New at the Library

Answers the two most important questions about the use of medication to treat ADHD. Does medication work? And is it safe? Parents are surprised to learn that there are almost 50 different medications used to treat ADHD, representing only two primary medications. This book addresses such issues as how to determine if medication is needed, how to decide which medication is the right fit for your child, whether children can outgrow ADHD, how to eliminate medication side effects, and how you can discuss the need for medication with your child. Most importantly though, this book answers the questions: Does ADHD medication work, and is it safe? T

"Imagine microscopic worms living in the soil. They enter your body through your bare feet, travel to your intestines, and stay there for years sucking your blood like vampires. You feel exhausted. You get sick easily. It sounds like a nightmare, but that's what happened in the American South during the 1800s and early 1900s. Doctors never guessed that hookworms were making patients ill, but zoologist Charles Stiles knew better. Working with one of the first public health organizations, he and his colleagues treated the sick and showed Southerners how to protect themselves by wearing shoes and using outhouses so that the worms didn't spread. Although hookworm was eventually controlled in the United States, the parasite remains a serious health problem throughout the world. The topic of this STEM book remains relevant and will fascinate young readers interested in medicine, science, history-and gross stories about bloodsucking creatures"---Provided by publisher.

Description: We have all had that experience with the friend who has a new diet, one that he’s following enthusiastically. Or maybe we’ve been that friend, adopting a new diet because we learned about it from another friend, or read about it online, in a magazine, or heard a compelling celebrity endorsement. Most such diets promise the same things: weight loss, better health, better sleep, mental functioning and a general improvement in mood and affect–in other words, self-transformation. Many convince us that certain foods or food ingredients cause ill health, and avoidance will improve a wide range of physical and mental capacities. These diets promise radical transformation in our lives, if we just follow a few “simple” rules. Both authors of this book have professionally encountered such diets in their research, clinical work, and with the general public. Janet Chrzan is a nutritional anthropologist who teaches courses in food and culture, nutrition, nutrition evolution, and other related topics. Kima Cargill is a professor of clinical psychology who teaches the psychology of food and culture, as well as consumerism and its effects on well-being. … The authors examine popular fad diets from the perspectives of anthropology, psychology, and nutrition to explain why these diets are popular at this particular time. While studies of dietary practices usually examine the content of the diet and how it affects the bodies and social lives of adherents, this book instead explores the cultural and economic contexts of the diet and their psychological appeal for the individual. (publ.)

A tiny mutation on the X chromosome can shape a family's history. Passed down from a "carrier" parent to a child, fragile X syndrome is the most common inherited cause of intellectual disability and autism. Beyond that--and a rarity among genetic disorders--some fragile X carriers not only transmit the mutation but also experience related conditions themselves. The Carriers is an essential book for fragile X families, including those just learning they are carriers, and for all readers interested in the complexities of heredity, the ethical dilemmas of genetic medicine, and the relationship between genes and personality.

Antimicrobial resistance is a health problem that threatens to undermine almost a century of medical progress. Moreover, it is a global problem that requires action both in the United States and internationally. Combating Antimicrobial Resistance and Protecting the Miracle of Modern Medicine discusses ways to improve detection of resistant infections in the United States and abroad, including monitoring environmental reservoirs of resistance. This report sets out a strategy for improving stewardship and preventing infections in humans and animals. The report also discusses the strength of the pipeline for new antimicrobial medicines and steps that could be taken to bring a range of preventive and therapeutic products for humans and animals to the market.

The story of doctors who developed a safe and effective early treatment for COVID-19 and their battle with the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex that suppressed it.

This book evaluates existing theories, concepts, and models with the practices of death, dying and bereavement from different societies around the world. The differences in various belief systems and how these influence death, dying and bereavement practices are highlighted, including Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, Ancestor worship, Afro-Brazilian religions, the belief systems of Native Indians, the Maoris of New Zealand and others. These belief systems will contribute to a better understanding of the existing models of death, dying and bereavement that are examined. An overview of countries in different continents is also provided.

Reviewed: NYRB 6 Oct. 2022 p. 18.

Description: Who is considered most at risk for diabetes, and why? In this thorough, engaging book, historian Arleen Tuchman examines and critiques how these questions have been answered by both the public and medical communities for over a century in the United States. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, Tuchman describes how at different times Jews, middle-class whites, American Indians, African Americans, and Hispanic Americans have been labeled most at risk for developing diabetes, and that such claims have reflected and perpetuated troubling assumptions about race, ethnicity, and class. She describes how diabetes underwent a mid-century transformation in the public’s eye from being a disease of wealth and “civilization” to one of poverty and “primitive” populations. In tracing this cultural history, Tuchman argues that shifting understandings of diabetes reveal just as much about scientific and medical beliefs as they do about the cultural, racial, and economic milieus of their time. (publ.)

For caregivers of deeply forgetful people: a book that combines new ethics guidelines with an innovative program on how to communicate and connect with people with Alzheimer's. How do we approach a "deeply forgetful" loved one so as to notice and affirm their continuing self-identity? For three decades, Stephen G. Post has worked around the world encouraging caregivers to become more aware of--and find renewed hope in--surprising expressions of selfhood despite the challenges of cognitive decline. In this book, Post offers new perspectives on the worth and dignity of people with Alzheimer's and related disorders despite the negative influence of "hypercognitive" values that place an ethically unacceptable emphasis on human dignity as based on linear rationality and strength of memory.

"A guide for health care providers on how to diagnosis, treat, and care for those with eating disorders. Four new chapters have been added to the fourth edition"---Provided by publisher

Note: Replaces 5th ed. (2011).

An urgent plea for a broader understanding and awareness of the unconsidered dangers of new genetic technologies Since 2010 it has been possible to determine a person's genetic makeup in a matter of days at an accessible cost for many millions of people. Along with this technological breakthrough there has emerged a movement to use this information to help prospective parents "eliminate preventable genetic disease." As the prospect of systematically excluding the appearance of unwanted mutations in our children comes within reach, David B. Goldstein examines the possible consequences from these types of choices.

"This fascinating book gives readers an appreciation of how biomedical research should work and how the reality is all too often seriously flawed. Explaining the logical basis of the different research approaches used by biomedical research scientists and their relative merits, it will help readers to make more realistic appraisal of media reports linking aspects of lifestyle, environment or diet to health outcomes and thus judge whether such claims are a real effect worthy of consideration for behavior change or deserving of further research resources."--Amazon.com

The decade ahead will test the nation's nearly 4 million nurses in new and complex ways. Nurses live and work at the intersection of health, education, and communities. Nurses work in a wide array of settings and practice at a range of professional levels. They are often the first and most frequent line of contact with people of all backgrounds and experiences seeking care and they represent the largest of the health care professions. A nation cannot fully thrive until everyone - no matter who they are, where they live, or how much money they make - can live their healthiest possible life, and helping people live their healthiest life is and has always been the essential role of nurses. Nurses have a critical role to play in achieving the goal of health equity, but they need robust education, supportive work environments, and autonomy.

Reviewed: PW 23 May 2022 p. 23.

Description: Women are pursuing their health like never before. Whether it’s juicing, biohacking, clutching crystals, or sipping collagen, today there is something for everyone, as the wellness industry has grown from modest roots into a $4.4 trillion entity and a full-blown movement promising health and vitality in the most fashionable package. But why suddenly are we all feeling so unwell? The truth is that deep within the underbelly of self-care–hidden beneath layers of clever marketing–wellness beckons with a far stronger, more seductive message than health alone. It promises women the one thing they desperately desire: control. Vividly told and deeply reported, journalist Rina Raphael reveals how this obsession is a direct result of women feeling dismissed, mistreated, and overburdened. Women are told they can manage the chaos ruling their life by following a laid-out plan: eat right, exercise, meditate, then buy or do all this stuff. And while wellness may have sprung from good intentions, we are now relentlessly flooded with exploitative offerings, questionable ideas, and a mounting pressure to stay devoted to the divine doctrine of wellness. What happens when the cure becomes as bad as the disease? With a critical eye, humor, and empathy, wellness industry Raphael examines how women have been led down a kale-covered path promising nothing short of salvation. She knows: Raphael was once a disciple herself–trying everything from “clean eating” to electric shock workouts–until her own awakening to the troubling consequences. Balancing the good with the bad, this is a clear-eyed exploration of what wellness can actually offer us, knocking down the false idols and commandments that have taken hold and ultimately showing how we might shape a better future for the movement–and for our well-being. (publ.)

Practice is an important part of preparing for a test and improving your chance of success. Mometrix practice questions are designed to prepare you for the real test. You could know everything that is going to be covered on the test but still perform poorly if you have never worked with HESI A2 practice questions. Being familiar with the different types of questions and answer choices that you might see on the official test is a big advantage. Another benefit of taking practice tests is that you can measure your performance. They help you decide if you need to study and practice more or if you're ready for test day.

An intimate, heart wrenching portrait of one small hospital that reveals the magnitude of America's health care crises. "With his signature gut-punching prose, Alexander breaks our hearts as he opens our eyes to America's deep-rooted sickness and despair by immersing us in the lives of a small town hospital and the people it serves. "

$aQuinones was among the first to see the dangers of synthetic drugs and a new generation of kingpins whose product could be made in Magic Bullet blenders. In fentanyl, traffickers landed a painkiller a hundred times more powerful than morphine. They laced it into cocaine, meth, and counterfeit pills to cause tens of thousands of deaths-- at the same time as Mexican traffickers made methamphetamine cheaper and more potent. He investigated these new threats, discovering how addiction is exacerbated by consumer-product corporations. Amid a landscape of despair, Quinones found hope in those embracing the forgotten and ignored, illuminating the striking truth that we are only as strong as our most vulnerable. -- adapted from jacket

This guidebook helps people who are diagnosed with breast cancer understand what is happening to them while they cope physically and emotionally with cancer treatment"--Provided by publisher.

Note: Replaces 3 rd ed. (2012).

What exactly do these people do on the job every day? What kind of skills and educational background do you need to succeed in this field? How much can you expect to make, and what are the pros and cons of these various professions? Is this the right career path for you? How do you avoid burnout and deal with stress? This book can help you answer these questions and more. Medical Technicians: A Practical Career Guide, which includes interviews with professionals in this field book covers the following medical technician careers. -Cardiovascular Technologists (ECG or EKG Technicians) -Nuclear Medicine Technologists -Phlebotomy Technicians -Laboratory Technicians -Surgical Technologists -Radiologic Technologists (x-ray, MRI, and CT Technicians)

Our brains are the most complex machines known to humankind, but they have an Achilles heel: the very molecules that allow us to exist can also sabotage our minds. Here are gripping accounts of unruly molecules and the diseases that form in their wake. A college student cannot remember if she has eaten breakfast. By dinner, she is strapped to a hospital bed, convinced she is battling zombies. A man planning to propose marriage instead becomes violently enraged, gripped by body spasms so severe that he nearly bites off his own tongue. One after another, poor farmers in South Carolina drop dead from a mysterious epidemic of dementia. With an intoxicating blend of history and intrigue, Sara Manning Peskin invites readers to play medical detective, tracing each diagnosis from the patient to an ailing nervous system. Along the way, Peskin entertains with tales of the sometimes outlandish, often criticized, and forever devoted scientists who discovered it all. Peskin never loses sight of the human impact of these conditions. Alzheimer's Disease is more than the gradual loss of a loved one; it can be a family's multigenerational curse. The proteins that abound in every cell of our bodies are not simply strings of oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon; they are the building blocks of our personalities and relationships. A Molecule Away from Madness is an unputdownable journey into the deepest mysteries of our brains.

Studying can be hard. We get it. That's why we created this guide with these great features and benefits Comprehensive Review: Each section of the test has a comprehensive review created by Test Prep Books that goes into detail to cover all of the content likely to appear on the test. NCLEX PN Practice Test Questions: We want to give you the best practice you can find. That's why the Test Prep Books practice questions are as close as you can get to the actual test. Answer Explanations: Every single problem is followed by an answer explanation. We know it's frustrating to miss a question and not understand why. The answer explanations will help you learn from your mistakes. That way, you can avoid missing it again in the future. Test-Taking Strategies: A test taker has to understand the material that is being covered and be familiar with the latest test taking strategies. These strategies are necessary to properly use the time provided. They also help test takers complete the test without making any errors.

