Basic Sciences Books

I have the whole CIBA set of Frank Netter illustrations, and treasure them both for their fine artistic work and their value as medical reference resources. I found them invaluable during my medical school days, especially for my neuroanatomy classes, and still make reference to them from time to time in my clinical practice. The texts for some of the older volumes need a little updating, but the illustrations are still pertinent, helpful as ever. These are helpful adjuncts to medical students and residents alike.

I am an aerospace physician and I routinely use the Netter series, not just for my own personal reference, but to illustrate to patients the anatomy, as well as the pathology of disease processes that they may be facing. It is a well-organized series of illustrations, with excellent descriptions. It is an excellent consolidation of all the commonly required information regarding any given disease process, and functions well as an all-around reference, not just for anatomy. Though some of the text does need to be updated, it still serves as the benchmark of illustrative anatomy and pathology, and is an invaluable addition to the library of all medical personnel, both medical students and physicians alike.

My father is a doctor (both MD and PhD). He used this set of books once to explain anatomy to me so that I could understand a medical condition we were discussing. The drawings are incredible, Netter must have been a true genius with a passion for his work. What an excellent resource!

These flash cards cover ALL necessary topics! The pictures are clear and easy to understand.

I am a Complimentary Practicioner and I have found these cards extremely useful. I use them a little differently than most who have them would, but they have been invaluable. Netters paintings and discriptions are far superiour to most other Anatomy and Physiology products and books.

I recently bought 6 different packs of science flash cards. I was disappointed with most of them because they were essentially nothing but English-style questions on one side and answers on the other. I could do that myself, using index cards!

What I was looking for were flash cards with diagrams, where structures are pointed to with numbered arrows and you have to come up with the term that identifies it: with the answers on the back side of the card. That I cannot do myself. And that is what these flash cards are! The images - which are in color - are excellent too, and cover the topic of neuroscience in great detail.

Don't waste your time sitting in class for another month getting ready for Step 1. Get these books, knuckle down and do ALL of them (it will take well disciplined 7-8 hours of study 6 days per week) and you will do great. That's what I did, I'm no genius, and I still scored in the 96th percentile.

This is one of the best series I have ever seen. If you are a foreign grad, you really have to know how to take these exams. This set of 5 books is a great source. I did every question and used the explanations and I did very well on the boards. A definite must have !

Don't waste your time sitting in class for another month getting ready for Step 1. Get these books, knuckle down and do ALL of them (it will take well disciplined 7-8 hours of study 6 days per week) and you will do great. That's what I did, I'm no genius, and I still scored in the 96th percentile.

Although I found this book a bit wordy, Pells left nothing out. If not sure about the situation between America and Europe after WWII to the present, you will be after reading this book. Background knowledge would be helpful, but not necessary. The length should not turn away readers either, because it turns out to be a quick read. A very informative and comprehensive study and a must read for anyone interested in globalization in the twentieth century.

As a Texan who first moved to Europe at age 13 in 1961, Pell's book was like reading the story of my life. And yet it made me understand so many things that were always something of a conundrum (such as why the French looked down on everything American in general but adored the Kennedy's) to the sinister goings-on of the McCarthy era (they actually burned books considered subversive in American embassies abroad, such as "works by notorious radicals like Mark Twain and Theodore Dreiser"). I got this book because I wanted to have a better understanding of why the U.S. is where it is today, and it more than filled the bill, in an all-emcompassing way. Thank you, Mr. Pells.

For those not fortunate enough to attend Richard Pell's classes at the University of Texas, this book is the next best thing. A comprehensive account of the relationship between history and culture. Insightful examination of the effect of not only globalization, but "Americanization" on today's modern world.

Dr. Katz has done both the medical community and patients a great service by writing Nutrition in Clinical Practice. This book offers the layperson a surprisingly readable, painstakingly detailed overview of the role nutrition plays in health and disease. Anyone interested in knowing why good diet is so important should read this book.

For the physician or nutritionist, this book is an essential tool for incorporating the latest research into your nutritional interventions. For students, Dr. Katz's work will be a highlight of their curriculum.

A very thorough and thoughtful discussion of nutrition that is ideally suited to the needs of the primary care provider. The CLINICAL HIGHLIGHTS feature at the end of each chapter is especially useful, but the final section, PRINCIPLES OF DIETARY COUNSELING, is worth getting the book for all by itself. Knowing about healthful nutrition is the easy part - getting our patients to adopt healthful eating habits is what's difficult. This approach to the problem of behavioral change is the best I have seen.

