Reviews Books

Brilliant in every way, David Kidd's carefully weaved tale of the end of Old China, as seen through the eyes of an upper class family, is profoundly personal and endearing. As it wavers between fact and fiction its underlining message becomes abundantly clear: the Old China is gone and never to be forgotten, even as those who lived it fall into the abyss of time. A moving,humorous, delightful, and sorrowful read. Simply brilliant.

This book haunts..it stays with you as a most intimate portrait of those special and tender people caught in the transition between the old China and the Revolution in 1948. No account has ever brought more tears and love for those real people who saw and felt their world change almost beyond their understanding.

Beautifully, lyrically rendered in the author's inimitable voice, full of haunting descriptions of a world that is gone forever yet never to be forgotten. David Kidd was truly one of a kind, unique in every way.

Memoirs of the surviving privileged classes who lost everything in twentieth-century revolutions can often seem terribly materialistic and self-pitying: when displaced aristocrats wail and wail for their lost tiaras or smashed porcelain, without a jot of sympathy for why they were asked to leave in the first place, you can begin perversely to develop sympathy for the cadres who called these people class parasites and threw them out. David Kidd's memoir of marrying into an ancient and wealthy Chinese family in 1948 shows every sign of such a work, but it's far better than it starts out to be (given his adoration for lives of privilege and his almost willfuil refusal to see the point of view of why anyone would support the Communists in 1949 in the first place). The superb descriptions of the Yu family's rotting but beautiful manor are done with great humor and artistry as well as with melancholy, and the very memorable portrait of the phlegmatic and wry Yus themselves seems to bring additional perspective and depth to the material. What emerges in the end is (despite the book's brevity) a very artful and moving snapshot of a world in transition

Funny, absurd, and heartbreaking moments abound in this memoir, which offers an incredibly dispassionate account of being raised, on the brink of poverty, by a freeloading father and codependent mother. In a surprising and original way, the extreme differences between his parents seem to operate like yin and yang forces that converge into the strangely sane wholeness of Dirk's own mindful and even compassionate perspective on his parents and his past.

Once you open this book, you won't be able to put it down until it's finished. There's never a dull moment. The story is heartbreaking and pretty funny at times & the author's writing style is sharp and smart.

Perishable has a lot in common with The Glass Castle, which is one of my favorite memoirs. Both stories make you wonder what in the hell the parents are thinking.

I'm very curious about what happens to the family after the book ends. I can't wait to read the author's next book.

The title of Dirk Jamison's slender memoir Perishable is a reference to the most striking oddity of the author's childhood, that his father--a man for whom the notion of responsibility was anathema--undertook to feed his family of five for a number of years by "trashing," taking recently discarded food prised from dumpsters home to the family dinner table. This was a lifestyle choice rather than necessity. Able-bodied but unwilling to waste his time on a paying job, the author's father saw eating trash as a means of gaining free time: "More trash means less work. Less work means more time." But his enthusiasm for jars of expired pickled eggs and the like was not shared by the rest of the family. The elder Jamison's bizarre take on life was coupled with a selfish abdication of parental responsibility. But his father's instability, if perhaps the worst of what the author endured growing up, was not the whole of it. Jamison's mother was the better parent of the two, but she brought her own problems to the familial mix. Now "slinking off to cry with slabs of chocolate," now refusing a knee operation because she was sure it implied temporary amputation of the affected limb, Jamison's mother, the author explains, was not so much crazy as stupid: "'Ma'am, are you insane?' is the question that nobody ever asks. But I can see that question in their eyes, and it's a misdiagnosis I'm always grateful for. Much preferable to the actual problem, which appears to be staggering stupidity." There were also the regular abuses of Jamison's Mengele-esque older sister and, in the author's adolescence, the in-retrospect-inappropriate attention of "Scoutmaster Gary," the Mormon overseer of a series of Church-sponsored activities in which Jamison took part. In short, the author's home life was unstable, and his father's mode of parenting arguably a form of abuse. Jamison and his siblings lacked dependable adult figures who were capable of making rational decisions on behalf of the family.

