Reviews Books

I am impressed with The New York Review's revival of this unexpectedly non-Jamesian title. A truly unique James choice to bring back to life--it's been done so with a cover so compelling (I'm not a tradional James fan) I opened the book which I found locally in a brick and mortar as they are now called, book shop. The internet cannot do justice to the thoughtful sophistication of this book's packaging. (But I can purchase another copy here more easily!) The publisher's comments about the work were also compelling and complimentary to the cover art. The Other House is a mystery, a detective story, a love triangle with more than three angles--a true page turner--with a timelessly human plot and "modern" characters. Anyone thriller fan would be enchanted with it. And turning every page, holding the book, is a sensory thrill. Paper, writing, art--all representative of what any literary rebirth deserves. If it's worth bringing back--do it with quality, I say! They did--along with a whole marvelous collection of equally intriguing books, with well written new introductions. Good choices--the pieces themselves, the introduction authors and the book artist designers. Truly timeless in all ways!

This book is a novelization of the play by the same name. And you can see the stageplay - the characters are continually coming and going - and there's stage business - all of which I think shows some stiffness - yet about half way through the novel I was startled at how much the characters were real, rounded - I could just about see them - they ached with life - I was always aware of the stage during the novel - the story itself is rather shocking - it's a mystery novel! - it's all very well done - it's short - and it's very psychological

A trusted friend sent me a copy of this new edition of The Other House, insisting that I'd enjoy it. It looked intriguing. I felt obligated to at least give it a try. I still trust the friend! I can't believe this is what is known as a Classic. I thought they were all very boring. I couldn't wait to get back to this plot and I'd never have thought it was written in the uptight Victorian era. It's more like a movie special of the week or one of the top ten best selling novels. Read it then recommend it and impress your friends with your literary depth.

It's hard to believe that James's theatrical turn of the late 19th century ended with his audience "booing" him off the stage. This novelized play reads quickly and delightfully. I've read more than twenty of his novels, and this was the quickest of them all.

The plot is simple enough (at least for James): two houses, apparently back to back, in Wilverley, a small English village, set the scene. One contains a widow, the other a young married couple. The young wife widows the young husband, and he becomes Wilverley's "most eligible bachelor," except for the fact that he promised his dying wife that he would never marry again, at least not during the life of his child. So somebody has to kill the child, right?

Enter James's genius for character. There's Paul, the huge, infinitely imperturbable son of the wealthy Mrs. Beever; the diminutive and impetuous Dennis Vidal; Tony Bream himself, a remarkably good-natured but insensitive fool; and the powerful Mrs. Beever, whose awful determination cows every one else before her. Like James's best writing, his characters become interesting on their own; his fictions become an opportunity to satisfy curiosity. I think that's what makes this book a "page-turner"; the characters are interesting enough that I want to know what's going to happen.

In the end, I suppose, what makes this book succeed is what would have made the dramatic version fail: James's endless fascination with the workings of the human mind must have become either painfully boring or just incomprehensible to a theatrical audience. However it came about, I recommend it unequivocally.

I enjoyed reading this book and hope others will too.It help refreshes ones knowledge especially those in training to be a paediatric neurologist.A recommended book for the Advanced Master Medicine(paediatric Neurology)University Sains Malaysia

I found this to be the best organized and most clearly written of the case based reviews for the oral boards. The cases discussed in this book were very similar to vignettes presented in the oral examination and this review covered almost all of the questions I was asked. I'm glad that I went through this book twice before boards and recommend it highly.

This is an excellent case-based review of pediatric neurology. Dr. Rosser presents a wide variety of cases. These are followed by an elegant and consistent approach to the analysis of each case. The analysis of the cases includes; localization, diagnosis, differential diagnosis, and appropriate work-up.

This book could be even better if it included a DVD with videos and illustrations of the various conditions described.

I'll be taking my oral exam this year and ordered this as prep. I am about half-way through and it's been a great investment so far... Well written, easy to understand and pinpoints some cases you never thought of...

Excellent review material; closest review to actual test. I will use again when I recert.

This was an excellent review book and I really recommend reading it from front to back 2-3 times! It provides information in an organized manner that allows for easy recall! I will definitly refer to this book in my practice.

This review guide is an excellent resource for the PNP exam and PNP program. I would highly recommend it.

Read this book front to back 2-3 times and you can rest assure that you will pass the PNP exam. This is an excellent review of pertinent information and is also my most used reference now that I am a certified APRN in practice.
Excellent review guide.

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.