Pharmacy Books

In my experience this was a great book that I was sad to have lost. It is a great book to quickly familiarize oneself with pharmacy practice. As far as using it to pass the PTCB?...If you work in a pharmacy for any significant length of time, you can pass the PTCB.(Note: Passing the PTCB doen't mean you're a good technician) This book offers a great intro to the background information that will help you quickly adapt and excel at your job.
I bought this book when I first started working in a retail pharmacy. I used this book as a self-study, learning to read prescriptions and basic pharmacy practice expectations.
It covers quite a bit of information, not all of which is entirely useful depending on your desired pharmacy practice setting.
Still, I would recommend this book if you're looking to quickly familiarize yourself with the basic concepts of pharmacy practice. It's overview of different physiological systems is basic and suits the purpose of introducing drug classes.
If it is of any import, I am now in a Doctor of Pharmacy program, I've been in several pharmacy practice settings and I can say that if an individual actively utilized this book they would have more than enough background knowledge to (on-the-job training aside) be pharmacy literate.
I too noticed math errors in the book. However, it does provide a good idea of what types of math one needs to utilize as a pharmacy technician. With regard to the PTCB test's math section?...I'd skip books altogether on that and get comfortable with dimensional analysis (setting up the math problem so when you multiply you cancel out all units except what you're looking for). The rest of the PTCB can be passed quite easily with knowledge accrued from this book and work experience.
In sum, I'd say, this book is a great intro to learning ABOUT your job. I couldn't recommend a book for "passing the PTCB", because as you may have gleened already, I think all you need to do that is learn FROM your job.

I have purchased a few books for pharmacy tech and find this to be the most successful. The author states facts clearly. It is easy to understand and is full of useful information. I strongly recommend it to all in the pharmacy field. It helped me understand it all and the tests were a great review. It is definetly worth your time and money. It really is an excellent choice! Thanks to the author.

I have had the pleasure of being a student of Dr. Moini's. He is very interesting and informative on the pharmacy tech program. His book is laid out so that you can follow and understand each subject. I recommend this book for anyone wanting to be a pharmacy tech.

How many mls in a teaspoon? 4mls if you ask Jahangir Moini. I also suppose the female and male signs got switched when we wern't looking. Oh let me count the mistakes. I guess the proofreaders were on vacation that day. Don't use this book. Get the APhA Basic Pharmacy & Pharmacology Series instead. ISBN 0-89582-736-0 by morton publishing.

I taught a certification review class at a local community college using this text and its companion exam review guide. The material is flawed, the two books often give differing information, and there is more information than is needed for an examination review. In my opinion, the texts were not proofread well. There are numerous misspellings, drugs placed in the wrong classes, and the answer keys to the review questions had mistakes in nearly every chapter. The review questions and accompanying CD-Rom are way too advanced and inapplicable to the national exam. The book was also very lean on the review of pharmaceutical calculations. Pharmacy math is a huge portion of the exam and I feel this book should have had more than three brief chapters. Upon first glance, this looks like a thorough textbook, but once you get into it, it is difficult to follow and inaccurate. It's difficult to teach a course (and probably take a course), when the instructor has to edit and revise the text as s/he goes along. I do not recommend this text at all, unless you enjoy researching every point the author makes, to determine what information is true, and what is false.

This text is good for an advanced undergraduate course. It is a pretty good reference, with two major problems:

1) The book is a flimsy paperback. Other paperbacks I have can withstand usage just fine, but after 1 month the text was in two pieces. It feel apart at the binding. I never even brought it to class, it sat on the bookshelf and fell apart after twice a week readings.

2) The solutions are presented as references to journal articles. I am not too shy of searching for articles, but when you are in a crunch it would be nice to not have to search through 10 pages of tangential information to find the one data or conclusion you need in order to verify the accuracy of your work.

Besides for that, it worked just fine for my advanced undergrad course in physical organic chemistry. I did have to make frequent references to other sources for more in-depth information, but when study time came it worked better than the myriad organic texts available at my library.

It is now more than a month after I was supposed to receive this book and I have not gotten it yet, what the hell is going on.

I have been using this book since the first edition, in my postgraduation courses and each time, it is better. The 5th edition introduced aspects that we awere longing for, like, for example, new achievements in the area of aromaticity and improvements in the first chapter. The best improvement was attached to problems solving (despite being not so friendly) and 3D figures. A CD should be added to the next edition.