Jamison tells the story of his unusual childhood in spare, unflinching prose. Neither sentimental nor self-pitying, the author approaches his subject with something like journalistic dispassion. He is startlingly frank. This is most admirable not when he is detailing his family's failures but rather when he confesses to poor behavior of his own during the period. In the end Jamison's remarkable account of his peculiar upbringing is probably more universal in its scope than he intended. My guess is that a lot of readers will find much that's familiar in the book, their own imperfect familial relationships here writ more extreme. Thus Perishable isn't merely a good read. It may help you laugh at your own crazy relatives.

Debra Hamel -- author of Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in ancient Greece (Yale University Press, 2003)

All of us grew up in families that were more or less dysfunctional. But this one takes the cake. Well, it wasn't as bad as those families you see on the TV news where a child is actually killed, but boy was it bizarre. In fact it seems remarkable that Mr. Jamison grew up at all, let alone sane enough to put enough sentences together to write a book like this. Then when you find the humor and understanding that he brings to the book and you have to realize that almost regardless of what you do to them kids seem to shake it off and grow up.

The story is delightful (so long as you didn't have to live it). This is what happened to the true hippies who never became part of society. Or as viewed from the standpoint of the author realizing that everyone in your family is a lunatic. To summarize: Dad's dropped out, working sucks and he isn't going to do it any more; Mom is a Mormon whose main goal is to get her children into heaven; sis is trying to kill him. They are all nuts, but as it is described, they're nuts in a delightful way.

Highly amusing read.

This is a great book for easy reading & covers all inpatient pediatric subjects you will encounter in house. I only wish the book was smaller for my lab coat's pocket!

great quick reference for the "I need to know this now" type of information. An excellent job and excellent tool for teaching med students and residents

The Philadelphia Guide: Inpatient Pediatrics fills a significant gap in practical pediatric texts. Harriet Lane has long been the standard, but is difficult to use, impractical at times, and incomplete. This book, which conveniently fits in a white coat pocket, is an indispensible resource for medical students and pediatric residents and fills the holes that Harriet leaves open. It give practical and complete, yet concise information on presentation and management of the diseases commonly encountered by the pediatric inpatient physician. As a new pediatric resident, this book has become the most indispensible resource in my pocket.

As a user of harrriet lane for years...This book goes beyond. As an easy to read, comprehensive resource for almost everything you will see as an inpatient house officer, I would recommend keeping it with you at all times. It is filled with all the questions you find yourself often looking up on those late night calls. It gives you the one line answers you are always looking for. It has information on conditions from the most basic to the most obscure and what you need to know about them. It provides answers to treatment, diagnosis, and guidelines.

Most of all it helps you treat patients, provide better care, and teach you at the same time. It includes chart, bold type, and subject heading formats. This book is AWESOME!!! Get yours today

This is a highly informative, easy to read book of interviews which is geared to anyone interested in contemporary analytic philosophy. Technical language is kept to a minimum and the book was very inspiring to this newbie to philosophy.

Just finished this wonderful collection of interviews. Past reviewers have been accurate in their high assessment of this collection. Let me add that as a professor of philosophy at a top 10 department who knows many of these men being interviewed personally, I found this collection to be profoundly revealing (though The Harvard Review of Philosophy, quickly becoming quite a prestigious publication, has never requested an interview from me!)

The interviews have a nice even keeled pitch to them which both reveal the individuals being interviewed as academics, and also as people. If you have not had the chance to have lunch at a conference at the same table as Hillary Putnam (who is charming) or coffee with Cora Diamond (who is absolutely wonderful) this may be as close as you will ever come (some of the interviewees have passed away, such as Quine, so this is particularly valuable contribution here). Grab a copy of this book right now, for yourself or for a friend. Give it as a gift - it is quite a handsome-looking volume.

Those who have not bought the book (and quite a few of my fellow colleagues have - it has become a kind of guilty pleasure for the members of the department) do not know its structure. For each philosopher here is a photograph, a brief and fair biography, and then an informal but rigorous interview. Thus, through a picture, a history, and also an interview each philosopher takes on a multidimensional personality. I particularly recommend the John Rawls' piece. He is not getting out as much nowadays and but his kindness, generosity, and brilliance come through in this rare interview.

A collection of interviews from the Harvard philosophy journal. It has a number of big names like Putnam and Rorty, and anyone who studies philosophy will be familiar with the work of everyone in the table of contents. Part musings a la "Culture and Value", part anecdotal, part confessional.