Owning the Sun tells the story of one of the most contentious fights in human history: the legal right to produce lifesaving medicines. Medical science began as a discipline geared toward the betterment of all human life, but the merging of research with intellectual property and the rise of the pharmaceutical industry warped and eventually undermined its ethical foundations. Since World War II, federally funded research has facilitated most major medical breakthroughs, yet these drugs are often wholly controlled by price-gouging corporations with growing international ambitions. Why does the U.S. government fund the development of medical science in the name of the public only to relinquish exclusive rights to drug companies, and how does such a system impoverish us, weaken our responses to crises, and, as in the cases of AIDS and COVID-19, put the world at risk?

"Plague: A Very Short Introduction explores the historical and social impact of plague from the earliest times. Throughout history, plague has been the cause of many major catastrophes, from the Black Death of 1348 to devastating epidemics in China and India in the late 1800s. Today, Corona-virus serves as a powerful reminder that we have not escaped the global impact of epidemic diseases. This VSI demonstrates the influence of plague on modern notions of government and public health, examining how plague has been interpreted in different times and place. It includes evidence from ancient DNA on the nature of plague and the latest research on plague in the Middle East"---Provided by publisher.

This study guide is deigned to help students, novice nurses, and seasoned nurses apply concepts of prioritization, delegation, and assignment to nursing practice in today's patient care settings. -- adapted from text.

A vital overview of prostate cancer for the millions of men that are suffering and their loved ones The moment the family doctor says, "You might have prostate cancer," most patients immediately ask themselves, "Am I going to die?" Their life is turned upside down as they are faced with a scary new reality they likely know little about. Patients must familiarize themselves with strange new medical terminology, tests, procedures, and, worst of all, major changes to their bodies. The Prostate Cancer Owner's Manual offers clarity on these topics to help readers and their loved ones get through this life-changing diagnosis that will take years to overcome.

Nearly a decade into the second wave of America's overdose crisis, pharmaceutical companies; yet to answer for the harms they created. As pending court battles against opioid makers, distributors, and retailers drag on, addiction rates have soared to record-breaking levels during the COVID pandemic, illustrating the critical need for leadership, urgency, and change.

After a seemingly uneventful pregnancy, Megan Nix's second daughter, Anna, was born very small and profoundly deaf. Megan and her husband, Luke, learned that Anna could have lifelong delays due to an infection from a virus they had never heard of: cytomegalovirus, or CMV, which Megan had unwittingly contracted from her toddler during pregnancy. Megan had not been told that CMV is contagious in the saliva of one out of three toddlers, spread through a kiss, a shared cup, a bite of unfinished toast. She had not been told that the stakes were high, that congenital CMV causes more birth defects and childhood disabilities--including blindness, deafness, cerebral palsy, epilepsy, and autism--than any infectious disease. Or that some of these disabilities are evident at birth, but others appear suddenly at age two or three and are never traced back to congenital CMV. Remedies for Sorrow unfolds across the dramatic landscape of Sitka, Alaska, where Luke makes his living as a salmon fisherman. There, Megan struggles to meet Anna's needs and dives deeper into the mystery of why no one--not her OBGYN, not her toddler's pediatrician--had mentioned CMV, despite the staggering cost of this silence to families and children like Anna.

Families hit by addiction like Wolf’s needed a “how-to” book on finding the right treatment at the right rehab. Since that book didn’t exist, he wrote it himself. From intervention to recovery, The Right Rehab is a step-by-step guide that details how to identify and access treatment options available to all individuals and families, no matter how plentiful or spare their resources. Due to Walter's relationships with the most ethical and renowned professionals in the treatment world, he is able to explain the treatment plan principled experts insist is the most evidence-based, dependable, and customizable for the individual who is fully committed to sobriety. The Right Rehab is for the millions of vulnerable, terrified and uninitiated families who need to know what to do first, next, and into the future, while protecting them from programs that don’t work. No one wants to get that call, but many can see it coming. Arm yourself ahead of time with this clear, concise, and easy-to-follow guide to getting the right help for your loved one.

The book includes a review of all nursing content areas, more than 4,500 NCLEX exam-style questions, detailed rationales, test-taking tips and strategies, and new Next-Generation NCLEX (NGN)-style questions. An Evolve website simulates the exam-taking experience with a choice of practice questions along with realistic practice tests. Based on Silvestri's proven Pyramid to Success, this complete review is a perennial favorite of students preparing for the NCLEX. More than 4,500 practice questions are included in the book and on Evolve. Detailed rationales are provided for both correct and incorrect answer options. Alternate item format questions include multiple response, prioritizing, fill-in-the-blank, figure/chart, and video clips. Test-taking strategies provide useful hints for analyzing and uncovering correct answer options. Pyramid Points and Pyramid Alerts identify content that typically appears on the NCLEX-PN exam Pyramid to Success sections at the beginning of each unit provide an overview of content, guidance for your review, and the subject's relative importance in the NCLEX-PN text plan.

This book includes the kinds of questions that consistently test the clinical judgment skills necessary to pass today's NCLEX exam. Even better, all answers include detailed rationales to help you learn from your answer choices as well as test-taking strategies with tips on how to best approach each question.

A sublimely elegant, fractured reckoning with the legacy and inheritance of suicide in one American family. In 2009, Juliet Patterson was recovering from a serious car accident when she learned her father had died by suicide. His death was part of a disturbing pattern in her family. Her father's father had taken his own life; so had her mother's. Over the weeks and months that followed, grieving and in physical pain, Patterson kept returning to one question: Why? Why had her family lost so many men, so many fathers, and what lay beneath the silence that had taken hold?

The discovery of cells--and the reframing of the human body as a cellular ecosystem--announced the birth of a new kind of medicine based on the therapeutic manipulations of cells. A hip fracture, a cardiac arrest, Alzheimer's dementia, AIDS, pneumonia, lung cancer, kidney failure, arthritis, COVID pneumonia--all could be reconceived as the results of cells, or systems of cells, functioning abnormally. And all could be perceived as loci of cellular therapies. The Song of the Cell tells the story of how scientists discovered cells, began to understand them, and are now using that knowledge to create new humans.

The topic of stem cells has a high profile in the media. We've made important advances in our scientific understanding, but despite this the clinical applications of stem cells are still in their infancy and most real stem cell therapy carried out today is some form of bone marrow transplantation. At the same time, a scandalous spread of unproven stem cell treatments by private clinics represents a serious problem, with treatments being offered which are backed by limited scientific rationale, and which are at best ineffective, and at worse harmful. This Very Short Introduction introduces stem cells, exploring what they are, and what scientists do with them.

Nurses have always been vital to human existence. A nurse was likely there when you were born and a nurse might well be there when you die. Familiar in hospitals and doctors' offices, these dedicated health professionals can also be found in schools, prisons, and people's homes; at summer camps; on cruise ships, and even at NASA. Yet despite being celebrated during the Covid-19 epidemic, nurses are often undermined and undervalued in ways that reflect misogyny and racism, and that extend to their working conditions--and affect the care available to everyone. But the potential power of nursing to create a healthier, more just world endures. The story of nursing is complicated. It is woven into war, plague, religion, the economy, and our individual lives in myriad ways. In Taking Care, journalist Sarah DiGregorio chronicles the lives of nurses past and tells the stories of those today--caregivers at the vital intersection of health care and community who are actively changing the world, often invisibly.

This book demystifies cancer by explaining the underlying cell and molecular biology in a clear and accessible style. It answers the questions commonly asked about cancer such as what causes cancer and how cancer develops. It explains how DNA makes proteins and how mutations can corrupt those proteins. It also gives an overview of current therapies and how treatments may advance over the next decades, as well as explaining what actions we can take to help prevent cancer developing.

Reviewed: NYT/BR 4 Dec. 2022 p. 24 (100 Notable Books of 2022); NYT/BR 11 Dec. 2022 (10 Best Books of 2022); NYT/BR 19 June 2022 p. 10.
Description: Villarosa’s New York Times Magazine article on maternal and infant mortality among black mothers and babies in America caused an awakening. A Black woman with a college education is as likely to die or nearly die in childbirth as a white woman with an eighth grade education. Her article made racial disparities in health care impossible to ignore. Here she shows how today’s medical texts and instruments still carry fallacious slavery-era assumptions that Black bodies are fundamentally different from white bodies. Study after study of medical settings show worse treatment and outcomes for Black patients. Black people live in dirtier, more polluted communities due to environmental racism and neglect from all levels of government. And, most powerfully, Villarosa describes the new understanding that coping with the daily scourge of racism ages Black people prematurely. (publ.)

A deep dive into the spectrum of Autistic experience and the phenomenon of masked Autism, giving individuals the tools to safely uncover their true selves while broadening society's narrow understanding of neurodiversity

A leading microbiologist tackles the scientific and sociopolitical impact of viruses in eleven striking essays. Invisible in the food we eat, the people we kiss, and inside our own bodies, viruses flourish--with the power to shape not only our health, but our social, political, and economic systems. Drawing on his expertise in microbiology, Joseph Osmundson brings readers under the microscope to understand the structure and mechanics of viruses and to examine how viruses like HIV and COVID-19 have redefined daily life.

In his award-winning debut essay collection, What Cannot Be Undone, Walter M. Robinson shares surprising stories of illness and medicine that do not sacrifice hard truth for easy dramatics. These true stories are filled with details of difficult days and nights in the world of high-tech medical care, and they show the ongoing struggle in making critical decisions with no good answer. This collection presents the raw moments where his expertise in medical ethics and pediatrics are put to the test. He is neither saint, nor hero, nor wizard. Robinson admits that on his best days he was merely ordinary. Yet in writing down the authentic stories of his patients, Robinson discovers what led him to the practice of medicine--and how his idealism was no match for the realities he faced in modern health care.

Reviewed: PW 28 Mar. 2022 p. 51; PW 23 May 2022 p. 23.

Description: In this thought-provoking book, part memoir, part journalistic
investigation, the acclaimed writer and poet explores the way in which the
progressive health industry has appropriated and commodified global healing
traditions. She reveals how wellness culture has become a luxury good built
on the wisdom of Black, brown, and Indigenous people–while ignoring and
excluding them. … It is divided into four sections, beginning with The Mind, in
which Fariha examines the art of meditation and the importance of intuition. In
part two, The Body, she investigates the physiology of trauma, detailing her
own journey with fatphobia and gender dysmorphia, as well as her own chronic
illness. In part three, Self-Care, she argues against the self-care industrial
complex but cautious us against abandoning care completely and offers
practical advice. She ends with Justice, arguing that if we truly want to be well,
we must be invested in everyone’s well being and shift toward nurturance
culture. (publ.)

This comprehensive guide to liver disease and health teaches readers everything they need to know about the human liver, including how to prevent liver infections and disease, how liver diseases are diagnosed and treated, and how to take care of one's liver"---Provided by publisher

A top expert reveals his insights into Meibomian gland dysfunction, a ubiquitous, misunderstood disease that leads to Dry Eye syndrome In Reversing Dry Eye Syndrome (Yale University Press 2007), ophthalmologist Steven Maskin introduced readers to Dry Eye syndrome, explaining what the syndrome is, why it occurs, and how it can best be managed and treated. In Your Dry Eye Mystery Solved, he reveals his recent discoveries and treatments for Meibomian gland dysfunction (MGD), an underlying disease that leads to Dry Eye syndrome and involves blockage of the oil-producing tear glands within the eyelids. Not only are these glands key to clear vision and comfortable eyes, but when disrupted they can cause severe pain and a host of related symptoms.

A revelatory tale of how the human brain develops, from conception to birth and beyond By the time a baby is born, its brain is equipped with billions of intricately crafted neurons wired together through trillions of interconnections to form a compact and breathtakingly efficient supercomputer. Zero to Birth takes you on an extraordinary journey to the very edge of creation, from the moment of an egg's fertilization through each step of a human brain's development in the womb--and even a little beyond.

Description: Already Toast shows how all-consuming caregiving can be, how difficult it is to find support, and how the social and literary narratives that have long locked women into providing emotional labor also keep them in unpaid caregiving roles. When Kate Washington and her husband, Brad, learned that he had cancer, they were a young couple: professionals with ascending careers, parents to two small children. Brad’s diagnosis stripped those identities away: he became a patient and she his caregiver.
Brad’s cancer quickly turned aggressive, necessitating a stem-cell transplant that triggered a massive infection, robbing him of his eyesight and nearly of his life. Kate acted as his full-time aide to keep him alive, coordinating his treatments, making doctors’ appointments, calling insurance companies, filling dozens of prescriptions, cleaning commodes, administering IV drugs. She became so burned out that, when she took an online quiz on caregiver self-care, her result cheerily declared: “You’re already toast!” Through it all, she felt profoundly alone, but, as she later learned, she was in fact one of millions: an invisible army of family caregivers working every day in America, their unpaid labor keeping our troubled healthcare system afloat. Because our culture both romanticizes and erases the realities of care work, few caregivers have shared their stories publicly.

