through storytelling, extensive research, and easy recommendations, Dr. Elizabeth Comen has given us all a priceless road map to reclaim our agency." —Eve Rodsky, author of Fair Play
"All in Her Head accomplishes a remarkable feat of storytelling. By combining essential medical histories about women's bodies with all the narrative propulsion of a medical thriller, Comen has written a must-read, compelling, and important book." —Siddartha Mukherjee, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies and The Song of the Cell
This information about All in Her Head was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Dr. Elizabeth Comen, M.D., has dedicated her medical career to saving the lives of women. An award-winning, internationally sought-after clinician and physician-scientist, Dr. Comen is a Medical Oncologist specializing in breast cancer, an Associate Professor of Medicine and Co-Director of the Mignone Women's Health Collaborative at NYU Langone Health. She earned her BA in the History of Science from Harvard College and her MD from Harvard Medical School, then completed her residency in Internal Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital and her fellowship in oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Dr. Comen is the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including the Department of Defense Breakthrough Award for Breast Cancer, the American Society of Clinical Oncology Young Investigator Award, and multiple grants from the Breast Cancer Research Foundation and the Susan G. Komen Foundation. Recognized for her compassion and easy-to-comprehend communication with patients, Dr. Comen is routinely tapped by the media, appearing frequently on Good Morning America, CNN, Oprah Daily, The Today Show, The View, and ABC News. A tireless advocate for women's healthcare, she is the author of the national bestseller, All In Her Head: The Truth and Lies Early Medicine Taught Us About Women's Bodies and Why It Matters Today.
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