Based on 15 years of clinical practice in Internal and Preventive Medicine, this text is specifically designed for the practicing clinician, yet is accessible to the educated lay reader. It is comprehensive, with topics ranging from obesity and cardiovascular disease, to aging, cognition, early development, and the menstrual cycle. Comprehensive, extensively referenced and carefully evidence-based, the book is concise and practical. This book should be of interest to any clinician wishing to address diet and health effectively in the course of clinical practice, as well as to any patient wanting authoritative information on nutritional health.

I always grab up any book I can find by Elizabeth Dearl. She's a fabulously talented writer with a unique style and an engaging voice. Her latest, Triple Threat, is a real treat. This book contains not one, but two mysteries starring the fun and outrageous amateur sleuth/ mystery writer Taylor Madison and her cute ferret, Hazel. Set in the colorful small town of Perdue, Texas, both stories are slyly humorous, intriguing and edge-of-your-seat suspenseful. I just love all Ms. Dearl's quirky characters. They are so real I feel I know them. In the first story, a novella entitled `Buyer's Remorse', Taylor temporarily moves in with her friend, Paula, to help her clean out and repair her recently- purchased, run down and potentially haunted house in the country. Is the house truly haunted or is the "ghost" an alive and well person with an ax to grind? The second story, novel three in the series, `Triple Threat,' involves a fascinating mixture of ingredients-- triplets who hate each other, a tornado, an amateur tornado hunter, a funeral, a bizarre will-- that cook up into one complex, outrageous and suspenseful mystery. No way will you guess the ending of either of these stories.

In this, Elizabeth Dearl's third Taylor Madison mystery, we find ourselves pulled even deeper into the lives and loves of the inhabitants of the small town of Perdue, Texas. All our favorite characters are still there, continuing to tickle us with their unique quirks and charms, but new characters take center stage bringing with them personal histories and experiences that pull us immediately into a hotbed of mystery and intrigue. A dead father's simple wish to reunite his triplet daughters becomes increasingly more complex until Taylor, her handsome sheriff lover, Cal, and the town in general, find themselves embroiled in a murder mystery as frightening and unpredictable as the tornado that pays Perdue a destructive visit.

To add to the total enjoyment of this novel, the publisher has included a short novella written by Dearl entitled Buyer's Remorse. This gem of a read finds Taylor helping a friend move into a newly purchased, dilapidated house. There's mystery and excitement aplenty, with ghostly visits and even a treasure. Taylor's side-kick, her pet ferret named Hazel, plays an integral role in the solution of this engrossing short mystery.

Triple Threat, like Dearl's previous Taylor Madison mysteries, Diamondback and Twice Dead, is completely absorbing. I cannot praise the characterization and writing style enough. The author blends her personal expertise in forensics, investigative procedures and police work with a uniquely witty dialogue and description to produce a tantalizing blend of intrigue, romance and excitement that's truly unforgettable. If you haven't yet read a Taylor Madison mystery, do yourself a favor and pick one up now.

Triple Threat begins with a novella called Buyer's Remorse (app. 125 pages) and then flows into the main story. Buyer's Remorse is about Paula, Lester's widow and survivor of domestic abuse. She has been working hard at putting her past behind her and is the police dispatcher. However, when she buys the old Fisher place, she immediately regrets it and calls on Taylor to help her out. Turns out that Abraham & Violet Fisher's house is beautiful, but has been let go for a long time and is really run down. Still, Taylor knows that they can set it to rights if they work at it and so they both dive into cleaning and sorting and rewiring the electricity. The last thing they need is Abraham's ghost showing up to scare them to death. As scraps of Abraham's journal show up, discovered who knows where by Hazel, Taylor's pet ferret, Taylor & Paula discover that Abraham regrets murdering someone during the Great Depression. But who? And why? Is Abraham's ghost really haunting the house or is the specter all too human and looking for some long-lost treasure?

