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Headstrong

More Brankele Frank

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Non-Fiction

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Brankele Frank

What does one experience during burnout? Frank starts thinking about her experiences from a scientific point of view. She is, after all, a neurobiologist, interested in the human brain and its limitations. The decision to write a book about her experiences turns out to be much more difficult than she thought. It is some time before she dares to admit to herself that writing the book has triggered a second collapse.At this point, the story becomes heart-wrenching to read. Frank is still looking for scientific answers, but her search turns into something personal. The result is a lucid study of her brain, as well as an analysis of a widespread phenomenon. Frank writes with gusto and humour, though the tone is serious when she realises she may never completely recover. Not only a book about stress and the immune system, Headstrong is an indictment of our performance-driven society.<ul><li>A neurobiologist crashes and burns, not once but twice</li><li>Deeply personal and thoroughly scientific memoir about the price of success</li><li>Physical and mental collapse due to overwork is becoming increasingly common</li></ul>Year of publication 2023Page count 340Publisher Das MagRights Sebes &amp; Bisseling Rik Kleuver <a href="mailto:kleuver@sebes.nl">kleuver@sebes.nl</a>Paul Sebes <a href="mailto:sebes@kleuver.nl">sebes@kleuver.nl</a>Sample translation available

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A thorough analysis of international scientific literature, written like a gripping whodunnit, in a drily humorous style.

Neurobiologist Brankele Frank finds out what burnout really means for body and mind.

Angela Maas

Els Quaegebeur

Cardiologist Angela Maas and journalist Els Quaegebeur examine this health gap: Where are the systemic flaws in women’s healthcare? What are the misconceptions and prejudices and why are many essential differences neglected? How can we make the current healthcare culture more female-friendly as a matter of urgency?

Angela Maas’s successful previous book A Woman’s Heart was translated into several languages including English and German.

Book

De gezondheidskloof

Medicine has traditionally been based on the male body, with women as bycatch, but women are not just 
smaller men. In scientific research, female patients remain alarmingly underrepresented, and today there is still no equality between men and women as patients, despite growing proof of the differences. And female medical professionals themselves still need further emancipation in their roles.

The Healthcare Gap

Lieke Marsman

Marsman combines short essays with diary fragments in which she recounts learning of her cancer’s recurrence, meetings with harried doctors, an arm amputation and everything that makes life worth living. She has her first religious experience, though it soon becomes clear that this is not about religion per se, but about the severe limits of a pragmatic and rational Western worldview when faced with death. Marsman weaves the arguments of Christian thinkers with quantum physics, and the ideas of Wittgenstein and William James with the stories of Lucian of Samosata and ancient Greek gods. She studies scientists who turned religious, while personally wrestling with loneliness, meaninglessness, and cowardice. Her intellectual journey transforms into an obsession with UFOs – and the manifold implications for us on earth if life does, in fact, exist somewhere out there. For Marsman, dying with hope, no matter how far-fetched or unrealistic it might be, is still always better than living on without it: ‘And in moments when everything here feels unexpectedly hopeless, I’d like to think: On another planet they can save me.’<ul><li>Associative, literary style that mixes essay with intimate experience </li><li>A frank account about fighting a metastasized cancer – and a moving plea to live </li><li>A follow-up to the highly-acclaimed The Following Scan Will Last Five Minutes</li></ul>

A haunting, poetic account of an otherworldly journey through the here and now, shadowed by death. But also: a heartfelt call to live and a socially critical essay on the imagination and letting go of old certainties.

A moving examination of living with  illness, death and hope

Op een andere planeet kunnen ze me redden

In 2017, poet and novelist Lieke Marsman was diagnosed with a rare type of bone cancer. After enduring various rounds of chemo, she was told her illness was terminal. Still, she is continuing with treatment – radiotherapy, immunotherapy, operations. Living for years with death has changed Lieke’s worldview, and On Another Planet They Can Save Me is a poetic and philosophical exploration of the need to embrace the unknown.

