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Shouting Won't Help: Why I--and 50 Million Other Americans--Can't Hear You
Shouting Won't Help Why I--and 50 Million Other Americans--Can't Hear You Author:Katherine Bouton Why more Americans are going deaf than ever before?and what we can do about it — For twenty-two years, Katherine Bouton was a senior editor at The New York Times. At daily editorial meetings, she had a secret that grew harder to keep every day?she couldn?t hear what her colleagues were saying. She had gone profoundly deaf in her left ear; her rig... more »ht was getting worse. As she writes, she was ?the kind of person who might have used an ear trumpet in the nineteenth century.?
���� Audiologists agree that we?re experiencing a national epidemic of hearing impairment. At present,�50 million Americans suffer some degree of hearing loss?17 percent of the population. And hearing loss is not exclusively a product of growing old. The�usual onset is between the ages of nineteen and forty-four, and in many cases the cause is unknown.
���� Shouting Won?t Help�is a deftly written, deeply felt look at a widespread and misunderstood phenomenon. In the vein of Jerome Groopman and Atul Gawande, and using her experience as a guide, Bouton examines the problem personally, psychologically, and physiologically. She speaks with doctors, audiologists, neurobiologists, and a variety of people afflicted with midlife hearing loss, braiding their stories with her own to illuminate the startling effects of the condition. The result is a surprisingly engaging account of what it?s like to live with an invisible disability?along with a robust prescription for our nation?s increasing problem with deafness.« less