Reviewed: PW 4 Apr. 2022 p. 41.
Description: Better, stronger, healthier, whole–the wellness industry promises us that with enough intention, investment, and positive thinking, we’ll unlock our best selves and find meaning and purpose in a chaotic and confusing world. The problem? It’s a lie. The industry soars upwards of $650 billion a year, but we’re still isolated, insecure, and inequitable. “Wellness” isn’t making us well; it’s making us worse. It diverts our attention and holds us back from asking the questions that do help us heal: Who gets to be well in America? Who’s harmed–and who’s left out? And what’s the real-life cost of our obsession with self-improvement? To be truly well, we don’t need juice fasts or yoga fads. We need to detox from a culture rooted in perfectionism, white supremacy, and individualism–and move toward a model that embodies mutual responsibility and extends beyond self-help to collective care. Organizer, yoga activist, wellness disruptor, and CTZNWELL founder Kerri Kelly sounds the wake-up call. It’s time to commit to the radical work of unlearning the toxic messages we’ve been fed–to resist, disrupt, and dream better futures of what wellness really means. (publ.)

Reviewed: LRB 27 Jan. 2022 p. 15.
Description: Vaccines are a documented success story, one of the most successful public health interventions in history. Yet there is a vocal anti-vaccination movement and the propagation of anti-vax claims through books, documentaries, and social media. In this book, Jonathan Berman explores the phenomenon of the anti-vaccination movement, recounting its history from its nineteenth-century antecedents to today’s activism, examining its claims, and suggesting a strategy for countering them. (publ.)

Reviewed: NYT 20 Dec. 2020 p. SR4 (author op./ed.)
Description: “There is nothing wrong with you for dying,” palliative care doctor BJ Miller and Shoshana Berger write in A Beginner’s Guide to the End. “Our ultimate purpose here isn’t so much to help you die as it is to free up as much life as possible until you do.” Theirs is a clear-eyed and big-hearted action plan for approaching the end of life, written to help readers feel more in control of an experience that so often seems anything but. Their book offers everything from step-by-step instructions for how to do your paperwork and navigate the healthcare system to answers to questions you might be afraid to ask your doctor, like whether or not sex is still okay when you're sick. You’ll be walked through how to break the news to your employer, whether to share old secrets with your family, how to face friends who might not be as empathetic as you'd hoped, and to how to talk to your children about your will. (Don’t worry: if anyone gets snippy, it’ll likely be their spouses, not them.) There are also lessons for survivors, like how shut down a loved one’s social media accounts, clean out the house, and write a great eulogy. An honest, surprising, and detailed-oriented guide to the most universal of all experiences, this is the one book that everyone needs. (publ.)

Description: The authors underscore the important role of dentistry in mitigating substance use risk, and also highlight the role of the dental hygienist as an active member of the team. They discuss strategies for achieving best practices in substance use disorder assessment and management, while recognizing current barriers specific to the field of dentistry. (publ.)
Note: Library Standing Order.

Reviewed: NYT/BR 27 Feb. 2022 p. 11.
Description: What does it cost to live? When we fall ill, our lives are itemized on a spreadsheet. A thousand dollars for a broken leg, a few hundred for a nasty cut while cooking dinner. Then there are the greater costs for even greater misfortunes. The car accidents, breast cancers, blood diseases, and dark depressions. When Emily Maloney was nineteen she tried to kill herself. An act that would not only cost a great deal personally, but also financially, sending her down a dark spiral of misdiagnoses, years spent in and out of hospitals and doctor's offices, and tens of thousands owed in medical debt. To work to pay off this crippling burden, Emily becomes an emergency room technician. Doing the grunt work in a hospital, and taking care of patients at their most vulnerable moments, chronicling these interactions in searingly beautiful, surprising ways. Shocking and often slyly humorous, Cost of Living is a brilliant examination of just what exactly our troubled healthcare system asks us to pay, as well as a look at what goes on behind the scenes at our hospitals and in the minds of caregivers. (publ.)

Reviewed: TLS 22 Jan. 2021 p. 25.
Description: Nurses have never been more important. We benefit from their expertise in our hospitals and beyond: in our schools, on our streets, in prisons, hospices and care homes. When we feel most alone, nurses remind us that we are not alone at all. Author and pediatric intensive-care nurse Christie Watson reveals the remarkable extent of nurses’ work. A community mental-health nurse choreographs support for a man suffering from severe depression. The critical-care team try to save the life of a teen suffering from stab wounds when a visit from his school nurse allows him to show his vulnerability. And when a pregnant woman loses frightening amounts of blood following a car accident, it is a military nurse who synchronises the emergency department into immaculate order and focus. Christie makes a further discovery: that, time and again, it is patients and their families–including her own–who show exceptional strength in the most challenging times. We are all deserving of compassion, and as we share in each other’s suffering, Christie Watson shows us how we can find courage too. (publ.)

Note: Faculty Request.
Description: This collection of practical thinking exercises has been developed to incorporate the National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN) Clinical Judgment Model (CJM) and to emphasize the new item types that will be integral to the NCLEX-RN exam. Exercises range from basic to more complex and address all specialty areas to fully prepare you for all facets of the exam. (publ.)

Description: Dogs have a storied history in health care, and the human-animal relationship has been used in the field for decades. Certain dogs have improved and advanced the field of health care in myriad ways. Registered nurse and therapy animal instructor Jill Schilp presents the stories of these pioneer dogs, from the mercy dogs of World War I, to the medicine-toting sled dogs Togo and Balto, to today’s therapy dogs. More than the dogs themselves, this book is about the human-animal relationship, and moments in history where that relationship propelled health care forward. (publ.)

Sarah DiGregorio delves deeply into the fraught world of premature birth. With bracing honesty, she recounts her own story and the stories of other women who draw on the power of love and meld it with cutting-edge science, as they struggle to save the lives of their newborns. The book explores the evolution of neonatology and its breakthroughs--how modern medicine can be successful at saving infants at five and a half months gestation who weigh less than a pound, when only a few decades ago, there were essentially no treatments for premature babies.

At only eight months old, identical twin sisters Ariel and Zan were diagnosed with Crouzon syndrome -- a rare condition where the bones in the head fuse prematurely. They were the first twins known to survive it. Growing up, Ariel and her sister endured numerous appearance-altering procedures. Surgeons would break the bones in their heads and faces to make room for their growing organs. While the physical aspect of their condition was painful, it was nothing compared to the emotional toll of navigating life with a facial disfigurement. Ariel explores beauty and identity in her young-adult memoir about resilience, sisterhood, and the strength it takes to put your life, and yourself, back together time and time again.

Description: With the searching, exquisite prose of a loving daughter, Patti Davis provides a life raft for the caregivers of Alzheimer’s patients.
“For the decade of my father’s illness, I felt as if I was floating in the deep end, tossed by waves, carried by currents, but not drowning." In a singular account of battling Alzheimer’s, Patti Davis eloquently weaves personal anecdotes with practical advice tailored specifically for the overlooked caregiver. After losing her father, Ronald Reagan, Davis founded a support group for family members and friends of Alzheimer’s patients; drawing on those years, Davis reveals the surprising struggles and gifts of this cruel disease. From the challenges of navigating disorientation to the moments when guilt and resentments creep in, readers are guided gently through slow-burning grief. Along the way, Davis shares how her own fractured family came together, and how her father revealed his true self-always kind, even when he couldn’t recognize his own daughter. (publ.)

HESI A2 Practice Test Questions Book 2021-2022: 350+ Test Prep Questions for the HESI Admission Assessment Exam provides you with a quick but total review of everything tested on the exam with real examples, graphics, and information. HESI A2 Practice Test Questions Book 2021-2022 offers more than 350 practice questions covering: Mathematics Reading Science Vocabulary and Grammar.

HESI A2 Study Guide 2021-2022 covers: Mathematics Reading Vocabulary Grammar Biology Chemistry Anatomy Physiology and Physics. Includes a FULL practice test.

HESI A2 Study Guide 2022-2023: Admission Assessment Exam Prep with Practice Test Questions. With HESI A2 Study Guide 2022-2023: Admission Assessment Exam Prep with Practice Test Questions, you'll benefit from a quick but total review of everything tested on the exam with current, real examples, graphics, and information. HESI A2 Study Guide 2022-2023: Admission Assessment Exam Prep with Practice Test Questions comes with FREE online resources, including: practice questions, online flashcards, study "cheat" sheets, and 35 tried and tested test tips. HESI A2 Study Guide 2022-2023: Admission Assessment Exam Prep with Practice Test Questions covers: Mathematics Reading Vocabulary Grammar Biology Chemistry Anatomy and Physiology Physics and includes a FULL practice test!

This book will walk you through the important concepts in each subject and also provide you with insider information on test strategies and tactics. Even if it's been years since you graduated from high school or cracked open a textbook, don't worry - this book contains everything you'll need for the HESI A2. --Adapted from introduction.

A comprehensive, all-in-one review of the information you need to know to pass your nursing exams! Updated with the latest test plan and written in an easy-to-read outline format, HESI Comprehensive Review for the NCLEX-PN® Examination, 6th Edition prepares you for success on both the HESI exit exam and the NCLEX-PN®. This trusted guide breaks down chapters by clinical areas and the concepts emphasized on the NCLEX-PN® exam, so you can easily search for various topics to review. Rationales are provided for any incorrect answers or areas of weakness to help strengthen your understanding. The companion Evolve website also offers 750 practice questions, including alternate item formats, in both study and exam modes to give you valuable practice using the same electronic testing format you will face on the nursing school exit exam and on the NCLEX-PN® exam.

Get ready to pass both the HESI exit exam and the NCLEX-RN® exam! HESI Comprehensive Review for the NCLEX-RN® Examination, 6th Edition provides a complete, all-in-one review of the information you need to know. Written in an easy-to-read outline format, this study guide reviews content by concepts and clinical areas. Along the way, valuable tips from HESI help you apply principles of clinical decision-making and critical thinking. With more than 900 practice questions in both study and exam formats, the Evolve companion website lets you practice test-taking in the same electronic format you will experience on your nursing school exit exam and on the NCLEX-RN exam.

An intimate, heart wrenching portrait of one small hospital that reveals the magnitude of America's health care crises. With his signature gut-punching prose, Alexander breaks our hearts as he opens our eyes to America's deep-rooted sickness and despair by immersing us in the lives of a small town hospital and the people it serves.

Description: The authors focus on a journey to excellence in esthetic restorative dentistry and aim to provide a roadmap for clinicians who wish to develop clinical skills and elevate the scope and status of their dental practices. They emphasize not only that at the core of this area of dental care is one’s ability to technically perform treatment but also it is equally as important to attract patients, build relationships, and communicate the value of treatment. Finally, the series of articles is designed to include checklists and practical reference guides that can be used while working clinically or when developing the business and team of one’s practice. (publ.)
Note: Library standing order.

An award-winning investigative journalist's horrifying true crime story of America's deadliest drug contamination outbreak and the greed and deception that fueled it. Two pharmacists sit in a Boston courtroom accused of murder. The weapon: the fungus Exserohilum rostratum. The death count: 100 and rising. Kill Shot is the story of their hubris and fraud, discovered by a team of medical detectives who raced against the clock to hunt the killers and the fungal meningitis they had unleashed. 'Bloodthirsty' is how doctors described the fungal microbe that contaminated thousands of drug vials produced by the New England Compounding Center (NECC). Though NECC chief Barry Cadden called his company the 'Ferrari of Compounders,' it was a slapdash operation of unqualified staff, mold-ridden lab surfaces, and hastily made medications that were injected into approximately 14,000 people.