A good read for anyone who wants to gain insight into the "whole person" of those who've put forth some of the big ideas in contemporary (analytic, or 'post-analytic') philosophy. In addition to some stirring showings by (for e.g.) Rorty and Nehemas, the John Rawls interview is all we have of his more personal musings, on everything from his life's oeuvre to the morality of flying the Confederate flag (some internicene trouble among the undergraduates.)

The interviews are easy to handle in length (a dozen pages or so on average), and give you some of the best that a philosophical 'confession' would. They also have a nice 'in the moment' conversational style.

I just finished this wonderful collection of interviews with great philosophers (some of whom I studied with during my undergraduate days). The interviews convey a picture of the philosopher that is both personal and professional. It is eminently readable and thoroughly enjoyable. I recommend it highly. Philosophy is a serious hobby for me now, venture capital taking up more of my time, but I imagine that this collection would be a pleasure for someone interested in the subject at any level.

This nifty paperback covers many common problems encountered in the pediatric emergency department. Each case starts with a clinical vignette including rich color photos demonstrating visual diagnostic findings. Turn the page and...voila!...there is the diagnosis with a brief review of salient features that aid in arriving at the correct diagnosis. I heartily recommend this book to medical students, house officers, fellows, and clinicians preparing for board certification.

Be led on rounds by Drs. Fleisher and Ludwig! I honed my skills more with this book than I did on weeks of my pediatrics rotation. The authors include both common and uncommon conditions that one could expect to see in the community. "Common things are common" was reflected in that there were several examples of common conditions such as chicken pox, herpes, impetigo, etc. You will definitely feel more confident with pediatric diagnosis after reading this book.

An excellent review of pediatrics. Case based examples with crisp, clear photos. Clinical vingettes help with evaluation of the photographed child. An EXCELLENT tool for board and test review, as well as general learning purposes.

most practical and huge boost for pediatricians at all levels who seek better clinical skills and knowledge.
Highly inspirational and 'Seeing is believing!'

Know these Vignettes! Nothing more to say. They will be tested over. Period :) Terribly boring subject, but points are points.

Using this review source helped me sleep better before the exam, because I felt ready for the "case-based" style of the boards that everyone kept telling me about. This is a great series, but I don't think it should be used as a stand alone review source. Case-based coverage of topics means that some topics are missed/not covered. However, the topics covered by this volume were very high yield for my exam. Definitely worth the money!

Not a big fan of behavioral science, but this book makes it bearable by focusing on what you'll be tested on and helping you distinguish similar conditions from each other. Good biostatistics section also included. Great information and great figures to help you understand the info. Strongly recommend - the rest of the series is also outstanding.

I'm not much for writing reviews, but this book and series helped me so much I felt obligated to let people know about it. I'm very interested in psychiatry, which is why I applied to medical school, thus I wanted to write a review on this particular volume of the series. This book is composed of 50 case presentations with questions at the end of each case, followed by the explanations/answers to the questions.

The cases and explanations are superb, concise and get right to the "meat and potatoes" of every subject. After taking step 1, I can recommend this format without hesitation. I also thought the BRS Behavioral Science review book was very good.

Know these Vignettes! Nothing more to say. They will be tested over. Period :)

There was a lot of material in the books in this series, yet I found myself getting through them quickly and retaining a lot of the information, I think because the material is so well presented and explained. Great cases and the format is tailor-made for current USMLE format. This author really understand what the board question writers are into. For me, this type of review was the best way for me to get ready for Step 1.

This is wonderful review books. Excellent writing and informacion. Great pictures and examples. I do much, much better on exam from this books.

After studying like crazy for a full month for the USMLE, I needed a break from reading textbooks. I decided to check out this case-based review because a friend recommended it. I am still thanking him for this recommendation. This book and the other books in the series really prepare you well for the USMLE, because they get you used to the long clinical vignettes that made up most of my exam. The cases and explanantions are EXTREMELY high-yield and very concise but thorough. I recommend the whole series for anyone who wants to do well on the Step 1 exam.

