Reviews and Blurbs

REVIEWS

THE WOMEN'S REVIEW OF BOOKS (5-06) describes the book as "exhaustively researched, comprehensive in its cultural analysis, effectively organized, engagingly written, and, well, a riot."

Bookslut: (9-06) describes "Kamen's account of what it has been like to live for over a decade with a chronic daily headache. It is a disarmingly droll memoir, a scientific and cultural history of pain, a feminist critique of the medical and pharmacological industries, and a political “outing” of the millions of invisible chronic pain-sufferers in this country."

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY (1-17-05): "Undeniably funny. Kamen's irreverent sense of humor about her pain and herself makes the book a delight to read as she unabashedly pokes fun at the corporate pharmaceutical industry (even while she hopes for a test-tube cure), doctors and other caregivers. Kamen makes the reader understand what it is like to be happy even while one is in pain." Read More

LIBRARY JOURNAL (2-15-05): "...her story documents the failures of our medical system to deal with chronic pain or any other illness that is difficult to measure objectively while also offering insight into the desperation experienced by chronic illness sufferers." Read More

CHICAGO TRIBUNE (2-13-05): "Gripping...Kamen takes us inside the world of chronic pain and shows us how the constant disbelief and distrust she encountered were almost as bad as the pain itself... Read More

DESERET MORNING NEWS (3-11-05): "Anyone who has had serious headaches will easily relate to this book, subtitled "An Epic Quest to Cure an Unrelenting, Totally Unreasonable, and Only Slightly Enlightening HEADACHE." Read More

CHICAGO READER (3-11-05): "Paula Kamen deserves a pat on the back for, if nothing else, sticking with the publication date for this new memoir, a chronicle of her 14-year quest to treat one stinker of a headache." Read More

CHRISTIANITY TODAY (3-15-05): "Well-mannered bosses and human resource heads don't talk about it. Young women like me who miss work because of migraines maybe shouldn't draw attention to it. But it's obvious if you take inventory at most workplaces: the trouble with hiring young women is the number of days they call in sick." Read More

MSNBC NEWS (3-25-05): "The most frightening thing about Paula Kamen's 'All in My Head' (Da Capo, $25) is that what happened to her could happen to any one of us." Read More

NEW SCIENTIST (3-26-05): "Your head aches. You take a pill. Bet you didn't know that if you take too many headache tablets they can cause 'rebound' headache. The cure has become the cause of the malady. So what do you do if you get a headache that doesn't go away, ever?" Read More

AMERICAN SCIENTIST (4-05): "Paula Kamen has had a headache for nearly 15 years. Her search for relief has led her to try (among other things) acupuncture, massage, yoga, Xanax, Botox, vibrating hats, magnets, surgery, Prozac and giving up coffee." Read More

BITCH MAGAZINE (Spring-05): "Part memoir, part science journalism, part jeremiad against current medical approaches to pain management. Her reporting and gender analysis are top-notch...Kamen knows how to assemble the facts compellingly, and her commentary on doctors' views of female pain patients is nicely nuanced. Her story is both gripping and terrifying. But it's her deadpan humor and fine, fine writing that make All in My Head so truly fantastic." -- Lisa Jervis.

INDIA TELEGRAPH (4-25-2005): "While putting in a contact lens one day, 24-year-old journalist Paula Kamen felt a stinging pain from a “dagger of criminal nerves behind the left eye,” as she puts it in a darkly humourous memoir." Read More

TINFOIL + RACOON (4-05): Rochelle, a librarian from Bloomington, IN, wrtes in her blog,"I picked up All in My Head: An epic quest to cure an unrelenting, totally unreasonable, and only slightly enlightening headache, by Paula Kamen, because it sounded like it would be a fun, smart-girl treatment of something near and dear to my brain: headaches. And it is." Read More

WASHINGTON POST (5-15-05: At age 24, Paula Kamen put in a contact lens and, with that commonplace act, triggered a violent and unremitting headache that changed her life. The headache, detailed in All in My Head: An Epic Quest to Cure an Unrelenting, Totally Unreasonable, and Only Slightly Enlightening Headache (Da Capo, $24.95), launched her on a desperate -- and epic -- search for relief. Read More

BOSTON GLOBE (5-22-05): ......Kamen's head may be threatening to explode, but she manages to keep her sense of humor intact. Her prose is a pleasure, and as a fellow headache sufferer, I found this book packed with useful information. She covers diet, doctors, and alternative therapies, and even researches physiology. For readers who have headaches and for chronic pain sufferers, this book is a must-read......Read More