Growing up in a New Jersey factory town in the 1980s, Daisy Hernández believed that her aunt had become deathly ill from eating an apple. No one in her family, in either the United States or Colombia, spoke of infectious diseases. Even into her thirties, she only knew that her aunt had died of Chagas, a rare and devastating illness that affects the heart and digestive system. But as Hernández dug deeper, she discovered that Chagas--or the kissing bug disease--is more prevalent in the United States than the Zika virus. After her aunt's death, Hernández began searching for answers. Crisscrossing the country, she interviewed patients, doctors, epidemiologists, and even veterinarians with the Department of Defense. She learned that in the United States more than three hundred thousand people in the Latinx community have Chagas, and that outside of Latin America, this is the only country with the native insects--the "kissing bugs"--that carry the Chagas parasite. Through unsparing, gripping, and humane portraits, Hernández chronicles a story vast in scope and urgent in its implications, exposing how poverty, racism, and public policies have conspired to keep this disease hidden. A riveting and nuanced investigation into racial politics and for-profit healthcare in the United States, The Kissing Bug reveals the intimate history of a marginalized disease and connects us to the lives at the center of it all.

Description: In September 1914, a month after the outbreak of the First World War, two British doctors, Flora Murray and Louisa Garrett Anderson, set out for Paris. There, they built a makeshift hospital in Claridge’s, the luxury hotel, and treated hundreds of casualties carted in from France’s battlefields. Until this war called men to the front, female doctors had been restricted to treating only women and children. But even skeptical army officials who visited Flora and Louisa’s Paris hospital sent back glowing reports of their practice. Their wartime hospital was at the cutting edge of medical care–they were the first to use new antiseptic and the first to use x-ray technology to locate bullets and shrapnel. Wendy Moore illuminates this turbulent moment when women were, for the first time, allowed to operate on men. Even as medical schools still denied them entry, Suffragettes across the country put down their bricks to volunteer, determined to prove the value of female doctors. Within months, Flora and Louisa were invited by the British Army to set up two more hospitals-the first in northern France and the second a major military hospital in the heart of London. Nicknamed the “Suffragettes’ Hospital,” Endell Street became renowned as “the best hospital in London,” thanks to its pioneering treatments and reputation for patriotism. … Drawing from letters, memoirs, diaries, army service records, and interviews, Moore brings these remarkable women and their patients to life and reclaims this important, spirited history. At a time when women are campaigning as hard as ever for equality, the fortitude and brilliance of Flora and Louisa serve as powerful reminders of what women can achieve against all odds. (publ.)

Reviewed: NYT/BR 1 May 2022 p. 22.
Description: Over thirty years, doctors diagnosed Sarah Fay with six different mental illnesses–anorexia, major depressive disorder (MDD), anxiety disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and bipolar disorder. Pathological is the gripping story of what it was like to live with those diagnoses, and the crippling impact each had on her life. It is also a rigorous investigation into the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)–psychiatry’s “bible,” the manual from which all mental illness diagnoses come. Yet as Fay found out, some of our most prominent psychiatrists have been trying to warn us that the DSM is fiction sold to the public as fact. Former advisory editor at The Paris Review and award-winning writer Fay calls for a new conversation about mental health diagnosis, one based on rigorous transparency. With exquisite detail and a precise presentation of fact, she digs up her own life at the root to finally ask, Is a diagnosis a lifeline or a self-fulfilling prophecy? (publ.)

Description: Modern diseases and viruses have been spurred anew by war and conflict as well as shifting poverty, urbanization, climate change, and a new troubling anti-science/anti-vaccination outlook. From such twenty-first-century forces, we have seen declines in previous global health gains, with sharp increases in vaccine-preventable and neglected diseases on the Arabian Peninsula, in Venezuela, in parts of Africa, and even on the Gulf Coast of the United States. International vaccine scientist and tropical disease and coronavirus expert Peter J. Hotez, MD, PhD, argues that we can–and must–rely on vaccine diplomacy to address this new world order in disease and global health. … Building on the legacy of Dr. Albert Sabin, who developed the oral polio vaccine with Soviet scientists at the height of the Cold War, he explains how he is still working to refresh and redirect vaccine diplomacy toward neglected and newly emerging diseases. The last five years saw a significant return of epidemic infectious disease, culminating in COVID-19. In our new post–COVID-19 world, how do we prevent future illnesses by expanding scientific and vaccine diplomacy and cooperation, especially to combat the problems that humans have brought on ourselves. (publ.)

This volume covers allergies, defined as hypersensitivity to the immune system, and immune disorders, which are dysfunctions of the immune system classified as different from allergies based on immune system disorders. Readers will explore allergies to common allergens, like pollen and certain foods, as well as a variety of immune disorders, such as lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. Coverage includes causes, prevalence, and treatments. Topics in this volume include: Signs and symptoms Food allergies Drug allergies Environmental allergies Genetics Immunodeficiencies Asthma Acute response Late-phase response Essays are comprehensive and accessible to high school students, undergraduates, and general readers interested in learning more about allergies, allergens, and immune disorders. Each essay includes multiple subheads including an opening Summary and Further Reading. The volume ends with a Glossary, Bibliography, and Subject Index.

Depression is defined as a state of low mood and aversion to activity. This volume addresses factors that can contribute to depression, like certain life events and personality; how depression is measured; and life styles that are connected to depression, like alcoholism and creative thinking. In addition, content will cover management of the condition and how it affects global health. Included in this volume are essays on: Bereavement Physical abuse Rapid mood changes Medical treatments Non-psychiatric illness Antidepressants Physical activity Alternative treatments Beck Depression Inventory Essays are comprehensive and accessible to high school students, undergraduates, and general readers interested in learning more about the complex topic of depression. Each essay includes multiple subheads including an opening Summary and Further Reading. The volume ends with a Glossary, Bibliography, and Subject Index.

As director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), Dr. Anthony Fauci dispenses $6.1 billion in annual taxpayer-provided funding for scientific research, allowing him to dictate the subject, content, and outcome of scientific health research across the globe. Fauci uses the financial clout at his disposal to wield extraordinary influence over hospitals, universities, journals, and thousands of influential doctors and scientists--whose careers and institutions he has the power to ruin, advance, or reward. Through funding leverage and carefully cultivated personal relationships with heads of state and leading media and social media institutions, the Pharma-Fauci-Gates alliance exercises dominion over global health policy. The Real Anthony Fauci details how Fauci, Gates, and their cohorts use their control of media outlets, scientific journals, key government and quasi-governmental agencies, global intelligence agencies, and influential scientists and physicians to flood the public with fearful propaganda about COVID-19 virulence and pathogenesis, and to muzzle debate and ruthlessly censor dissent.

Reviewed: PW 21 Mar. 2022 p. 63.
Description: Linda Villarosa lays bare the forces in the American health-care system and in American society that cause Black people to “live sicker and die quicker” compared to their white counterparts. Today’s medical texts and instruments still carry fallacious slavery-era assumptions that Black bodies are fundamentally different from white bodies. Study after study of medical settings show worse treatment and outcomes for Black patients. Black people live in dirtier, more polluted communities due to environmental racism and neglect from all levels of government. And, most powerfully, Villarosa describes the new understanding that coping with the daily scourge of racism ages Black people prematurely. Anchored by unforgettable human stories and offering incontrovertible proof, Under the Skin is dramatic, tragic, and necessary reading. Her New York Times Magazine article on maternal and infant mortality among black mothers and babies in America caused an awakening. Hundreds of studies had previously established a link between racial discrimination and the health of Black Americans, with little progress toward solutions. But Villarosa’s article exposing that a Black woman with a college education is as likely to die or nearly die in childbirth as a white woman with an eighth grade education made racial disparities in health care impossible to ignore. (publ.)

Reviewed: SA May 2021 p. 76; TLS 14 Jan. 2022 p. 8; NYT/BR 11 July 2021 p. 14.
Description: Elinor Cleghorn became an unwell woman ten years ago. She was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease after a long period of being told her symptoms were anything from psychosomatic to a possible pregnancy. As Elinor learned to live with her unpredictable disease she turned to history for answers, and found an enraging legacy of suffering, mystification, and misdiagnosis. In Unwell Women, she traces the almost unbelievable history of how medicine has failed women by treating their bodies as alien and other, often to perilous effect. The result is an authoritative and groundbreaking exploration of the relationship between women and medical practice, from the “wandering womb” of Ancient Greece to the rise of witch trials across Europe, and from the dawn of hysteria as a catchall for difficult-to-diagnose disorders to the first forays into autoimmunity and the shifting understanding of hormones, menstruation, menopause, and conditions like endometriosis.

Reviewed: NYT 16 Jan. 2022 p. SR3 (author op/ed).
Description: An authoritative, illuminating and deeply humane history of addiction–by a therapist who has reached the depths of addiction himself. Even in the midst of a period of staggering drug abuse that we can confidently call a crisis, questions about the fundamental nature of addiction, its origins, and its ideal treatments abound. This absence of consensus is the latest plotted point on a centuries-old historical arc: as humans have struggled to define, treat, and control addictive behaviour, stigma and controversy have been the only constants. With uncommon empathy and erudition, Carl Erik Fisher draws on his own experience as both a psychiatrist of addiction and a recovering alcoholic as he traces the history of a phenomenon that, centuries on, we hardly appear closer to defining–let alone addressing responsibly. A rich, sweeping history that probes not only medicine and science but also policy, literature, religion, and sociology, Fisher illuminates the extent to which the story of addiction has persistently reflected broader questions of what it means to be human and to take care of one another. He introduces us the physicians, activists, politicians, researchers, and writers who have struggled to understand and solve this complex condition. He also examines the treatments and strategies that have produced positive results for many addicts–himself included–lighting the way forward for those whose lives addiction threatens to destroy. This is at once an eye-opening history of ideas, a personal story of addiction and recovery, and a clinician’s impassioned call for a more expansive, nuanced view of one of society’s most intractable challenges. (publ.)

Description: Can your zip code predict when you will die? Should you space out childhood vaccines? Does talcum powder cause cancer? Why do some doctors recommend e-cigarettes while other doctors recommend you stay away from them? Health information–and misinformation–is all around us, and it can be hard to separate the two. A long history of unethical medical experiments and medical mistakes, along with a host of celebrities spewing anti-science beliefs, has left many wary of science and the scientists who say they should be trusted. How do we stay sane while unraveling the knots of fact and fiction to find out what we should really be concerned about, and what we can laugh off? Journalist, doctor, professor, and CDC-trained disease detective Seema Yasmin, driven by a need to set the record straight, dissects some of the most widely circulating medical myths and pseudoscience. Exploring how epidemics of misinformation can spread faster than microbes, Dr. Yasmin asks why bad science is sometimes more believable and contagious than the facts. Each easy-to-read chapter covers a specific myth, whether it has endured for many years or hit the headlines more recently. Dr. Yasmin explores such pressing questions as

• Do cell phones, Nutella, or bacon cause cancer?
• Are we running out of antibiotics?
• Does playing football cause brain disease?
• Is the CDC banned from studying guns?
• Do patients cared for by female doctors live longer?
• Is trauma inherited?
• Is suicide contagious?

and much more. (publ.)

More people were killed by smallpox during the twentieth century - over 300 million - than by all of the wars of that period combined. In 1918 and 1919, influenza virus claimed over 50 million lives. A century later, influenza is poised to return, ongoing plagues of HIV/AIDS and hepatitis infect millions, and Ebola, Zika, and West Nile viruses cause new concern and panic. The overlapping histories of humans and viruses are ancient. Earliest cities became both the cradle of civilization and breeding grounds for the first viral epidemics. This overlap is the focus of virologist/immunologist Michael Oldstone in Viruses, Plagues and History. Oldstone explains principles of viruses and epidemics while recounting stories of viruses and their impact on human history.

Reviewed: PW 19 Aug. 2019 p. 94.
Description: Rooted in the work of the late epidemiologist Dr. David Barker, this book highlights the exciting research showing that heredity involves much more than the genes your parents passed on to you. Thanks to the relatively new science of epigenetics, we now know that the experiences of previous generations may show up in your health and well-being. Many of the risks for chronic diseases–including obesity, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease and dementia–can be traced back to your first 1,000 days of existence, from the moment you were conceived. The roots of these vulnerabilities may extend back even further, to experiences your parents and grandparents had–and perhaps even beyond. Similarly, what happens to you will affect your children and grandchildren. That’s why it’s so important to make good dietary choices, get a suitable amount of exercise and be cautious about exposure to toxins. Positive lifestyle changes have been shown to spark epigenetic adjustments that can lead to better health, not only for yourself, your offspring and their children, but also for generations to come. This book makes the hard science accessible. (publ.)