On Another Planet They Can Save Me

Sjeng Scheijen

In this concise work, Scheijen demonstrates that Russian history is just as complex, varied and dynamic as French or German history, and equally as difficult to sum up in vacuous stereotypes. The Russian people have never been homogenous – far from it – and the country we see today was once very different. The Russian Empire, for example, was a leader in women’s rights. In fact, for much of the country’s history, it has been far closer to Europe – in cultural, economic, legislative, scientific and religious matters – than either side is willing to admit. Shining a light on Russia’s history also demonstrates something else: today’s Russia, with its authoritarian political oppression and belligerent foreign policy, was far from inevitable. With Putin’s reign likely to end within the next ten years, Scheijen reminds us that another Russia was and still is possible. Russia will have to come to terms with its Soviet history, particularly under Stalin, but it is up to us to move beyond simplistic framings of ‘us’ versus ‘them’ and recognise a rich kindred culture. <ul><li>A powerful argument against mystification, written with a dry humour. In the end, the Russian soul is ‘the American Dream in a fur cap’ </li><li>Just after the Bolshevik Revolution, Russia brought in antidiscrimination laws and legalised abortion. It was only with Stalin that rights were limited again</li></ul>

Sjeng Scheijen calls for breaking out of this self-reinforcing negative spiral – because it makes rapprochement well-nigh impossible.

168 pages in which prejudices and myths are exploded with a sovereign brilliance, humour, feel for self-mockery, and rock-solid erudition.

Building Blocks for Peace in Europe after Putin

Een ander Rusland. Bouwstenen voor een vreedzaam Europa ná Poetin

Is Russia so unique that we can’t understand its people? Putin would like us to think so, and it’s why he has to defend against the ‘decadent West’. Meanwhile, our own stubborn myths about the enigmatic ‘Russian Soul’ only confirm his narrative. If we ever hope to see peace in Europe, renowned Russia-expert Sjeng Scheijen argues, we had better look at what we share. After all, one can’t win a war of ideas with bombs alone.

Another Russia

Jan Luiten van Zanden

Van Zanden argues that it was only with the rise of sedentary societies in the Middle East and Central Asia that gender inequality first took shape. Civilizations developing on the peripheries, meanwhile, maintained a greater level of gender equality, and the religions which developed in each region either conformed or co-evolved to mirror these pre-existing gender dynamics. Rather than technology, it was women’s stronger economic position during the Middle Ages in places like northwestern Europe or Japan that drove economic development and the emergence of democratic political systems. Riding on the prosperity of the industrial revolution, however, the 18th and 19th centuries saw the rise of domesticity and the bread-winner model, confining women largely to the home. It wasn’t until the 20th century that women began regaining their place in the workforce. That women ‘belong’ in the kitchen is then a relatively recent fabrication. In one sense, Van Zanden provides a much-needed corrective to our picture of economic history by finally including women’s agency. However, Lucy’s Daughters is also about the far-reaching consequences – social, economic, political – of these historical roots. Van Zanden demonstrates that gender inequality is one of the main causes of poverty and political suppression.<ul><li>Extends from the Palaeolithic to the present, from the Middle East to the United Kingdom, from Indonesia to Japan </li><li>Told from various angles, including religion, art, criminality, even international sport, to paint a panorama of gender relations and gender inequality </li><li>Nuanced and accessibly written, with an eye for the different kinds of patriarchy throughout time and place</li></ul>

We know this, but it can’t be emphasised enough: the restriction of women’s freedoms isn’t a natural phenomenon. It isn’t the logical consequence of pregnancy or some other biological fact. And the oppressive patriarchy isn’t a consequence of agriculture. In a wonderfully concise overview book about prehistoric and historic gender relations, economic historian Jan Luiten van Zanden gives those myths short shrift.

Social inequality between men and women is a phenomenon with a long history. Jan Luiten van Zanden investigates why this relationship differs by culture and how patterns have emerged over time.

A History of Gender Relations

Dochters van Lucy. De geschiedenis van de vrouw-manverhouding vanaf de eerste vrouw

While some see gender inequality as a natural phenomenon, the history of economics reveals a very different story. Jan Luiten van Zanden’s research focuses on the complex interplay between the social status of women and economic development. In this panoramic work, he examines the historical roots of gender inequality throughout Eurasia, and its socio-economic consequences today.

Lucy’s Daughters

More Non-Fiction

What happens in your body and brain during ‘burnout’ and how to recover

Over de kop

Brankele Frank thought she could do it all. Combining a career as a neurobiologist with a job as a strategic consultant for McKinsey? Writing for newspapers and magazines? No problem, there was still enough time for a triathlon. But when her life comes to a screeching halt her first concern is recovery. After a while, Frank begins to search for answers.

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