SHAPE MAGAZINE (6-05): All in My Head chronicles journalist Paula Kamen's 15-year struggle with prescription migraine medications that left her, now 38, plagued by lethargy, anxiety attacks and uncontrollable weight gain to alternative medicine options that also gave little relief. With the tireless consumer activism of Ralph Nader and the sardonic wit of Saturday Night Live's Tina Fey, Kamen's tale is essential reading for anyone suffering from chronic pain." -- Erica Jorgenson

CHICKLIT (6-05): Kamen has managed to create a cogent, informative and highly readable book from the dozens of messy strands relating to chronic pain and its management...Read More

PsycCRITIQUES (by the American Psychological Association), January 11, 2006. Kamen's account moves beyond being just a memoir, ...because she uses her skills as a research journalist to pepper the book with facts about headaches, drugs, and negotiating a deeply flawed health care system. Read More

BLURBS

This deeply human, witty and courageous book tells us the story of Paula Kamen's headache, and much more. During her lengthy, determined odyssey for relief of headache pain (during which the "personal becomes political" time and time again), Kamen addresses the broader issue of chronic pain in all its complexity, especially as it affects women. She challenges a broad range of western and "alternative" medical practitioners, as well as politicians and drug companies -- indeed all of society -- to develop compassionate and scientifically knowledgeable healing practices, useful remedies and improved health policies for the large number of people who suffer chronic pain. Drawing on her own experiences, historical and medical books and articles, and the testimony of many others, Kamen makes visible what has been all too invisible up until now. This wonderful book should be required reading for everyone.
-----Jane Pincus and Judy Norsigian, for The Boston Women's Health Book
Collective. See the companion website for book, with new parts on chronic pain and fatigue

"Part confessional memoir, part raucous stand-up comedy routine, part-antidote to self-help literature, part incendiary call to action, All in My Head is a painfully funny descent into the woefully underreported topic of chronic pain. Kamen writes with the dedication of a muckraking journalist, the comic flair of Woody Allen, and the obsessive attention to detail of Spalding Gray. Tragically for the author, yet blessedly for readers, All in my Head is clearly a book that Paula Kamen was born to write."
-----Adam Langer, author of Crossing California

Not since Norman Cousins' ANATOMY OF AN ILLNESS has there been a medical memoir of such depth and compelling fascination. The detail, the beautiful writing, the triumph of this young author's will over paralyzing pain will make you cry for her and adore her on the selfsame page.
----- Barbara Seaman, author and
co-founder of The National Women’s Health Network

Paula Kamen combines a sharp journalistic intelligence with a very welcome flair for the absurd.
-----Dave Eggers

Paula Kamen's comic gifts are the best prescription for protecting us against the insane realities of our pharmaceuctically-obsessed health-care system.
-----Neal Pollack, author of Nevermind the Pollacks

As a longtime fan of Paula Kamen and a fellow sufferer of constant, chronic, and misdiagnosed pain, I dove right into "All in My Head." As with her prior works, and pardon the painful pun, Kamen hits the nail right on the head in this book, this time investigating not only her headache but the metaphorical headaches one can easily get contemplating a spectrum of questionable pharmaceuticals and a parade of doctors, not a few of them unsympathetic. Best of all though, despite the sobering topic, Kamen manages to magically bring in a dose of levity- perhaps laughter is the best medicine after all- letting her keen wit and hilarious eye for bizarre detail shine through right from the start.
-----Spike Gillespie, author Surrender (But Don't Give Yourself Away): Old Cars, Found Hope and Other Cheap Tricks"

MEDIA INTERVIEWS

ARCHIVED RADIO APPEARANCES

Paula interviewed by Steve Edwards on the "848" show— WBEZ Chicago 91.5 on March 16, 2005 — archived HERE

"To the Best of Our Knowledge" program from Wisconsin Public Radio, aired week of April 24, 2005 — archived HERE

Interview with writer Kerri Buckley for Oregon Coast community radio's "Literary Cafe," aired October 2005--archived HERE

NYC's WBAI 99.5 community radio
"Healthstyles" program. Interview on federal-migraine research funding on March 19, 2010.

PODCASTS

The Bat Segundo Show #5, at Dolores St. Cafe, San Francisco. From July 2005.

It Won't Kill You, personal podcast on chronic health issues by Juliann, that also talks about pain as a women's issue. Also reads excerpt. From October 2005.

Created on 03/14/2005 05:03 PM by carolsim Updated on 03/22/2010 04:19 PM by paulakamen