This book is written at the undergraduate level. The figures are a joke. It's a paperback and will fall apart. If you are in graduate school; buy the text by Anslyn & Dougherty instead. It is a nice hard bound book, durable & weighs a ton. Its worth the money and the weight in your backpack.

Everyone in the world of organic chemistry knows of Dr. Carey and the great author and chemist he is. Hardly anyone could compare with the way he slides from subject to subject, explaining in detail and ease subjects that can be rather difficult to grasp. However, his method, because of his complete understanding of the subject matter is amazing. Often I wish I had had him for an instructor for at least one course in organic or any other for that matter. It is his ability to break down difficult concepts, and introduce them in logical and orderly fashion as to make that same difficult concept... much more easy to understand. If you are thinking about graduate school, or even want to make better grades in your soph-jr 2 semester organic chem class, use this book. It will help you understand some of the topics your "quick course" book leaves out! I cannot recommend this book high enough. guyairey

I read this book in preparation for a graduate course in macroeconomics. While it does provide a good overview, I found it went only slightly deeper into economic models than the basic text I used as an undergraduate. This book provided little in the way of the advanced math required for my graduate course where we used Advanced Macroeconomics by David Romer.

I would expect an intermediate text, as this is marketed, to better illustrate the mathematics required for economics, given the heavy reliance on math in the field today.

This is a clearly written and nicely organized upper-division macroeconomics textbook. Mankiw uses plain English and simple math to model the macroeconomy in the short-run (the IS/LM model), the long-run (the AS/AD model), and the very long run (the Solow growth model). He also devotes a lot of space to the Mundell-Fleming model of international trade and finance. One of the best features is the frequent use of short case studies that apply economic theory to "real world" problems such as the Great Depression or the Japanese slump of the 1990s. Mankiw's views are mainstream -- he doesn't even hint at the existence of alternatives such as Austrian economics or neo-Marxism -- but he is non-dogmatic about policy and quite candid about the limits of what economists really know about the economy. His book is a small masterpiece of clear economic writing for undergraduates.

So why did I give it only four stars? I was disappointed by the relative neglect -- in spite of the many "case studies" -- of the micro-economic, historical, and institutional realities that underlay the graphs and algebra of conventional macroeconomic analysis. Let me give two examples of what I mean:

-- According to Ben Bernanke, Asian countries responded to the financial turbulence of the 1990s by amassing huge foreign exchange reserves to defend their currencies against future attacks. These savings have for the most part been invested in the U.S., where they have financed trade deficits and fueled asset bubbles in the equities and housing markets. In other words, capital has flowed from relatively capital-poor countries to a capital-rich country, where it has paid for consumption binges.

-- According to Robert Pollin, two decades of union-bashing, downsizing and free trade have led to widespread job insecurity in the U.S. With workers too intimidated and too worried about jobs to press for wage increases, the economy was able to grow in the 1990s without triggering a round of inflation, and the benefits of this growth were skewed towards upper-income groups. In other words, extra-market power relationships in the workplace directly affected macroeconomic performance and income distribution.

I don't doubt that these developments can be captured and analyzed in the IS/LM or AS/AD framework. I'm not so sure, however, that many people steeped in this mode of analysis would have expected these developments ex ante. That would have required a knowledge of history, policy responses, and specific markets that is difficult to capture in abstract models. For my taste, any approach to economics that focuses on algebraic relationships between economic aggregates to the semi-exclusion of history and institutions is just too "otherworldly" to be satisfying. But maybe that's a problem with the way my mind works, not with macroeconomics. It certainly doesn't mean that Mankiw's book is anything less than excellent. Any student interested in learning basic macroeconomic analysis should read it.

i am a second year economics student from New Zealand. I ordered the complimentary set from Amazon because I heard of its great service and the books were cheaper than what we could buy them for back in NZ. To my amazement I received the student guide quite promptly expecting the complimentary text would arrive soon after. It has been over a month into my course and I still havent received it. Whats worse is the guide is almost useless (complimentary good) with out the good. Why cant Amazon send both of them together?

