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Daniel Maté, Gabor Maté: The Myth of Normal (Hardcover, english language, 2022, Knopf Canada) 4 stars

A groundbreaking investigation into the causes of illness, a bracing critique of how our society …

Interesting points, inelegantly explained...

4 stars

I started reading this with giving it a fairly close reading, and it may well have happened had I not had life stuff which lead to not feeling up to going through the whole book like that. I stopped taking the notes for that after 21 pages, and I have 12 notes, which realistically are pretty much, 1/6 of a page to explain (or more)... Though the same errors probably do repeat, and wouldn't need to use the same amount of explanation.

I feel I would have rather read it if the logical fallacies, the contradictions, and the failures to respect other's identities had been smoothed over a great deal.

Some of the contradictions occur in the same paragraph, many less than 10 pages from each other.

That said, the core of what he's trying to do here seems fairly reasonable. Some stuff I felt I just disagreed with, but didn't feel it was "bad faith" but rather a lack of understanding. Some stuff I wasn't really sure about, as it was in a different context that I couldn't be sure was misunderstanding, as I don't know well enough to be certain.

The level of certainty he makes his claims, leads me somewhat to feel he's not learned enough about them to realise how much he doesn't know.