I used this book along woth my PMP study guide, and found it very comprehensive and useful. Lot better than Rita's Hot Topics because this one is very self contained and covers more. Unlike Rita's book, It's not tied to a specific study guide. Helped me a lot in passing the exam. However, it's not an alternative to a study guide.
Highly recommended.

I used these Flashcards in a Book to pass my PMP exam. I love this approach of Flascards in a Book; they serve the same purpose as the loose flashcards, but these are easier to manage and carry around than the loose cards. I used these for a quick review of the concepts that I learned from the Study Guide. It saved me lots of time.
Plus these cards by Dr. Sanghera are very comprehensive and self contained.

I found this flashcard book the best among the two such books available in the market. It presents the quick review of your PMP exam preparation in a self contained, comprehensive, and logical way. As a companion to the PMP Study Guide, this book really helped me in passing the exam. Of course you cannot expect it to be a substitute to the Study Guide.

This book is a great tool to pass the PMP Exam. Use it as a qucik review tool and not as a study guide. That said, it's very comprehensive and self contained. Simply excellent. I recommend it, highly.

Mason's collection of essays is a wide-ranging and overall pretty good collection of essays. The title essay is sort of a 'literary memoir', and while I expected it to be one of the better essays, it really isn't. But there are some excellent essays on Auden, Tennyson, Frost, Heaney, Louis Simpson, J.V. Cunningham, Anne Xexton, and Irish poetry. And then there are the essays meant to further the cause of the New Formalist movement. They almost sound like propoganda, but they are well written, enjoyable essays that make sense. And my favorite essay is "Other Lives: On Shorter Narrative Poems." Mason is a phenomenal narrative poet, and anyone with an interest in narrative poetry should read this essay.

This book is a collection of essays and reviews by poet David Mason, who thinks that contemporary poetry and its professional readers have neglected "nonacademic readers" like "the educated common reader." Through a critical style that incorporates the anecdote and that admires Louis Simpson's "refreshingly personal criticism," "as if we were hearing after-dinner opinions," Mason's text follows the goal of his Preface: "I have in mind that audience of grown-ups arguing about books even while they discuss . . . the latest political tremors or a new movie coming to town." Mason's taste for life in poetry criticism, whether communicated through autobiographical or biographical techniques, doesn't mean that he remains uncritical of self-absorbed forms of art. In the title essay, for instance, Mason acknowledges "the useful legacy of Eliot's ideas" in support of "the self so distanced from itself." Of the book's sixteen sections, five open with personal anecdotes. These anecdotes quickly become relevant to their subject matter (whether regionalism, self-indulgence, sentimentality, Tennyson, or Yeats). Given Mason's opposition to self-indulgence, one might argue that Mason develops contradictory attitudes toward forms of expression, or that he is critical of the personal in art, but then makes self-absorbed statements like, "Nowadays close reading often bores me," or, "I have sometimes felt that I was part of a story, and that I had a sacred duty to transcribe as much of it as I could." Yet such personal statements have relevancy to the larger poetics/rhetoric of the essays. Besides, wouldn't it seem odd--and bad writing at that--to claim that "poetry helps us live our lives" without then providing here and there a few examples from life when it has? Mason claims, "People do quote poetry, or refer to it--some do, anyway--and they connect it to their lives." He then supports this claim with the example of when his mother once remembered six potent lines by Yeats. Yet Mason's theory about why "people remember poems or songs or key phrases at surprising moments in life" is questionable. He says that "the best forms of expression are often those we most want to remember." But he suggests that these best forms of expression are those that are so large, so universal, so full of matter, that they "convey 'a general truth'." "Universality is suspect in some quarters, I suppose, but I submit," Mason says, "that we cannot have great art without it." When Mason then quotes from W.H. Auden's New Year Letter, he means to show how such poetry that conveys truth makes things happen because, as Auden once said, it survives--in the memory, among other places--as a way of happening, a mouth." Yet the section he quotes, like so many Auden lines, might seem to some less like a memorable poem and more like lineated philosophical text. What are the best forms of expression for poetry? This is an important question for Mason. On the one hand, there is the often difficult poetry of magnitude, and on the other, that of locality, which is less difficult. Mason proposes that the former is usually formal, whereas the latter is typically free verse. He worries that the latter is generally practiced by poets who "ought to hold themselves to higher standards than they sometimes do." These standards are the focus of Mason's important essay "Louis Simpson's Singular Charm." A New Formalist and one of the editors of the anthology Rebel Angels: 25 Poets of the New Formalism, Mason believes that meter "is . . . a kind of compression that, in the right hands, lends language a supercharged memorability." He finds that Simpson, with his rejection of meter, "has courted danger, choosing a slighter technical range that often highlights his lackadaisical diction." Mason's essay is good at providing us with passages--from articles by and interviews with Simpson--about this Jamaican-born poet's reasons for this rejection. The reasons involve Simpson wanting his poetry to be more accessible and direct for an audience like the one Mason advocates. Simpson believes free verse better lends this accessibility and directness. Mason disagrees, making some convincing arguments; one is that Simpson "comes to that tired solecism that meter is un-American." Readers need only digest what is arguably the most important essay in The Poetry of Life, "American Poetry in the Nineteenth Century," to be reminded of the great American poets who worked sometimes accessibly and gorgeously in traditional forms. But in arguing that Simpson's stylistic change toward accessibility and directness "leaves disturbing implications for the art," a change which sometimes lends Simpson's poetry what Mason calls "deliberate banality," Mason may not be true to his aversion to the Twentieth-century critics who have prized difficulty in poems. Perhaps Mason, who from time to time in this book reminds readers of his career as an English professor, is more on the side of J.D. McClatchy, "accustomed . . . to respect the authority of difficulty," than he is on the side of Dana Gioia, to whom Mason devotes a chapter, desiring neither anti-intellectualism nor a ban of difficulty in art, but, instead, a popular audience for poetry? Accessibility, difficulty, formality, memorability, popularity, universality--these are the interesting buzzwords of The Poetry of Life. They are perhaps defined and discussed with the most clarity and precision in Mason's superb "Robert Frost, Seamus Heaney, and the Wellsprings of Poetry." Though this essay has as its primary concern a comparison of Frost and Heaney, it draws this definition and discussion in, and in very enlightening ways. Though different in many ways, both poets, Mason asserts, "have made use of colloquial speech in their poetry" and "refreshing rhythm and idiom with materials that are at least partly extra-literary." Mason demonstrates this use, rhythm, and idiom through focusing attentions on and drawing connections between each poet's images of work, play, and water. No doubt, these images are universal. And Mason knows precisely when and from what poem to quote, showing that Frost and Heaney often image the world without either that magnitudinous air of Auden and Eliot or that more banal, informal language of Simpson.