I am going to give this book four stars, however, I do have reservations about doing so. When I first picked up this book from one of the economics professors at my school, I was curious to read it because Gregory Mankiw was the Chief of the Council of Economic Adivsors. So I naturally thought, well this must be a brilliant man to have achieved a position so high. Well, now for the book. While the book is laid out in a fairly simple way and it is really easy to understand, sometimes too easy for an intermediate text, I began to notice Mankiw's economic philosophy slipping into the text. If anyone doesn't know, Mankiw is a New Keynesian. Well I thought that Keynesian economics was dead after the Reagan/Bush administrations failed with certain aspects of the economy. Please note, I said certain, such as the supposed tax cuts in the 80's that were offset by Social Security Tax hikes, and the out of control budget deficits. But I digress. Now, back to Mankiw. His text is filled with the ideas that he advised 43 on, and in fact 43 carried out.

But I don't want to hate on Mankiw. I think that the book could have been more properly balanced with other ideas. Mankiw could have really out done himself if he would have supplied a book that had his approach, somewhat governmental, and another approach that lets market forces take over the economy and promotes less government intervention. But that is just wishful thinking. All in all, the book does have its highlites, such as: easy to read, easy to understand, well laid out, and the fact that hopefully Mankiw will be busy and come out with a second edition to make this one really cheap. So therefore, despite its inherent downfall due to Mankiw's economic philosophy, I give four stars, and would recommend it to anyone who might be interested in macroeconomics or wants to expand their library.

This book is very well written. I like the clear dichotomy between those topics which are classical and those which Keynesian. Yes, it is true that there is not alot of math in this text, but that is fine for the following reason. In grad school, what is initially more important is a clear understanding of all that you should have learned as an undergrad. You will learn the math you need as well as how to apply it. Secondly, this book, if you pay attention, will really help you master the simple models and learn how to manipulate them in order to suit your purpose. In one section, Mankiw will define is endo and exo variable because of a question he wants to answer, but switch those same variables around in order to answer a very different set of questions. I really liked that approach because alot of published work is derivative in nature: take an existing model and modify it in a new way, after which show the contribution.
In summary, the value of this book is that you will be able to get a clear idea about all of the major topics in contempory maco. Having an easy reference once you get to grad school is nice.

I found this book most useful as a reference tool. It's not very useful in terms of studying for the NAPLEX. It is, however, detailed and I do occassionally refer back to it.

This Comprehensive Review is truly a comprehensive edition, in which I found almost all the study materials, except of course some of them, but for the truth it is more than enough....
but One should seek for more study materials and subjects, so as to be able to answer all the questions.

This is a good book to prepare for FPGEE. But there were questions in FPGEE December '06 I have never saw anywhere in this book. This book does not cover Economic, Social, and Administrative Sciences much.

The book is great in that it covers such a wide variety of topics and provides basic knowledge that are essential for a pharmacist, while it explains each topic concisely. It helps me a lot. However, the topics are not logically aligned. On the one hand, similar descriptions appear in more than one chapter, on the other hand, some chapters contain multiple, rather unrelated topics. Sometimes the book is difficult to understand: some drug names, units (mesh for injection purification), formulae (clearance), and seemingly contradicting explanations. The book would become even more helpful if its contents are reshuffled, some alleged typos and editing errors are resolved, and an index is added. Also, the book would shine if it acquires more detailed knowledge of drug metabolism.

this book is very hepful for taking FPGEE but it have very less role in Naplex.I will tell you all with the my experiance i have studied APHA pharamcy review for naplex whic is the best book.If any body taking naplex please also do Kaptest online which also have lot of patient profiles which actually come for your naplex.KAPLAN review is just helpful after you have studied some theory from some books like APHA.

This book is easy to understand and teaches the topic very well. It's not difficult subject matter, and the book is very straight forward.

I am a junior level BSN nursing student and found this book to be very explanatory and easy to comprehend. The CD is also very helpful for practicing one and two step calculations. I highly recommend this book to other nursing students who are learning medication calculations!

This is indispensible for any nurses, vet techs, or aides. The emphasis on metric-standard conversions is very good. The exercises are excellent and should be completed to fully understand the concepts.

This book is a good book for those who want to learn drug dosage and do not have a strong background in Math. It has a comprehensive step-by-step review for the math that is needed to master the material. As someone whose weakness is math, I found the book to be an easy read and walked a way with a weath of knowledge...