In Triple Threat, Taylor is saddened to hear that Hank Barton of Hope's Feed & Hardware has passed away. Hank was the first one to welcome Taylor into Perdue and let her stay in the apartment above his store for free until she had the means to move out. He was survived by his daughters: Lily & Rose who had just moved back to town a year or so ago. Lily ran a flower shop, Rose a secondhand clothing store and Rose's husband, Justin, took over the hardware store. Taylor was pretty good friends with Rose and was shocked to hear that the twins were actually triplets and that they had another sister out there somewhere named Iris. Taylor was even more surprised at the sisters' reaction when Hank's will was read. Turns out Hank wanted his girls to be reunited more than anything so he put a codicil in his will that would give all of his property to the NRA if the girls didn't spend one year living under the same roof together. From the way Rose & Lily reacted, you'd think that they hated Iris. But why?

When Iris showed up a couple of days later, Taylor wasn't surprised that she looked just like her sisters, but she was surprised at how many accidents happened to her. Iris received a death threat, almost drowned in the lake, and then went missing in a freak tornado accident. Who wanted her dead? Taylor wasn't sure if anything was deliberate, but she was too busy trying to keep Cal from blowing a fuse over the new Citizens' Police Academy that Billy, a brand new deputy and Bo, City Councilwoman, had cooked up between the two of them. What with the triplets' weird behavior, townspeople learning to shoot, a grieving mother, and a bout of the flu, Taylor has her hands full trying to solve this mystery!

This is third book in the Taylor Madison series (and first short story?) and it is just as fabulous as the first two. Dearl has a lovely, smooth writing style and knows how to pace her stories perfectly so that the reader is never bored, but the endings don't come up too quickly. Her characters are very memorable and I just get a kick out of all of the small town people in this book because I have met people just like them. All of Dearl's books are well worth reading and the extra cost associated with the books (or you can buy them for a fraction of the cost in ebook format). If you love mysteries, you will thoroughly enjoy this series! I can't wait for the next one to come out!

This is a much needed book. I good modern overview of what you would encounter in the field of radiation protection and dosimetry. The coverage of standards and their development is often missed in other works. Since you will spend a great deal of time referring to these standards knowing the actors and history is important. As someone in the field I would have liked to have seen a little more on international standards development. It was very refreshing to see a text where equations were defined clearly. So many physics books seem to revel in making you figure out that particulars authors flavor of equation definition.
I have found the book to be a great general reference and starting point for those new to the field. It is actually an enjoyable read. And having a joke thrown in once and a while was great.

This is an excellent book for students of radiation protection and dosimetry. It provides a great overview of health physics from radioisotope decay to non-ionizing radiation. The technical content is balanced with good practical examples. I would like to recommend this book for anyone studying health physics or preparing for the certification by the American Board of Health Physics.

This book is the coolest. Buy this book so my family can have more money, but it is a very well written, insightful book, with jokes tosses in at the right times.

Check out his beard!

Labelling this work as "balanced" is a minimal descriptive. Relethford seeks to explain and reconcile some of the major themes in human evolution. Each topic is introduced with a presentation of "traditional" views. These are lined out fully and each seems to have sufficient support for a conclusive case. Relethford has been busy keeping up with the latest research, and the remainder of each section relates much of that. By the end of each section, it's clear that the old view has been successfully challenged. However, as the author frequently points out, many questions remain open. Little of this book provides final answers. He wants more work done. Much of the book is an appeal for newcomers to the field to find opportunities.

No approach is better suited to gaining an understanding of the path humanity has taken in its spread around the planet. Relethford's style keeps your attention on the topics. He presents the information clearly and succinctly. The flow is good and requires little "back-flipping" to understand what he's trying to accomplish. As a geneticist, his focus is on gene indicators. The fossil record, while providing a firm foundation, is clearly not definitive in his view. It is the genetic record of humanity that has provided the clearest picture of how and when humans came out of Africa to populate the world. Fossils are a guide, but the path is better marked by gene markers. They offer a more complete picture of our wanderings.

"More complete" doesn't do justice to Relethford's approach. He lacks the dogmatic approach of many of his colleagues. The balanced treatment makes this book especially valuable, particularly to one new to the topics. As the book progresses the focus becomes ever tighter. After giving a general description of African origins, he summarises our knowledge of the Neandertals. Co-existent with our species, he considers the questions of species identity, the possibilities of interbreeding with Homo sapiens and extinction. In a related section he considers the onset of agriculture - did it spread from a single point of origin, or emerge in dispersed locations? He also examines the origins and progress of Native Americans and Polynesians. Closing the book with pinpoint examples, he explains the genetic history of islands on the Eire coast and the relationship of Jewish population elements. The historical issues are examined and countervailing ideas set against them.

