Amy Lowell Books

I paid for two volumes but only came the first volume. I was deceived.
I want the second volume or my money back.

Trying to purchase this two volume set through AMAZON was a DISASTER! The order was shipped and only one of the two volumes arrived. I returned the one volume and AMAZON reshipped the order. Again, only volume two arrived. I finally had to cancel the order with AMAZON and ordered it directly from the publisher ~ McGraw Hill Medical. AMAZON has not explained the basis for the problem, but McGraw Hill ships the two volumes together in shrink wrap. Somehow, the two volumes (which look identical except for the volume number) were removed from the shrink wrap and, in each case, only volume 2 was shipped by AMAZON.

We ordered this twice from Amazon. Each time, it came with only one of two volumes. When calling in to correct this, each time the assistant was unable to figure out how to get us the second volume, so we returned both first volumes and have not tried to re-order.

I have relied on this book for years to keep me up to date on the science and practice of dermatology. I was thrilled to be asked to write the chapter on cosmetics and skin care (ch 251) and counted the days until this edition was out. Once my book arrived I went to the website, entered my code and downloaded the book to my laptop. It is UNBELIEVABLE!!! You can search the entire 2 volume book for a search term in seconds. I can carry the book with me on my lap top to grand rounds, conferences and on airplanes. It is now my peripheral brain. Thanks to McGraw Hill for making it even easier on those of us who constantly write a need references at our fingertips. In addition- the illustrations are beautiful. If you are trying to decide whether to chunk your old one and spring for the new one- DO IT!

I had been looking forward to the new edition of Fitzpatrick after the announcements of new, updated format, improved web-content, etc. What a disappointment! Only part of the text is actually in the book, additional content only to be found on the web-version, which is both cumbersome to use (PDF version of the book rather than html with hyperlinks) and appears to deliver only part of what was promised (i.e. there is no way to copy the figures and paste into powerpoint). As a bonus, the entire text is littered with "e" symbols indicating additional e-only text, which makes for quite annoying reading and is just plain ugly.

The general unattractiveness of the layout is compounded by the 3-column design, which means that practically every word longer than 10 letters (i.e. most of derm nomenclature) is hyphenated at least once (often twice). Not the way forward for residents and practicioners alike, methinks. Figure quality is definitely below the Bolognia standard and after reviewing several chapters it is obvious that a lot of the material is duplicated throughout both volumes (amazingly, the same picture that looks fine in volume I will be off-color in volume II and vice versa, which is quite annoying in a field like dermatology, which relies heavily on visual clues).

If this is the future of textbooks, then I hope I will be able to get on without using any. In the meantime, I shall return my copy of Fitz and go with the new edition of Bolognia.

After reading this book, I had a new persepctive for the poet, Amy Lowell. Now I realized the hardships she went through in order to persue her writing career. The book is very moving.