Description: From the Black Death of the fourteenth century to more recent Ebola and SARS and the ongoing HIV/AIDS crisis, pandemics and disease outbreaks have devastated societies, wiped out significant portions of populations, and necessitated political, social, and scientific changes to address these public health catastrophes. When the COVID-19 virus effectively brought the world to its knees in 2020, it became clear that whatever scientists and policymakers had learned from historical pandemics wasn’t enough. Journalists, politicians, medical professionals, and other experts from a range of fields weigh in on how pandemics happen and evaluate the potential means of controlling them. (publ.)

Description: Wellness culture promises a reprieve from the stress of long workdays, restrictive dieting, and punishing exercises through providing the alternative of a balanced lifestyle that simply focuses on feeling good. However, the reality of wellness culture is more complicated. While some assert that it successfully promotes well-being, others argue that it is simply a way of rebranding the dieting and exercise regimens that already existed, building an industry around the products and services that allegedly promote wellness. This volume clarifies the nebulous concept of “wellness” and explores how culture, business, and health intersect to create today's wellness culture. (publ.)

Antivaxxers are crazy. That is the perception we all gain from the media, the internet, celebrities, and beyond, writes Bernice Hausman, but we need to open our eyes and ears so that we can all have a better conversation about vaccine skepticism and its implications. Hausman argues that the heated debate about vaccinations and whether to get them or not is most often fueled by accusations and vilifications rather than careful attention to the real concerns of many Americans. She wants to set the record straight about vaccine skepticism and show how the issues and ideas that motivate it--like suspicion of pharmaceutical companies or the belief that some illness is necessary to good health--are commonplace in our society. Through Anti/Vax, Hausman wants to engage public health officials, the media, and each of us in a public dialogue about the relation of individual bodily autonomy to the state's responsibility to safeguard citizens' health.

Muhammad H. Zaman provides a chilling look at the rise of antibiotic-resistant superbugs, explaining how we got here and what we must do to address this growing global health crisis. In September 2016, a woman in Nevada became the first known case in the U.S. of a person who died of an infection resistant to every antibiotic available. Her death is the worst nightmare of infectious disease doctors and public health professionals. While bacteria live within us and are essential for our health, some strains can kill us. As bacteria continue to mutate, becoming increasingly resistant to known antibiotics, we are likely to face a public health crisis of unimaginable proportions. A story of science and evolution that looks to history, culture, attitudes and our own individual choices and collective human behavior. A Biography of Resistance is a riveting and chilling tale from a natural storyteller on the front lines, and a clarion call to address the biggest public health threat of our time.

Separating FACT from FICTION in the COVID-19 Epidemic People are afraid. COVID-19 has upended our lives as it poses new medical dangers, economic suffering and grave uncertainty about the world around us. The collateral damage is enormous, but politics invade perception. There are so many unknowns. Does a treatment work? Is a vaccine coming? How likely are you to catch COVID and how can you best protect yourself and your family? Siegel identifies three major catalysts of the culture of fear: government, the media, and our own psyche. With fascinating, blow-by-blow analyses of the most sensational false alarms of the past few years, compounded now by the worst contagion of our lifetimes, he shows how fear mongers manipulate our most primitive instincts--often without our even realizing it. COVID shows us how to look behind the hype and hysteria, inoculate ourselves against these crippling fear tactics, and develop the emotional and intellectual skills needed to take back our lives, even as we battle the pandemic itself.

Health and Behavior: A Multidisciplinary Approach recognizes that health is impacted by multiple systems-ranging from the individual to the international. While providing current information in common areas addressed in health psychology such as stress, chronic pain, cigarette smoking and sleep disorders, the book examines cross-cultural dimensions in wellness and health care as well as health communication ranging from clinician and patient to the social marketing models used in public health. Each chapter begins with a "conversation" with the author relating the topic to real world problems as well as the student's life experience.

In the absence of good, trustworthy information, patients are guided mostly by their fear instincts when diagnosed with heart disease. With the misperception that more is better, they all too often end up agreeing to undergo every test and treatment recommendation of their harried healthcare provider, who could well be influenced by accepted norms, cognitive biases, medicolegal concerns, or economic considerations. In this book, Dr. J Shah explains the various cardiac tests and treatments, including situations in which they are critical, others in which they are reasonable, and yet others in which they could be unnecessary and even harmful. Using real life stories, he helps readers cultivate a better understanding of heart disease and correct the myths that have guided and misguided patients for years. He teaches the reader to become a more informed consumer of cardiac care and to make better decisions based on their individual needs and the latest scientific evidence.

Market-Based Health Care will define for students the challenges, arguments and politics behind the concept of consumer-driven health care including what it would look like if the business sector would do a better job of organizing our health care arrangements and remove any governmental components built into the system. This is an overwhelmingly complex topic and debate and one that is discussed widely in the classroom. This will be the first text to clearly present the market-based health care model and how doctors, medical insurance and "big pharma" play a role in its development.

A fascinating exploration of the skin. Providing a cover for our delicate and intricate bodies, the skin is our largest and fastest-growing organ. We see it, touch it, and live in it every day. It is also a waste removal plant, a warning system for underlying disease and a dynamic immune barrier to infection. One of the first things people see about us, skin is crucial to our sense of identity, providing us with social significance and psychological meaning. And yet our skin and the fascinating way it functions is largely unknown to us. Lyman leads us on a journey across our most underrated and unexplored organ and reveals how our skin is far stranger, more wondrous, and more complex than we have ever imagined.

Understanding Cancer is a brand new undergraduate textbook for students without prior training in biology that integrates an introduction to cancer medicine with descriptions of the biological processes that go wrong to cause cancer's onset and progression. It also highlights the human side of cancer with stories of patients and loved ones touched by the disease, dealing with diagnosis, treatment, and the prospect of death as well as the broader societal aspects of cancer and its prevention. In spite of this diversity, the book maintains precision and simplicity in describing what is and is not known about cancer, describing the strengths and limitations of current treatments

Description: Presents an extensive case collection of both common and less common conditions of the jaws and teeth. Focusing on the essentials of radiologic interpretation, this is a go-to companion for clinicians in everyday practice who have radiologically identified a potential abnormality, as well as a comprehensive study guide for students at all levels of dentistry, surgery and radiology. (publ.)

Description: This volume has the intent to provide an overall understand-ing of the impact that other health care providers have in the management of caries as well as the most current evidence associated with its cause and management. It begins with the scientific principles of caries cause from the biofilm ecology perspective to dietary approaches on nutritional coun-seling. Subsequent contributors offer updates on nonsurgical and surgical management of cavitated and noncavitated caries lesions and a framework to guide clinical decisions on how to implement strategies in a personalized manner. (publ.)
Note: Library standing order.

Description: From Jamestown to the Marlboro Man, the tobacco plant occupied the heart of the nation’s economy and expressed its enduring myths. But to-day smoking rates have declined and smokers are exiled from many public spaces. The story of tobacco’s fortunes may seem straightforward: science triumphed over our addictive habits and the cynical machinations of tobacco executives. Yet the reality is more complicated. Both the cigarette’s popularity and its eventual decline reflect a parallel course of shifting political priorities. The tobacco industry flourished with the help of the state, but it was the concerted efforts of citizen nonsmokers who organized to fight for their right to clean air that led to its undoing. (pup.)

Description: How often did our ancestors bathe? How often did they wash their clothes and change them? What did they understand cleanliness to be? Why have our hygienic habits changed so dramatically over time? In short, how have we come to be so clean? This book explores one of the most fundamental and pervasive cultural changes in Western history since the seventeenth century: the personal hygiene revolution. In the age of Louis XIV bathing was rare and hygiene was mainly a matter of wearing clean underclothes. By the late twentieth century frequent often daily bathing had become the norm and wearing freshly laundered clothing the general practice. Cleanliness, once simply a requirement for good health, became an essential element of beauty. Beneath this transformation lay a sea change in under-standings, motives, ideologies, technologies, and practices, all of which shaped popular habits over time. Peter Ward explains that what began as an urban bourgeois phenomenon in the later eighteenth century became a universal condition by the end of the twentieth, touching young and old, rich and poor, city dwellers and country residents alike. Based on a wealth of sources in English, French, German, and Italian, Ward surveys the great hygienic transformation that took place across Europe and North America over the course of four centuries. (publ.)

Reviewed: NYT 8 Mar. 2020 p. SR 6 (referenced); NYRB 26 Mar. 2020 p. 28.
Description: This book documents the decline of white-working class lives over the last half-century and examines the social and economic forces that have slowly made these lives more difficult. Case and Deaton argue that market and political power in the United States have moved away from labor towards capital-as unions have weakened and politics have become more favorable to business, corporations have become more powerful. Consolidation in some American industries, healthcare especially, has brought an increase in monopoly power in some product markets so that it is possible for firms to raise prices above what they would be in a freely competitive market. This, the authors argue, is a major cause of wage stagnation among working-class Americans and has played a substantial role in the increase in deaths of despair. Case and Deaton offer a way forward, including ideas that, even in our current political situation, may be feasible and improve lives. (publ.)

Description: This clinically oriented book covers all aspects of the evidence-based decision making process in multidisciplinary management of the natural dentition. The book opens by clarifying the principles of evidence-based decision making and explaining how these principles should be applied in daily practice. Individual chapters then focus specifically, and in detail, on en-dodontic, periodontal, and prosthetic considerations, identifying aspects that need to be integrated into decision making and treatment planning. Evidence-based decision making with regard to preservation of the natural tooth versus extraction and implant placement is then discussed, and a concluding chapter examines likely future trends in dentistry and how they may affect clinical decision making. (publ.)

Introduction to test-taking strategies and the NCLEX-RN Exam -- Leadership and management -- Advanced clinical concepts -- Medical-surgical nursing -- Pediatric nursing -- Maternity nursing -- Psychiatric nursing -- Gerontologic nursing -- Appendix : Common laboratory tests.

Reviewed: PW 27 May 2019 p. 78; NYT/BR 24 Nov. 2019 p. 34; LJ Aug. 2019 p. 114.
Description: As a teenager, Molly Case underwent an operation that saved her life. Nearly a decade later, she finds herself in the operating room again–this time as a trainee nurse. She learns to care for her patients, sharing not only their pain, but also life-affirming moments of hope. In doing so, she offers a compelling account of the processes that keep them alive, from respiratory examinations to surgical prep, and of the extraordinary moments of human connection that sustain both nurse and patient. In rich, lyrical prose, Case illustrates the intricacies of the human condition through the hand of a stranger offered in solace, a gentle word in response to fear and anger, or the witnessing of a person’s last breaths. It is these moments of empathy, in the extremis of human experience, that define us as people. (publ.) “At its core …[this is] a lucidly written narrative about patient care.” (PW)

Description: With the legalization of medical marijuana becoming increasingly common in many states, the medicinal potential of formerly illicit drugs has caught the public’s attention. However, marijuana is not the only drug being researched and used medicinally: MDMA, psilocybin, and ketamine have been found to have therapeutic qualities, which leads some to question whether the medical use of these substances may also be legal in the future. This volume helps readers explore issues like regulation, the ethics of using illicit drugs in medical and scientific research, and its place in the greater history of drug regulation in the United States. (publ.)
Note: Library standing order.

Note: Library Standing Order.
Description: Opioids are pain relievers that include legal drugs like morphine, fentanyl, and oxycodone and illegal drugs like heroin. In 2017, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services declared the opioid epidemic a public health crisis after 42,249 people in the United States died of opioid overdoses in 2016. Opioid prescription has been on the rise since the 1990s, when pharmaceutical companies asserted that the pain relievers were not addictive, though the tragic consequences have proven otherwise. This volume explores the history of the opioid crisis and solutions that have been proposed to fight this increasingly deadly epidemic. (publ.)

Description: Geared to the dental and medical community as a refresher and an update on oral diseases. It is believe that early detection, recogni-tion, and referral to an oral disease specialist, oral surgeon, oral medicine, or oral pathologist, will greatly reduce the negative effects of chronic dis-ease and the cost of clinical care. A major challenge in the diagnosis of oral disease is the need for memorizing long lists of oral lesions from oral pa-thology literature. This is made more difficult because many of these le-sions are not frequently encountered by the dentist or medical practitioner. This current issue highlights common and/or important oral conditions di-vided into various categories that a dentist may encounter in their prac-tice. Pulpal, periapical, and periodontal diseases are intentionally not dis-cussed in this issue since dentists are experienced in diagnosing and man-aging those conditions. (publ.)
Note: Library standing order

Description: Be prepared to meet the ARRT competency requirements. These procedure checklists make it easy. To qualify for your certification exam, you must demonstrate your competency in all 36 mandatory procedures and in at least 15 of the 30 elective procedures–and your instructors must verify your proficiencies. (publ.)