Mason is a rarity in this day and age--a poet-critic who writes in a public idiom. He is clear in his aesthetic criteria, but not so dogmatic that his work lacks room for surprise (I was surprised to see him so enthusastic about John Haines, for instance). What is most important about his writing, though, is that it is elegant as well as insightful; these essays are as much a pleasure to read as the poets he discusses. My own efforts at poetry criticism lack the warmth and elegance that allow Mason to wear his erudition lightly. The elegance, direct tone, intelligence, and accessibility of these essays give me hope that poetry criticism outside the university is not in critical condition. Cheers to Story Line Press for supporting this important poet's work.

This is a brilliant book. His analysis of contemporary poetry is astute, learned and, above all, readable. I urge everyone who is interested in poetry to read this book. His explanations of the new formalism are as sound and enticing as any offered by other critics. For poetry lovers, this is a must have book.

This is the most comprehensive and concise medical text that I have ever used....so reader friendly. It has over 70 contributors from all over the country.

This is a superb book for any practitioner working in primary care. It covers all important subjects completely and concisely. I used it to review for my boards with the review book that goes with it and I was very prepared. I highly recommend this text.

This a tremendous effort on the part of the editors and multiple contributing editors. The format is subsystem based with extensive attention to standard formatting for each subject area. The major primary care maladies in each anatomical subsystem are covered in a clear, concise and easy to read format. Excellent reference for any practitioner. The contributing author list reads like a who's who in Physician Assistant education.

I found this review book an excellent source of knowledge and simple to understand. This book by passes all the intricate biochemical details and present the meat and potatoes so to speak. The wisdom of the pearls make this book unique. I recommend this book to any professional in a primary care setting.