Life and Death Behind the Brick and Razor: Code Red Diamond
by Isaac Alexis, MD
Kindle Edition, 100 pg.
2017
Read: December 12, 2017
I wanted to use science to heal people and simultaneously teach them about how their bodies functioned and how to properly take care of their bodies. I also wanted to make a difference in the lives of people who traditionally did not have access to care to begin with. So I chose correctional medicine. It had its challenges but also opportunities to save many lives. In my opinion, it also had areas that seriously needed to be addressed.
Years after this decision, Dr. Alexis has turned to writing, using his experiences and point of view, to discuss some health tips and suggestions to help teens through some hot-button and pressing issues.
After a quick autobiographical chapter, the chapters revolve around the treatment of one particular patient, and then using that patient’s particular diagnosis (or lack thereof) and struggle as a launching point for health tips and/or discussion of some of the struggles that young people (or everyone) go through related to STDs, Drug Abuse, Gang Membership, etc.
There is so much energy, so much care, conviction, expertise behind this book that it’s a shame I can’t heartily endorse it. There’s a lot of heart here, and I admire that. But it’s just not that well written. Maybe it’d be more correct to say that it wasn’t that well-edited and re-written.
First of all, it needs a thorough editorial pass on basic grammar. But it needs some work on structure, too. Within the various chapters, things can seem to be randomly organized with a lack of transitions, or foundation for some of what he’s talking about. That page count of 100 pages should be 150 at a minimum — he really needs to flesh out everything just a bit. He’s got the material, he just needs to work with it a bit more so his readers can better understand both his experiences and perspective. The nature of the facility he works at — and its relation to other prisons and hospitals, is a good example — I think I have a decent idea how all that works out, but it takes using information from all parts of the book to come up with my guess; that shouldn’t be, I should’ve been given a one or two (or more) sentence description of that so I can appreciate his struggles to provide adequate care.
Now, what he doesn’t need to give us more of us medical jargon — often he’ll unleash a couple of paragraphs of almost non-stop medical terminology. This is not a bad thing, but I think he could help the non-informed reader a little bit more than he does with some of those streams of terminology. What I eventually decided is, the book reads like a transcript of someone telling stories about his life to a new friend, people just sitting around a table swapping stories. The hopping around, the unclear writing, and so on come across just the way people talk. If you think of it that way, the book is a lot easier to take.
If you can find some way (my suggestion or something else that works for you) to overlook/make your peace with Alexis’ style, you’ll probably enjoy this book. You can even appreciate the book without that — it’s just harder. Alexis writes from conviction and passion — with a healthy dose of morality. There’s a lot to be gained from this book. I liked Life and Death Behind the Brick and Razor, but it woulnd’t take much to make me like it sooo much more. He has important things to say, I just wish the book did a better job of providing the platform.
Disclaimer: I received this book in exchange for this post and my participation in this tour — I appreciate the opportunity, but my opinion remains my own.
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