Description: According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), approximately seven percent of middle school students and 20 percent of high school students use tobacco or nicotine products. Everyone knows smoking is bad for you, so why do so many teens still smoke? Are e-cigarettes, hookah, and smokeless tobacco safer alternatives? How can individuals stop smoking or support the quitting efforts of friends and family? This book answers these and other questions related to this high-interest topic. Each book in this series follows a reader-friendly question-and-answer format that anticipates readers' needs and concerns. Prevalent myths and misconceptions are identified and dispelled, and a collection of case studies illustrates key concepts and issues through relatable stories and insightful recommendations. The book also includes a section on health literacy, equipping teens and young adults with practical tools and strategies for finding, evaluating, and using credible sources of health information both on and off the internet–important skills that contribute to a lifetime of healthy decision-making. (publ.)

Description: Seeks to inform readers on a variety of different clinical areas that they would find useful and clinically relevant. The issue includes articles ranging from the use of platelet-rich fibrin to updates on soft and hard tissue grafting and reconstruction, with additional articles on the current state of short implants and 3-dimensional cone-beam reconstruction. Articles that focus on topics in oral medicine, such as surgical management of the patient on blood thinners, and a review of neuropathic pain are included as well. (publ.)
Note: Library standing order.

Description: This volume is an avenue to present evidence-based solutions to unanswered questions in implant dentistry. In the following articles, the authors develop a rational approach to understanding controversial topics in implant dentistry based on literature and the authors’ clinical experi-ence. It is the editor’s hope to generate a systematic and comprehensive clinical approach for best clinical practices. (publ.)
Note: Library standing order.

Description: Under universal health care, all residents of a country would be guaranteed care without incurring financial hardship, regardless of income. Out of the thirty-three countries that are considered developed, thirty-two have universal health care, with the United States being the exception. However, despite the widespread nature of universal health care, its implementation varies between countries. Additionally, despite its positive health impacts, the financial burden it places on governments is a ma-jor source of concern. This volume helps readers examine this issue through exploring economic, political, and health considerations, taking all sides of the debate into account. (publ.)
Note: Library standing order.

Description: Since the smallpox vaccine was invented in 1796, vaccination has played an essential role in eradicating a number of diseases, including polio, measles, tetanus, and smallpox. Despite its effectiveness at prevent-ing disease outbreaks, vaccination has been met with resistance. It has on rare occasions caused patients to become injured or ill, encouraging some to deduce that they are not worth the risk. Questions about whether vac-cines are linked to autism also abound. While universal vaccination would help to eliminate diseases, the question of whether it violates individual liberty merits consideration. The prospective future of vaccination is also discussed. (publ.)
Note: Library standing order.

Note: Library Standing Order.
Description: Though first introduced in 2003, vaping’s popularity has rap-idly increased in recent years. Vaping involves the inhalation of aerosols and is generally considered safer than smoking tobacco, but little is currently known about its health impacts. Additionally, although evidence suggests that vaping can help curb tobacco smoking, there is also concern that it increases addiction among non-smokers, especially children and teenagers. This concern is exacerbated by marketing strategies for electronic cigarettes, which often seem targeted toward young people. The perspectives in this resource explore the facts that are currently available on vaping along with its relationship to addictive substances. (publ.)

Description: This volume is devoted to the rapid rise of vaping across the nation, especially among young people. This trend has prompted fierce debate in communities across the country, with some people heralding “e-cigarettes” and other vaping devices as valuable smoking cessation tools and others condemning them for being unhealthy in their own right–and a gateway to future cigarette consumption. The author describes the key events and people that provided the foundation for the rise of e-cigarettes and vaping, from governmental and medical efforts to reduce traditional cigarette smoking to the emergence and rapid spread of an entire industry devoted to selling vaping devices and accessories. This volume also explores how vaping has influenced youth culture and high school life, its impact on “old school” tobacco companies, and the increasingly visible partisan divide in attitudes about the public health impact of vaping.(publ.)

Description: Everyone knows that vitamins and minerals are nonnegotiable components of optimal health. But what exactly do these substances do in the body, and how much of each is needed? What happens if an individual ingests too little or too much of a particular vitamin or mineral? Which foods are the best sources of them, and are dietary supplements a safe alternative? Do certain vitamins and minerals offer protection against certain diseases and medical conditions? This book provides answers to these and many other questions in an accessible format, backed by summaries of key re-search findings. The authors cut through the confusion and hype that surround the nutrition and supplements industries to offer readers clear guidance founded on solid medical research. A standardized chapter structure and several appendices make the most important information readily available, while introductory essays explore fundamental topics–such as different types of intake recommendations and how they're determined–in greater depth. (publ.)

Reviewed: Choice (Nov. 2018 vol. 56 no. 3) Highly recommended for community college libraries.
Description: Former NEA fellow and Pushcart Prize-winning writer Sallie Tisdale offers a lyrical, thought-provoking, yet practical perspective on death and dying in her new book. Informed by her many years working as a nurse, with more than a decade in palliative care, Tisdale provides a frank, direct, and compassionate meditation on the inevitable. Tisdale explores all the heartbreaking, beautiful, terrifying, confusing, absurd, and even joyful experiences that accompany the work of dying, including : (1) A Good Death: What does it mean to die “a good death”? Can there be more than one kind of good death? What can I do to make my death, or the deaths of my loved ones, good? (2) Communication: What to say and not to say, what to ask, and when, from the dying, loved ones, doctors, and more; (3) Last Months, Weeks, Days, and Hours: What you might expect, physically and emotionally, including the limitations, freedoms, pain, and joy of this unique time; (4) Bodies: What happens to a body after death? What options are available to me after my death, and how do I choose–and make sure my wishes are followed? & (5) Grief: “Grief is the story that must be told over and over...Grief is the breath after the last one.” (publ.)

Description: Provides practicing psychiatrists, trainees, and other mental health professionals with the latest information on opioid addiction, including misuse of heroin and other illicit opioids, the role of prescription analgesic opioids, and recent overdose trends. Although highly effective in relieving acute pain, opioids can cause untold damage to people’s lives, health, and social structures. Recognizing the efficacy of these drugs when prescribed appropriately, the editors call not for eliminating access or for incarcerating those who are addicted, but for changing the patterns of prescribing and use. The crisis is analyzed by expert contributors from a wide variety of perspectives, they address issues of epidemiology and toxicology, prevention and harm reduction, and common comorbidities. Stressing that prevention and treatment do work, expert contributors provide down-to-earth, public-health-focused strategies that clinicians and public health workers alike will find indispensable. Moreover, the use of clinical vignettes and key chapter points help ground the reader and highlight the most important concepts. (publ.)

Reviewed: LR Nov. 2018 p. 11; PW 24 Sept. 2018 p. 92.
Description: A comprehensive portrait of a uniquely American epidemic–devastating in its findings and damning in its conclusions. The opioid epidemic has been described as “one of the greatest mistakes of modern medicine.” But calling it a mistake is a generous rewriting of the history of greed, corruption, and indifference that pushed the US into consuming more than 80 percent of the world's opioid painkillers. Journeying through lives and communities wrecked by the epidemic, Chris McGreal reveals not only how Big Pharma hooked Americans on powerfully addictive drugs, but the corrupting of medicine and public institutions that let the opioid makers get away with it. The starting point for McGreal’s deeply reported investigation is the miners promised that opioid painkillers would restore their wrecked bodies, but who became targets of “drug dealers in white coats.” A few heroic physicians warned of impending disaster. But this book exposes the powerful forces they were up against, including the pharmaceutical industry’s coopting of the Food and Drug Administration and Congress in the drive to push painkillers–resulting in the resurgence of heroin cartels in the American heartland. (publ.)

Reviewed: Choice (Apr. 2019 vol. 56 no. 8) Top 75 titles recommended for community college libraries.
Description: Depression is one of the most commonly reported mental dis-orders, and it affects millions of Americans. A wide variety of medications are used to treat depression, many of which have become household names: Zoloft, Prozac, and Paxil among them. Because these medications have the ability to alter how people think and feel, however, physicians must weigh a number of factors when prescribing them, especially to teens. … After an introductory case study of a person with depression and this individual’s problems and successes with antidepressants, this book provides an overview of depression and its various symptoms as well as the causes, prevalence, and diagnosis of depression. Readers will gain an understanding of the neurotransmission and specific mechanisms behind the activity of antidepressant medications; the effects and applications of these drugs, plus their associated risks of misuse and abuse; and related policy and societal issues. (publ.)

Reviewed: TLS 13 July 2018 p. 11; NYT/BR 12 Aug. 2018 p. 12.
Description: Metabolism, behavior, sleep, mood swings, the immune system, fighting, fleeing, puberty, and sex: these are just a few of the things our bodies control with hormones. Armed with a healthy dose of wit and curiosity, medical journalist Randi Hutter Epstein takes us on a journey through the unusual history of these potent chemicals from a basement filled with jarred nineteenth-century brains to a twenty-first-century hormone clinic in Los Angeles. Brimming with fascinating anecdotes, illuminating new medical research, and humorous details, Epstein introduces the leading scientists who made life-changing discoveries about the hormone imbalances that ail us, as well as the charlatans who used those discoveries to peddle false remedies. She exposes the humanity at the heart of hormone science with her rich cast of characters, including a 1920s doctor promoting vasectomies as a way to boost libido, a female medical student who discovered a pregnancy hormone in the 1940s, and a mother who collected pituitaries, a brain gland, from cadavers as a source of growth hormone to treat her son. Along the way, Epstein explores the functions of hormones such as leptin, oxytocin, estrogen, and testosterone, demystifying the science of endocrinology. (publ.)

Description: In September 1916, as World War I advanced into a third deadly year, an American woman named Ellen N. La Motte published a collection of stories about her experience as a war nurse. Deemed damaging to morale, her book was immediately banned in both England and France and later censored in wartime America. At once deeply unsettling and darkly humorous, this compelling book presents a unique view of the destruction wrought by war to the human body and spirit. Long neglected, it is an astounding book by an extraordinary woman and merits a place among major works of WWI literature. This volume gathers, for the first time, La Motte’s published writing about the First World War. In addition to Back-wash, it includes three long-forgotten essays. Annotated for a modern audience, the book features both a comprehensive introduction to La Motte's war-time writing in its historical and literary contexts and the first extend-ed biography of the “lost” author of this “lost classic.” Not only did La Motte boldly breach decorum in her writing, but she also forcefully challenged societal norms in other equally remarkable ways, as a debutante turned Johns Hopkins-trained nurse, pathbreaking public health advocate and administrator, suffragette, journalist, writer, lesbian, and self-proclaimed anarchist. (publ.)

Reviewed: PW 16 Apr. 2018 p. 83; Choice (Dec. 2018 vol. 56 no. 4) Top 75 books recommended for community college libraries.
Description: Dr. Paul A. Offit shares hard-earned wisdom on the do's and don'ts of battling misinformation. For the past twenty years, Offit has been on the front lines in the fight for sound science and public heath. Stepping into the media spotlight as few scientists have done—such as being one of the first to speak out against conspiracy theories linking vaccines to autism—he found himself in the crosshairs of powerful groups intent on promoting pseudoscience. (publ.) Paul A. Offit is the director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia as well as the Maurice R. Hilleman Professor of Vaccinology and professor of pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. (publ.)

Reviewed: PW 21 May 2018 p. 64.
Description: A visceral, fast-moving, and mordantly funny account of the summers Scardino spent working as an “ambulance attendant” on the mean streets of late-1960s New York. Fueled by adrenaline and Sabrett’s hot dogs, young Mike spends his days speeding from one chaotic emergency to an-other. His adventures take him into the middle of incipient race riots, to the scene of a plane crash at JFK airport and into private lives all over Queens, where New Yorkers are suffering, and dying, in unimaginable ways. Learning on the job, Mike encounters all manner of freakish accidents (the man who drank Drano, the woman attacked by rats, the man who inflated like a balloon), meets countless unforgettable New York characters, falls in love, is nearly murdered, and gets an early and indelible education in the impermanence of life and the cruelty of chance. (publ.)