As a nursing student, this book has always been a good reference when I had difficulties in calculating dosages or drug related calculations. I used this book and got an A in my Pharmacotherapeutics class. I highly recommend it!!!

This book covers not only Merck, but also big pharma in general. I enjoyed reading the book, too bad that all the events post-Vioxx recall are mentioned only in the Epilogue.

Merck is one of the most honest drug companies in the world. Given their recent troubles with Vioxx it is good to have a book out there that reminds us of the good things they have done. Hawthorne as always is well written and does a great job of taking us from the founding with George Merck to the present day and the quest to create new drugs. It is an unbiased perspective that may make those who want to blame big Pharma for all of their ills. Highly recommend.

This book was everything I hoped. Very well written, researched, and organized. I don't know what more a reader could have wanted than what Hawthorne hath writ.

Unlike what other critics here seem to have assumed, the book is *not* an expose. In fact, Hawthorne indicates repeatedly that Merck's employees and alumni are famously a tight-lipped bunch. In light of that, I think she did an outstanding job of lifting the veneer to peek into the company's ethos, zeitgeist, and birthright.

The book does an admirable job of staying centered on Merck as the subject, rather than shifting to the drug industry as the star of the show and Merck but a player in it. Perhaps a couple of the middle chapters spent more time reversing these roles than I'd have liked, but sometimes that's necessary when an industry sea change makes the company the object rather than the subject.

In all an excellent read, especially for someone (like me) who is considering a career in the industry.

Randy

As an ex-Merck employee who was there during the stellar days of Roy Vagelos and has had to watch Ray Gilmartin and Peter Kim squander the legacy and the public trust of a once distinguished phramaceutical company, I take great exception to this trite, inaccurate "informmercial" of a book. The give away is the opening page - the Merck superman, not above fixing his own plumbing problems. Clark Kent where are you?
This book is pathetic - stealing directly from Merck's circa 2000 PR materials. No mention of the great pharmacologists and medicinal chemistrs who set the stage for P. Roy's success - Clem Stone, Karl Beyer, Ralph Hirschmann, Paul Anderson, Brad Clineschimdt - just the story post Roy - with a number of patheric legends in their own minds taking center stage and leading Merck straight into the COX-2 fiasco.
Merck once had great leadership, now it has Gilmartin's Don Knotts to George Merck's Andy Griffith.
This book is worthless

As a writer with a strong interest in the pharmaceutical industry, I found this book to be an an insightful account of Merck's evolution, it's journey to becoming a giant on the pharmaceutical landscape and its subsequent decline in prestige (and value) as patents to its profitable drugs expire and obstacles to new drug development become insurmountable.

But "The Merck Druggernaut" is more than Merck's story. This book provides a riveting overview of the ills that afflict the entire industry and its growing estrangement from the needs of people, medicine and the complexities of healthcare insurance.

Fran Hawthorne's book is a must read for anyone interested in understanding how Merck fits into the overall picture of pharma's conflict between profit and corporate responsibility.

Alice Shane

This is an excellent reference work. The author defines a
typical drug and explains the FDA process of oversight. For
a variety of drugs, he explains the benefits, as well as
the downside.There are extensive sections on adverse drug
reactions. Toward the end of the book, the author explains
how to save money on drugs and safe self-treatment programs.
Overall, the book is a valuable addition to any personal
health care library.

I found this book to be full of knowledge on almost every subject reguarding minor health questions and the discussions of various opinions and remedies are very useful.

I loved the book even gave one as a Christmas gift, That person is still raving about it! It was very easy, no parking space to fine, low prices, delivered right to my home nice will do it again

A nutritionist recommended this book to me because I have arthritis. I found some of the suggestions about arthritis and other conditions useful. The book is easy to read and sounds like my grandmother.

This book is an excellent reference guide for what ails you. I have recently used the cold remedies and found them more effective than over the counter remedies. The best part is that the suggestions are easily obtained.

I pass step 1,2. I'm ready for my residency and I still use it. Every time I get confused with meds name or don't remember the family; I go in my brain and look for the pictures. This book really works.

I made the mistake of purchasing this book along with the pathology and microbiology books in this series.

