A wild ride through the dark heart of American health and health care, plus sex, drugs, and stem-cell wars. PHYSICAL is the story of a hard-living, happily married, middle-aged American (the author) who gets a three-day "executive checkup" at the Mayo Clinic and is thereby forced to confront his mortality, not to mention glove-wearing doctors and the pair of dominatrix-esque technicians who supervise his stress test quite strictly. James McManus must understand his revised actuarial odds in the light of his not-so-long-lived forebears and the fact that his youngest children are only six and five years old. He has to survive his own cardiovascular system, inherited habits, and genetic handicaps long enough to see Bea and Grace into adulthood. But with so much at stake, and in spite of his terror of death, he may not have the willpower to follow the Mayo clinicians' advice. On a related health front, McManus's twenty-nine-year-old daughter, Bridget, has lived with juvenile diabetes since she was four, and the Bush Administration's opposition to the stem-cell research that could save her life makes him feel like he "might have to do something rash." Meanwhile, should he have a vasectomy? Or try for another child, having lost his only son? How much longer will he be able to perform such manly feats without Viagra? Is his grateful wife sleeping with the brilliant opthalmological surgeon who saved their daughter's vision? PHYSICAL negotiates the political and medical forks in the labyrinth of our health care system and calls for sanity and enlightenment in the stem-cell research wars. It's a no-holds-barred, wrenching, often hilarious portrait of the looming mortality of a privileged generation that can't believe the party's winding down, if not over.
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An engaging portrait of the tournament from the inside. It's made all the more effective by the author's own reading. His voice has a touch of weariness that helps color passages about the almost endless hours at the poker table. Because McManus is a novelist, he has a strong sense of pacing. And because he is a poet, he is adept at effective word choice. Both are especially effective in the audio version of his book. — AudioFile magazine on Positively Fifth Street
An engaging portrait of the tournament from the inside. It's made all the more effective by the author's own reading. His voice has a touch of weariness that helps color passages about the almost endless hours at the poker table. Because McManus is a novelist, he has a strong sense of pacing. And because he is a poet, he is adept at effective word choice. Both are especially effective in the audio version of his book.
“Irresistible . . . His prose is flashy, funny, and unexpectedly erudite . . . the writer's equivalent of a royal flush.
Exhilarating . . . As tension-packed as any thriller . . . A great story. James McManus bet big and won.
Astounding . . . Wildly entertaining.
Highly rewarding, an entertaining, informative and dramatic yarn, full of twists and turns and sweaty palms, read all the more convincingly by an author who's not just acting the part.
" Maybe more than I wanted to know about clinic time. "
" I'm listening to this on audio. I really needed a car book and it was the first I grabbed. Interesting bits about the Mayo clinic, less interesting political rants. "
" UGH, his written voice was unbearable. could not read it any more. "
" The patently obvious agenda of this book (against G.W.Bush, for stem cell research) made it a bit irritating at times -- but it happens to be an agenda with which I generally agree, which mitigated my annoyance somewhat. "
" A look at the American health care industry without the slipshod editing and smarminess of Michael Moore. McManus makes this personal. The chapter "Open Globe Trauma" will haunt you. "
James McManus is the author of the bestselling poker tale Positively Fifth Street, as well as various other novels, including Going to the Sun, winner of the Carl Sandburg Award. In 2001 he received the Peter Lisagor Award for sports journalism. His writing appears in the New York Times, Boston Globe, Esquire, and Harper’s and has been widely anthologized. He teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Patrick Frederic is an American actor whose film and television credits include The Big Easy, 200 Cigarettes, and Law & Order, among others.
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