Reviewed: NYRB 21 Mar. 2019 p. 22.
Description: Leading immunologist Daniel M. Davis describes how the scientific quest to understand how the immune system works–and how it is affected by stress, sleep, age, and our state of mind–is now unlocking a revolutionary new approach to medicine and well-being. The body’s ability to fight dis-ease and heal itself is one of the great mysteries and marvels of nature. But in recent years, painstaking research has resulted in major advances in our grasp of this breathtakingly beautiful inner world: a vast and intri-cate network of specialist cells, regulatory proteins, and dedicated genes that are continually protecting our bodies. Far more powerful than any medicine ever invented, the immune system plays a crucial role in our dai-ly lives. We have found ways to harness these natural defenses to create breakthrough drugs and so-called immunotherapies that help us fight can-cer, diabetes, arthritis, and many age-related diseases, and we are starting to understand whether activities such as mindfulness might play a role in enhancing our physical resilience. (publ.)

Description: From barrier methods such as condoms and diaphragms to oral contraceptive pills and from hormone-based implants and injectables to permanent sterilization techniques, there are a number of ways to prevent unwanted pregnancy today. But which are the most effective, and how do you choose the method that’s right for you? What about side effects and long-term implications for health, such as increased risk for cancer? Does birth control affect your chances of getting pregnant in the future? This book will serve as a scientifically accurate yet easy-to-read introduction to birth control for teens and young adults. The information, guidance, and resources it offers will help readers to make better decisions regarding their sexual health. (publ.)

Review: LJ Winter 2018 p. 91.
Description: “Medicine still contains an oral tradition, passed down in stories: the stories patients tell us, the ones we tell them, and the ones we tell ourselves,” writes contributor Madaline Harrison. This book continues this tradition through a variety of narrative approaches by writers representing all facets of health care. And, since all of us have been or will be touched by illness or disability–our own or that of a loved one–at some point in our lives, any reader of this anthology can relate to the challenges, frustrations, and pain–both physical and emotional–that the contributors have experienced. Contributors offer perspectives on a wide array of issues, from food allergies, cancer, and neurology to mental health, autoimmune disorders, and therapeutic music. These experiences are recounted by patients, nurses, doctors, parents, children, caregivers, and others who attempt to articulate the intangible human and emotional factors that surround life when it intersects with the medical field. (publ.)

Description: Has the connection between body size and overall health been overstated for decades? This book examines how our dogged efforts to eradicate obesity may be doing more harm than good and explores alternative ways to measure and encourage health. (publ.)

Reviewed: NYT 12 May 2019 p. SR6 (author op./ed.); NYT/BR 30 June 2019 p. 15.
Description: Many have hailed the widespread use of generic drugs as one of the most important public-health developments of the twenty-first century. Today, almost 90 percent of our pharmaceutical market is comprised of generics, the majority of which are manufactured overseas. We have been reassured by our doctors, our pharmacists and our regulators that generic drugs are identical to their brand-name counterparts, just less ex-pensive. But is this really true? Katherine Eban exposes the deceit behind generic-drug manufacturing–and the attendant risks for global health. Drawing on exclusive accounts from whistleblowers and regulators, as well as thousands of pages of confidential FDA documents, Eban reveals an industry where fraud is rampant, companies routinely falsify data, and executives circumvent almost every principle of safe manufacturing to minimize cost and maximize profit, confident in their ability to fool inspectors. Meanwhile, patients unwittingly consume medicine with unpredictable and dangerous effects. (publ.)

Reviewed: NYT/BR 13 Jan. 2018 p. 17.
Description: Draws on the experiences of patients, physicians, and researchers to ex-plain the revolutionary development of immunotherapy as a treatment for cancer and how that information is being harnessed to create more effective patient therapies. For decades, scientists have puzzled over one of medicine’s most confounding mysteries: Why doesn’t our immune system recognize and fight cancer the way it does other diseases, like the common cold? As it turns out, the answer to that question can be traced to a series of tricks that cancer has developed to turn off normal immune responses–tricks that scientists have only recently discovered and learned to defeat. This book guides readers through the revolutionary scientific research bringing immunotherapy out of the realm of the miraculous and into the forefront of twenty-first-century medical science. As advances in the fields of cancer research and the human immune system continue to fuel a therapeutic arms race among biotech and pharmaceutical research centers around the world, the next step–harnessing the wealth of new information to create modern and more effective patient therapies–is unfolding at an unprecedented pace, rapidly redefining our relationship with this all-too-human disease. (publ.)

Reviewed: NYRB 23 May 2019 p. 15.
Description: The headline-grabbing 2014 measles outbreak at Disneyland was just the latest reminder of our nation’s falling vaccination rates. What was less evident, however, was that this event was only one example of a larger story of an increasing number of parents who are refusing vaccines, believing vaccines pose greater risks than benefits to their children. Given the certainty of the medical community that vaccines are safe and effective, many wonder how such parents, who are most likely to be white, have high levels of education, and have the greatest access to healthcare services and resources, could hold such beliefs? For more than a decade, sociologist Jennifer A. Reich has been following the issue of vaccine refusal–from the perspectives of the parents who distrust vaccines and the corporations that make them to those of the healthcare providers and policy makers who see them as essential to ensuring community health. Rather than arguing one view, Reich carefully examines how parents who opt out of vaccinations see their decision: what they fear, what they hope to control, and what they believe is in their child's best interst. (publ.)

Reviewed: Choice (Oct. 2018 vol. 56 no. 2) Recommended for community college libraries.
Description: Brings together all the relevant science about healthy eating in one place, and it’s exactly that–a conversation. This in-depth analysis leads to the simple conclusion that the specifics of what you eat don’t actually matter; staying lean and healthy simply requires avoiding the over-consumption of processed foods. While that is, of course, easier said than done, science also provides clear recommendations for how you can adapt your environment and lifestyle to make it possible. (publ.)

Description: Writing with great humanity and understanding, Ágnes Juhász draws on many years of working with people with dementia to show how she has learned to communicate and work collaboratively with sufferers and find the essence of the person hiding behind the symptoms of the disease. Based around real-life stories she shows what she has found works and does not work, and candidly reveals her own emotions of frustration, irritation and–sometimes–amusement, and how she has learned to cope with these. Her honesty in describing the highs and lows of being a carer is an inspiration to all those struggling to find the positive side of an illness we have all come to fear. A journalist in her native Hungary before training to be a nurse in Australia, Ms. Juhász came to specialize in dementia care and spent five years as leader of a dementia-specific program funded by the Australian government. (publ.)

Description: The announcement of a serious diagnosis is a solemn moment where directions shift, priorities change, and life appears in sharper focus. It is also a moment when a story takes shape. It is a story we are able to imagine, even if we haven’t experienced it firsthand, because the moment of diagnosis is as pervasive in popular media, television shows, movies, novels, and newspaper articles as it is in medicine. Exploring stories about diagnosis and pondering the impact they have on how we experience health and dis-ease, Prof. Jutel shares stories written from the perspectives of both those who receive diagnoses and those who deliver them, and confronts how we address illness in our personal lives and in popular media. (publ.)

Reviewed: TLS 16 Nov. 2018 p. 28.
Description: Diet books contribute to a $60-billion industry as they speak to the 45 mil-lion Americans who diet every year. Yet these books don’t just tell readers what to eat: they offer complete philosophies about who Americans are and how we should live. Diet and the Disease of Civilization interrupts the predictable debate about eating right to ask a hard question: what if its not calories but concepts that should be counted? Cultural critic Adrienne Rose Bitar reveals how four popular diets retell the Fall of Man as the narrative backbone for our national consciousness. Intensifying the moral panic of the obesity epidemic, they depict civilization itself as a disease and of-fer diet as the one true cure (publ.)

Reviewed: PW 16 Apr. 2018 (article/author interview); LJ 15 Apr. 2018 p. 88; NYT/BR 5 Aug. 2018 p. 11; PW 11 June 2018 p. 58; LR Nov. 2018 p. 11; Choice (Mar. 2019 vol. 56 no. 7) Top 75 titles highly recommended for community college libraries.
Description: In this masterful work, Beth Macy takes us into the epicenter of America’s twenty-plus year struggle with opioid addiction. From distressed small communities in Central Appalachia to wealthy suburbs; from disparate cities to once-idyllic farm towns; it’s a heartbreaking trajectory that illustrates how this national crisis has persisted for so long and become so firmly entrenched. Beginning with a single dealer who lands in a small Virginia town and sets about turning high school football stars into heroin overdose statistics, Macy endeavors to answer a grieving mother’s question–why her only son died–and comes away with a harrowing story of greed and need. (publ.)

Description: In the warped world of prescription drug pricing, generic drugs can cost more than branded ones, old drugs can be relaunched at astronomical prices, and low-cost options are shut out of the market. In this book, Robin Feldman shines a light into the dark corners of the pharmaceutical industry to expose a web of shadowy deals in which higher-priced drugs receive favorable treatment and patients are channeled toward the most expensive medicines. At the center of this web are the highly secretive middle players who establish coverage levels for patients and negotiate with drug companies. By offering lucrative payments to these middle players (as well as to doctors and hospitals), drug companies ensure that inexpensive drugs never gain traction. This system of perverse incentives has delivered the kind of exorbitant drug prices–and profits–that everyone loves except for those who pay the bills. (publ.)

Reviewed: LJ Aug. 2018 p. 119.
Description: This encyclopedia offers a variety of resources for readers interested in learning more about eating disorders, including hundreds of reference en-tries, interviews, scholarly debates, and case studies. Reflects recent changes in approaches to eating disorders brought about by the publication of the latest edition of the DSM. Explores key issues related to eating dis-orders and models critical thinking and argument construction in the Controversies and Debates section. Offers insights from a variety of perspectives expounded upon in interviews with scholars, eating disorder professionals, patients, and family members. (publ.)

Reviewed: LJ 1 Nov. 2018 p. 80.
Description: Food is supposed to sustain and nourish us. Eating well, any doctor will tell you, is the best way to take care of yourself. Feeding well, any human will tell you, is the most important job a mother has. But for too many of us, food now feels dangerous. We parse every bite we eat as good or bad, and judge our own worth accordingly. When her newborn daughter stopped eating after a medical crisis, Virginia Sole-Smith spent two years teaching her how to feel safe around food again–and in the process, realized just how many of us are struggling to do the same thing. (publ.)

Reviewed: PW 14 Jan. 2019 p. 40.
Description: The immune system is our body’s essential defense network, a guardian vigilantly fighting illness, healing wounds, maintaining order and balance, and keeping us alive. Its legion of microscopic foot soldiers–from T cells to “natural killers”–patrols our body, linked by a nearly instantaneous communications grid. It has been honed by evolution over millennia to face an almost infinite array of threats. For all its astonishing complexity, however, the immune system can be easily compromised by fatigue, stress, toxins, advanced age, and poor nutrition–hallmarks of modern life–and even by excessive hygiene. Paradoxically, it is a fragile wonder weapon that can turn on our own bodies with startling results, leading today to epidemic levels of autoimmune disorders. Richtel guides readers on a scientific detective tale winding from the Black Plague to twentieth-century breakthroughs in vaccination and antibiotics, to the cutting-edge laboratories that are revolutionizing immunology—perhaps the most extraordinary and consequential medical story of our time. (publ.)

Reviewed: NYT/BR 28 May 2019 p. 19.
Description: When he was almost fifty years old, Tomlinson weighed an astonishing–and dangerous–460 pounds, at risk for heart disease, diabetes, and stroke, unable to climb a flight of stairs without having to catch his breath, or travel on an airplane without buying two seats. Raised in a family that loved food, he had been aware of the problem for years, seeing doctors and trying diets from the time he was a preteen. But nothing worked, and every time he tried to make a change, it didn’t go the way he planned–in fact, he wasn’t sure that he really wanted to change. In this book, Tomlinson chronicles his lifelong battle with weight. He also hits the road to meet other members of the plus-sized tribe in an attempt to understand how, as a nation, we got to this point. From buying a FitBit and setting exercise goals to contemplating the Heart Attack Grill in Las Vegas, America’s “capital of food porn,” and modifying his own diet, Tomlinson brings us along on a candid and sometimes brutal look at the everyday experience of being constantly aware of your size. Over the course of the book, he confronts these issues head-on and chronicles the practical steps he has to take–big and small–to lose weight by the end. Affecting and searingly honest, this is a powerful memoir that will resonate with anyone who has grappled with addiction, shame, or self-consciousness. It is also a literary triumph that will stay with readers long after the last page. (publ.)

Description: Includes chapters on Digital Imaging, Image Processing and Analysis; Cone Beam Computed Tomography; 3D Volume Rendering, 3D Printing/ Additive Manufacturing; Computer-assisted (navigational) Surgery; Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT); Fluorescence and Near-Infrared Light Transillumination; Computed Tomography; Dental Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI); Ultrasound; Nuclear Medicine; and more!
Note: Library Standing Order.