The concept of having a mnemonics book for a subject such as pharmacology is an excellent one. In my opinion, mnemonics are an amazing way to learn subjects that typically require great memorization (e.g. microbiology and pharmacology). Anyone who has read Microbiology Made Ridiculously Simple probably knows how helpful visual mnemonics can be. The problem with this book and the others in this series that I purchased is that the visual cues are very poorly linked together. For a mnemonic illustration to be useful, it is CRUCIAL that the student can recall the illustration in its entirety; to do this, the objects in the diagram must be properly linked in some clever, memorable way. Simply drawing several drug attributes for a given drug class and throwing them onto an already-cluttered illustration is NOT an effective method of facilitating recall. In fact, I found that I could hardly recall the little images at all considering how haphazardly they were all thrown onto a given page. I cannot imagine ANYONE finding this book useful, save for whomever devised the mnemonics.

A FAR better mnemonics book for pharmacology that I found is called The Phunny Pharm. It actually manages to LINK the material together with humorous anecdotes and logical picture associations (similar to micro made simple) so that the information can actually be recalled. In contrast, this book and the other two in this series that I purchased fail to link most drawings at all. This book has very minimal text to accompany the pictures and several of the mnemonics are left completely unexplained. Although the objective of this book makes sense, the manner in which the illustrations are meshed together with little supporting text makes the book a terrible disappointment. I would suggest you save your money and look elsewhere; virtually every friend whom I have shown my visual mnemonics books to has been unimpressed.

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At first i was doubting the ability of the book to "work" but after i just glanced at the book, flipped through some pages reading some stuff My friend asked me about it a couple of hours later and i could actually recall some of the stuff in it! This is a MUST for all those over-worked tired medical students! Apart from it being fun to read it actually works! This is how i passed and excelled at pharmacology, could not have done it without this book! Well worth it.

I think this book is for the visual learner, like me, who hates to sit and memorize facts off a sheet of paper. Others who are not visual learners may find the cartoons useful at all, but I would certainly say they were very helpful to me.

I have found this book and the others in the series very helpful. I am a very visual learner and have found the illustrations easy to recall if I put the time and effort into memorizing them. The pictures are linked together in a thoughtful and logical manner. For example, an entire class of antibiotics is placed on one page which makes them very easy to remember. There is also a notes page opposite the illustrations for anything additional that I want to add. This is a very different method of learning as far having all the details placed on one illustration for memorization. The problem that I had with the Micro Made Ridiculously Simple is that there were not enough illustrations and the ones that were there were not detailed enough so that I still had to memorize the text.
I am now into my third year of medical school and can still recall the illustrations quickly when I am getting pimped on the floor. I can honestly say that this book and the others is an excellent way of memorizing and longer lasting recall. I don't understand why anyone would not find this series useful and easy to use.

"As a a pastor serving in a parish setting and as a family therapist, I have found Carol Falkowski's guidebook "Dangerous Drugs," an excellent resource in my work with conflicted families. It is practical, down to earth, easily understandable and up-to-date, a great book for anyone working with crisis situations in today's pervasive drug culture. I highly recommend it and give it 5 stars!"

This is an informative reference guide to drug abuse and the substances currently in vogue. The introductory chapters provide an overview of drug and alcohol abuse in the USA, discusses the attractions and harm of abuse, provides the tell-tale signs and symptoms, investigates the question of addiction and supplies guidelines on what to do.

The following chapters deals with individual substances like alcohol, cocaine, hallucinogens, heroin/opiates/narcotics, inhalants/solvents, marijuana, metamphetamine, sedatives/hypnotics and tobacco. Discussions of recently popular substances like Qat and Ketamine are included.

The chapter on other substances includes a section on herbal supplements like Kava Kava, Wormwood, Ma Huang (Ephedra) and other drugs like dextromethorphan and steroids.

The text is illustrated by graphs and there are 18 color plates of the drugs and the paraphernalia. This valuable and helpful guide and reference work concludes with copious notes and an index.

This book gives a clear, informative, and balanced portrayal of "what's up" on the current drug scene -- helps a parent, or anyone, better understand the daily flood of drug news in the media, or what we encounter first hand.

