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The Globe & Mail reviews Phoenix: The Life of Norman Bethune by Roderick Stewart and Sharon Stewart.
Their well-written, exhaustive and highly readable Phoenix: The Life of Norman Bethune should become the definitive basis for all serious discussion of Bethune. Because the book is so thorough and so objective, it will spark a more informed debate about the meaning of his career.
The son of a Presbyterian minister who failed repeatedly because of his arrogance and irascibility, Bethune, according to the Stewarts, repeated his father’s misadventures in a medical milieu. Bethune could not get along with anyone for any length of time, alienating colleagues, friends and the various women he compulsively pursued. He was not a good or respected surgeon, for he imperilled patients’ lives with haste and sloppiness. The Stewarts speculate that he had a borderline personality disorder; he was clearly an alcoholic and may have abused morphine. Bethune lied about his communism, defrauded an insurance company to support himself and personally carried out abortions on his wife and one of his mistresses. The Western doctor who knew him best in China considered him “psychopathic” and “a horrible man.”
To learn more about Phoenix, or to order online, click here.
To arrange an interview with the Stewarts, contact –
Jacqui Davis, MQUP Publicist, jacqueline.davis@mcgill.ca
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