Relethford provides a fine range of illustrations, including maps and analytical graphs to expand on the text. Some of these require close attention as they simplify some rather complex analytical techniques. The captions, in many cases, are essential - which doesn't detract from the information value. The References are almost entirely academic, making tracing difficult for the general reader for whom this book was produced. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

The author is to be commended for a very understandable book for the layman on this subject. He expertly describes the methods researchers use in analyzing genetic data without overwhelming the layperson (like myself) with unnecessary details. He includes just enough of the details to make things understandable. I appreciate this.

I also appreciate his caution in drawing conclusions from the data too soon. It seems to me that the author does not say, "This is the way it was." Rather he says, "This hypothesis is supported by the data, but another hypothesis may also be supported by the data if viewed from another perspective. More research is required." I would recommend this book to anyone who is trying to better understand the scientific method.

Ever since Cann, Stoneking and Wilson published their pathbreaking reconstruction of the history of human mitochondrial DNA in 1987, there has been a large amount of research attempting to use geographical patterns of human genetic diversity to throw light on human prehistory. Of all the books written for the layman that review progress in the field, this one is the best. Relethford avoids the triumphalism and groupthink that tends to characterize a lot of writing in this field. He is careful not to confuse the history of particular genes with the history of the populations in which these genes
are found. As he explains it, whatever historical inferences are made from genetic patterns are highly dependent on the investigator's assumptions about demographic history and these assumptions are often made without justification.
The author has himself contributed to much of the research described in the book. His studies of genetic history in Ireland are particular fascinating.He also includes a valuable discussion of the complex relationships between biological descent and ethnic identity; a subject upon which people are frequently confused.
I would recommend this book without reservation to anyone interested in the subject.

Admission: Had this book not been in a Barnes & Noble discount bin I probably would not have purchased it. Had I not, I would have missed a tome that in the words of those MasterCard gurus is `priceless.'

I had expected to use it as a reference, one where I could dip in and out of. Instead, I have read almost every one of the 96 speeches in this excellent work. Gottheimer has set the book out in chronological order, covering not just African-American civil rights, but also Asian-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, the suffragette movement, gays and lesbians.
Rather than taking it in this chronological order, I chose to read it by subject so I read all black civil rights speeches as one block. It has been an eye-opening, hugely instructive history lesson. And that highlights one of the wonders of this book.

It is not just a book of speeches. It is a history book. One of the many lessons I learned: While Martin Luther King can credibly lay claim to being the greatest orator of the civil rights movement, he most assuredly was not the only great speaker.

The anger, the power, the pain, the passion of many black speakers flows aggressively and often poignantly through these pages. Never before, had I appreciated so well, the suffering of the "negro" community, a suffering was not just physical, but also mental. The evil of slavery for many was greater because the family unit was regularly broken up and abused, with the young black girl often never more than a sex slave for her white master.

I never knew:
That the first African American Governor, Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback took office, even if in a pro tempore role in December 1872 for the state of Louisiana.
That the Civil Rights act of 1875 granted all citizens, regardless of color, full access to public facilities and accommodation. Mind you it appears the Jim Crow South did not know it either!
That the introduction of the sex discrimination amendment into the 1964 Civil Rights Act happened only because Congressman Howard Smith introduced it, believing that this amendment would scupper the whole Civil Rights bill. Gosh, who would have thought politicians could be so devious?

I have often thought that much of Jesse Jackson's speechmaking is clich?d but some of his phrasing and imagery when he spoke at the 1984 Democratic National Convention is absolutely superb.

"My constituency is the desperate, the damned, the disinherited, the disrespected, and the despised."

Or

"America is not like a blanket - one piece of unbroken cloth, the same color, the same texture, the same size. America is more like a quilt - many patches, many pieces, many colors, many sizes, all woven and held together by a common thread. The white, the Hispanic, the black, the Arab, the Jew, the woman, the native American, the small farmer, the businessperson, the environmentalist, the peace activist, the young, the old, the lesbian, the gay and the disabled make up the American quilt."