We parents know the drug scene has changed since our high school years, and we need a good, easily read, reference and fact book to bring us up to date. This second edition of Dangerous Drugs serves that need perfectly. Keeps us from just standing there "clueless" while our kids face the ever-changing and growing problem of drug abuse every day.

The color photos of drugs and drug equipment are very helpful, as are the charts at the beginning of each chapter.

EVERYONE concerned about the issues of drug abuse should read this book!

Dangerous Drugs - SECOND EDITION - is a must read reference book for anyone who lives or works with teenagers. It quickly and effectively presents the basic facts about drugs of abuse, the slang terms, the short and long-term effects, who's using them and what's new about them. Dangerous Drugs hits the mark by objectively discussing the essentials of just what parents and professionals need to know about the drug abuse scene today - from supplements sold on the Internet to the "normalization" of heroin.

Unlike most other books on this topic, Dangerous Drugs is not bogged down by scientific neurological jargon that too often complicates instead of clarifies. And the detailed, color photos of drugs and paraphernalia are a terrific, practical tool for parents and educators who, when it comes to drugs, need to know what to look for, not just behaviorally but literally.

Dangerous Drugs performs a public service by getting the most up-to-date information about drugs of abuse into the hands of those who need it, and even taking it a step further by addressing what to do if drug abuse strikes close to home.

I very much enjoy Carol's book: Dangerous Drugs. I have been working in the human services, substance abuse, corrections fields for more than 25-years. I have been working with young people since 1984. I am a public speaker, traveling thoughout North America speaking with both children and adults about drug prevention. I am an avid reader and researcher. I think this is an excellent, inexpensive, up-to-date reference guide for parents. I am always looking for resources to recommend to parents when they ask me, "What do you recommend? How can I learn about what's available to my kids?"

I find that most parents just don't have the "savy" and time to research "what's what" in the street drug arena. I've found Carol's book to "fit the bill to a T!" For the most part, concerned parents "just want to know what in the heck is going on." They see lots of information on TV, in the newspaper, magazines. They get overwhelmed and overloaded. They don't know how to put all of the pieces together. They get easily confused "Dangerous Drugs: An Easy to Use Reference for Parents and Professionals" does exactly that! It provides straight-forward, easy-to-understand information about drugs.

Sure, there are other books that delve deeper into some of the drug classifications highlighted in Carol's book. Sure, there are certain individuals who can argue whether Carol is using "scare tactics and half truths." But . . . I'm familiar with Carol's work. She is an avid researcher. She believes in giving accurate information. I find this book to have accurate information from cover-to-cover.

If you want an easy-to-use, factual, up-to-date reference guide for understanding drugs of abuse, this is the book for you. I highly recommend it. Don't take my word for it, next time you see a copy of the book, browse through it. I guarantee you will become engrossed. And you can rest assured that Carol carefully researched each and everything she writes about. I think her integrity is next to none. I've got a copy on my desk.

Happy reading!

This resource is so workable...I have no trouble finding any Medication that I need to follow up on for my job...I just received the book only 6 weeks ago and already the pages are all rumpled...I have a new "Buddy" at my job that answers all my questions with out making me wait!

Two of the few drugs that I ever needed to look up are not even in this book. Glucagon which is a very common antihypoglycemic for one. The combination antihypertemsive drug Diovan HCT was not even mentioned either. I had to go out and but a second reference to supplement this one.

Very professional and very accutate drugs referencer. Provides you maximum useful information, including nursing considertaions and implications in very readible and compact format. Drugs compatibility table, administration instructions, dosages and many other useful in practice details are all here, in this little, compatible, easy to care book. If you're a nurse and you want to stay updated with pharmacological innovations, get this book, it's worth every cent!

I don't like it - I work in critical care and it fails to list the intravenous drug compatibilities that Nursing 2004 Drug Reference has. IN critical care IV drug compatibilities are so important! So, I'm still relying on my Nursing 2004 book at work. Will not buy this book again - wasted my money - Janet

I use this book daily in my work and consider it a vital part of my analyzing the interaction of prescribed drug use among my clients. I am not a health care professional, but need access to medication descriptions and usages. The "PDR Nurse's Drug Handbook" is easy to use and includes a detailed index that makes it easy to look meds up. The book also lists generic drug names and includes dosages and interaction information. Highly recommend for anybody involved in prescribing or administering drugs.