If there's one book I've read this year that I want to convince everyone I know to read, INFLAMED is the book! Reading it felt illuminating, comforting, and radical at the same time--the kind of comfort that comes from confirmation that what you're seeing in the world isn't an illusion, that other people see it too.
This book is radical and insightful on two fronts. First, the information it offers about the origins of inflammatory diseases and inequalities in health and healthcare. The research it provides is carefully cited and wide-ranging, and I found it persuasive. Second, the method of thinking about this information that it models for the reader: not as separate topics, but as intertwining branches of the same rotten tree. That tree is colonialism and imperialism, and I was persuaded by the diagnosis as well as by the symptoms.
Everything else I can think of to say about it sounds too effusive to be real. I honestly think everyone should read this one. It'll make you a better person. For fans of Kimmerer's BRAIDING SWEETGRASS.
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