Gottheimer does not present Jackson's speech to the 1988 Democratic Convention where he used similar imagery. Good communicators know what works and as Martin Luther King showed often, are not afraid to repeat strong phrases in many different speeches. In '88, Jackson said,
"America is not a blanket woven from one thread, one color, one cloth. When I was a child growing up in Greenville, South Carolina and grandmama could not afford a blanket, she didn't complain and we did not freeze. Instead she took pieces of old cloth -- patches, wool, silk, gabardine, crockersack -- only patches, barely good enough to wipe off your shoes with. But they didn't stay that way very long. With sturdy hands and a strong cord, she sewed them together into a quilt, a thing of beauty and power and culture. Now, Democrats, we must build such a quilt."

One of the compelling aspects of the book is how history's so called "second-class citizens" - Blacks, Women, Chinese-Americans, Gays, Hispanics were able to overcome similar prejudice to build better futures for themselves. No one should believe that complete success has been achieved.

Bill Clinton's speech to African-American ministers at the Church of God of Christ, in Memphis in 1993 rebukes their community for in a sense swapping one form of tyranny for another. He imagined what Dr. Martin Luther King might say if he were to return. King might have said "I did not live and die to see 13-year-old boys get automatic weapons and gun down 9-year-olds just for the kick of it. I did not live and die to see young people destroy their own lives with drugs and then build fortunes destroying the lives of others. That is not what I came here to do."

Gottheimer (who was a Clinton speechwriter) indicated that Clinton did this speech almost extemporaneously, relying on some hand written notes. If so, kudos to a great communicator who by the way writes the foreword to Ripples of Hope. Kudos also to Gottheimer for putting this great edition together. I am boring people telling them how good it is.

This compilation is much more than just a desk reference for quotes ? it?s a thoroughly readable history of the civil rights movement in its leaders' own words. Ripples of Hope is a trove filled with speeches whose famous lines we?ve all heard but probably never bothered to read in their entirety, as well as several speeches that have been restored from relative obscurity. It elevates the speech from an archive to a new form ? an accessible, living source meant to be read, reflected upon, and drawn from as a source of motivation.

This book fills a stunning gap -- I've never seen another collection dedicated to the civil rights speeches that have played such a crucial role in American history. It includes all the famous speeches (I Have a Dream, etc.), but it also covers activists most of us haven't heard of, from movements most civil rights histories ignore. Each speech is accompanied by an introduction with just enough information to set the scene and put the speech in the context of its own and the other movements, but not so much that it gets in the way of the speeches themselves. Anyone who cares about how America's many peoples live together -- and how we wish they would -- must have this book on their shelf.

June Jordan was many things: woman, Mother, friend, poet activist essayist. She excelled, apparantly, at each. She died earlier this year from breast cancer. She left us this final testament, a group of essays that touch on allof her abiding concersn: race, poetry,feminism, anit-semitism, The plight of the Palestinian refugees, breast cancer,militarism, rape[agonizingly, she had been rapes. Twice!},Martin Luther King, Jr. and his womanising...She touched on each of these subjects in essays, rails about the lack of spending in research in breast cancer, goes to a LA synagogue for Shabbat service after a psychotic gunmen had opened fire at a Jewish day care centre,speaks about her son and his childhood friend, Daniel Pearl, who had been brutally murdered in pakistan,wonders aloud about the racial implication of the 2000 election and the curiopus way it was handled in Fla., speaks on rape in blunt,terrifying fashion. June jordan was a superb writer, and a better human being. the world is emptier without her light and wisdom, though as succor we have her essays and poems, for which I, for one, am so damn grateful. Highly recommended

This is an excellent piece of literary art. June Jordan, quite frankly, "makes love to the English language." This is how I describe the writing in this book. It is rare that I feel connected to any author in the way that I feel emotionally and spiritually connected to Ms. Jordan, through her writing. It is the first work of hers that I picked up. At the time, I was unaware that she had passed away from breast cancer. She will be missed but I am confident that her words and legacy will never be forgotten.

A poet, an activist, a writer and a teacher, June Jordan died in 2002.

It is somewhat depressing to read these essays, some of them years old, and realize how little events have improved or changed. Her essay on Palestine's children is one such example. The title of her book refers to the attacks on September 11th, and she ranges over subjects such as poverty, racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, rape and far too many of the horrors of the world. Articulate and passionate, Jordan brings a keen creative mind to her subjects and strangely enough, considering her subjects, a feeling of optimism.

Reading Jordan does give one some hope for the future and the fervent wish for more of her ilk. An original, creative mind, she is sorely missed.