Description: The overall goal of this volume is to provide examples of effective use of evidence and to provide strategies for dentists who wish to increase their use of evidence in routine practice. (introd.)
Note: Library standing order.

Reviewed: Choice (Jul. 2019 vol. 56 no. 11); Top 75 books recommended for community college libraries.
Description: A social history of obesity in the United States since the second World War. In confronting this familiar topic from a historical perspective, Jonathan Engel attempts to show that obesity is a symptom of complex changes that have transpired over the past half century to our food, our living habits, our life patterns, our built environments, and our social interactions. He offers readers solid grounding in the known science underlying obesity (genetic set points, complex endocrine feedback loops, neurochemical messengering) but then makes the novel argument that obesity is a result of the interaction of our genes with our environment. That is, our bodies have always been programmed to become obese, but until recently never had the opportunity to do so. Now, with cheap calories ubiquitous (particularly in the form of sucrose), unwalkable physical spaces, deteriorating rituals and norms surrounding eating, and the withering of cooking skills, nearly every American daily confronts the challenge of not putting on weight. Given the outcomes, though, for those who are obese, Engel encourages us to address the problems and offers suggestions to help remedy the problem. (publ.)

Description: This issue has the unique focus of complete health care for the female–from birth to advanced age. Specific topics covered include the following: Ambiguous genitalia; Precocious puberty; Issues related to care access (consent, confidentiality); Teenage pregnancy; Menopause symptom management; Sexuality; Pessary care; Preconception planning; IPV and dating violence; Sexually-transmitted infections (include HPV and vaccination); Care of Women living with HIV/AIDS; Sexual minority care; High-risk pregnancy; and Lactation. (publ.)
Note: Library Standing Order.

Reviewed: PW 20 May 2019 p. 28.
Description: A uniquely hopeful exploration of the impact of Alzheimer’s disease. This book combines the compelling story of Jamie Tyrone, a self-proclaimed “lab rat” diagnosed with a 91 percent chance of contracting AD, with the medical expertise of Dr. Marwan Sabbagh, a leading authority on Alzheimer’s and dementia. (publ.)

Reviewed: LJ 1 Nov. 2018 p. 80.
Description: Roberta Gately is a nurse and humanitarian aid worker who has served in war zones ranging from Africa to Afghanistan aiding refugees. Just the word refugee sparks conversation and fuel emotion. There are more than twenty-two million refugees worldwide and another sixty-five million who have been forcibly displaced. … As a young ER nurse in Boston, Roberta was stopped cold by stark images of big-bellied babies with empty haunting stares in the news. She called the aid organization featured in the news story and within two months, she was on her way. Roberta would soon learn that world into which millions of children around the globe were born was fraught with unspeakable horrors. The only certainties for so many of these children were, and remain to this day–disease and devastating injury. A nurse, humanitarian aid worker, and writer, Roberta Gately has served in war zones around the world. She has written on the subject of refugees for the Journal of Emergency Nursing and the BBC World News Online. She speaks regularly on the plight of the world’s refugees and dis-placed. (publ.)

Reviewed: PW 20 May 2019 p. 77; PW 28 Oct. 2019 p. 33 (Best Books 2019).
Description: Drawing on the very latest science and his own genetic research at the University of Cambridge, Dr. Giles Yeo has written the seminal “anti-diet” diet book. Exploring the history of our food, debunking marketing nonsense, detoxifying diet advice, and confronting the advocates of clean eating, Giles translates his pioneering research into an engaging, must-read study of the human appetite. Only by understanding the physiology of our bodies, their hormonal functions, and their caloric needs can we overcome the misinformation of modern dieting trends, empower ourselves to make better decisions, and achieve healthy relationships with food, our bodies, and our weight. (publ.)

Reviewed: LJ 15 May 2018 p. 77.
Description: The gut microbiome is known as “the forgotten organ” be-cause it is not identified as part of the human body per se, yet it has an immense influence on many systems in the body. The author, a licensed clinical nutritionist, explains what the microbiome is, the many functions it serves, how it can be either harmed or supported by our actions, and the role it may play in various diseases and in determining our overall health. This book examines the various potential causes of imbalance in the microbiome, such as diet and other lifestyle factors, and then identifies strategies for improving human health by protecting the gut microbiota. The science-based information is detailed but accessible to general readers or students without extensive background knowledge. (publ.)

Description: This book equips Alzheimer’s caregivers with knowledge, tools, and advice for their difficult road ahead. The concepts are conveyed in an open, hon-est, and creative manner using original family email communications from Carol B. Amos’s own journey. Carol also introduces The Caregiving Principle™: a simple approach that provides a deeper understanding of a per-son with Alzheimer’s disease and a framework for the caregiver’s role. She provides examples of how her system helped her connect with her mother. Amos encourages caregivers to take care of themselves and provides inspiration for the remainder of their journey. (publ.)

Description: The war on drugs has done little to curb drug use. Accidental drug overdose is the second-leading cause of injury-related deaths for young people. Enter harm reduction, a philosophy that accepts the idea that drug use is inevitable and that making it safer is a more realistic approach. But is harm reduction merely enabling dangerous and potentially deadly behavior? Does distributing clean needles to drug addicts send the wrong message? Is abstinence the only way to stop people from engaging in risky behavior? Experts on several sides of the debate offer perspectives on this fascinating issue. (publ.)
Note: Library Standing Order.

Reviewed: Choice (Jan 2019 vol. 56 no. 5) Top 75 Titles recommended for community college libraries.
Description: More and more not-for-profit hospitals are becoming financialy unstable and being acquired by large hospital systems. The effects range from not having necessary life-saving equipment to losing the most experienced nurses to better jobs at other hospitals. Theresa Morris takes an in-depth look at how this unintended consequence of the Affordable Care Act plays out in a non-profit hospital’s obstetrical ward. Based on ethnographic observations of and in-depth interviews with obstetrical nurses and hospital administrators at a community, not-for-profit hospital in New England, this book examines how nurses’ care of patients changed over the three-year period in which the Affordable Care Act was implemented, state Medicaid funds to hospitals were slashed, and hospitals were being acquired by a for-profit hospital system. Morris explains how the tumultuous political-economic changes have challenged obstetrical nurses, who are at the front lines of providing care for women during labor and birth. (publ.)

Reviewed: PW 23 July 2018 p. 196.
Description: Dr. Michael Fine’s argument frames the questions more expansively than others before him and offers an impassioned road map for a nation con-fused about which health care direction to travel. The crux of Dr. Fine’s book is that the U.S. has put the fate of its health care in the so-called marketplace, where the few profit from the public’s ill health and accelerate the erosion of democracy in the process. He looks around the world for examples of health care systems that are effective and affordable, pictures such a system for the U.S., and creates a practical playbook for a revolution to protect health and strengthen democracy. (publ.)

Note: 4 copies ordered for Peosta reserve.

Reviewed: LJ 1 Nov. 2018 p. 37.
Description: Inspired by her own experiences, renowned author and journalist Letty Cottin Pogrebin offers new insights and concrete advice on how to relate to, and help, our sick friends. (publ.)

Reviewed: NYT/BR 10 Feb. 2019 p. 14.
Note: Originally published as: No One Else: A Personal History of Outlawed Love and Sex (Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India: HarperCollins Publishers In-dia, 2015).
Description: Coming of age in the earliest days of AIDS, Dube was at the front lines when that disease made rights for gay men and for sex workers a matter of basic survival, pushing to decriminalize same-sex relations and sex work in India, both similarly outlawed dating back to British colonial rule. (His efforts would contribute to the repeal of Section 377 in 2018.) He became a trenchant critic of the United States’ imposition of its cruel anti-prostitution policies on developing countries–an effort legitimized by leading American feminists and would-be do-gooders–warning that this was a twenty-first-century replay of the moralistic Victorian-era campaigns that had spawned endless persecution of countless women, men, and trans individuals the world over. (publ.)

Reviewed: Choice (May 2019 vol. 56 no. 9) Top 75 Books recommended for community college libraries.
Description: It was once common for pharmaceutical companies and medical device makers to treat doctors to lavish vacations or give them new cars; companies would do virtually anything to buy influence so that their medications or devices would be used in a doctor’s office or hospital. But with growing public scrutiny of kickbacks to doctors, the huge giveaways have disappeared. In this book, Quinn Grundy shows that sales representatives are working instead behind the scenes. It is to nurses that these companies now market. Nurses, Grundy argues, are the perfect target for sales reps: their work is largely invisible and frequently undervalued, yet they wield a great deal of influence over treatment and purchasing decisions. Furthermore, there are no legal restrictions on marketing to most nurses. Grundy describes how, under the guise of education or product support, and through gifts and free samples, sales representatives influence nurses in the course of day-to-day clinical practice. (publ.)

Reviewed: LJ 1 Nov. 2018 p. 39.
Description: Lent Hirsch weaves her own harrowing experiences together with stories from other women, perspectives from sociologists on structural inequality, and insights from neuroscientists on misogyny in health research. She shows how health issues and disabilities amplify what women in general already confront: warped beauty standards, workplace sexism, worries about romantic partners, and mistrust of their own bodies. By shining a light on this hidden demographic, Lent Hirsch explores the challenges that all women face. (publ.)

Description: Nine months of tying tourniquets and pushing new medications, of IVs, chest compressions, and defibrillator shocks–that was Kevin Grange’s initiation into emergency medicine when, at age thirty-six, he enrolled in the “Harvard of paramedic schools”: UCLA’s Daniel Freeman Paramedic Pro-gram, long considered one of the best and most intense paramedic training programs in the world. Few jobs can match the stress, trauma, and drama that a paramedic calls a typical day at the office, and few educational set-tings can match the pressure and competitiveness of paramedic school. Blending months of classroom instruction with ER rotations and a grueling field internship with the Los Angeles Fire Department, UCLA’s paramedic program is like a mix of boot camp and med school. It would turn out to be the hardest thing Grange had ever done--but also the most transformational and inspiring. (publ)

Reviewed: TLS 4 May 2018 (referenced)
Description: This timely book addresses the scholarly neglect of endometriosis by the social sciences, offering a critical assessment of one of the world’s most common–and burdensome–health problems for women. Drawing on a range of theoretical perspectives, including science and technology studies, feminist theory and queer theory, The Makings of a Modern Epidemic explores the symbolic, discursive and material dimensions of the condition. It demonstrates how shifts in thinking about gender, the body, race, modernity and philosophies of health have shaped the epidemic, and produces a compelling account. (publ.)

Description: Over 5 million Americans currently live with Alzheimer’s disease. Along with them, 15 million unpaid caregivers seek knowledge and resources to assist them in the journey. The unique care principles found in this book help mitigate depression, decrease anxiety, and allow for successful relationships as long as possible in the dementia journey. Mary Ann Drummond, RN credits her unique care philosophy to the greatest teachers of all–the many individuals living with Alzheimer’s and related dementias she has had the pleasure of caring for over the years. Imbuing practical tips with wisdom, respect, and sensibility, Drummond comes full circle by sharing what happened when her own mentor fell prey to the disease. (publ.)

Review: LJ Feb. 2019 p. 107.
Description: Robert Kaplan brings together extensive data to make the case that health care priorities in the United States are sorely misplaced. America’s medical system is invested in attacking disease, but not in addressing the social, behavioral, and environmental problems that engender disease in the first place. Medicine is important, but many Americans act as though it were all important. The U.S. stakes much of its health funding on the promise of high-tech diagnostics and miracle treatments, while ignoring strong evidence that many of the most significant pathways to health are nonmedical. Americans spend millions on drugs to treat high cholesterol, for ex-ample, which increase life expectancy by six to eight months on average. But they underfund education, which might extend life expectancy by as much as twelve years. Wars on infectious disease have paid off, but clinical trials for chronic conditions–costing billions–rarely confirm that new treatments extend life. By comparison, the National Institutes of Health spends just 3 percent of its budget on research in social and behavioral determinants of health, even though these factors account for 50 percent of premature deaths. (publ.)

Note: Library Standing Order.
Description: Dr. Farrar and Dr. Ellison have created an issue that focuses on evidence-based clinical updates and innovations in various nephrology disorders. Top experts on the topic have contributed reviews on the following topics: Kidney Influence on Fluids and Electrolytes; Renal Diet; Pharmacologic Renal Therapy; Acute Renal Therapy; Chronic Renal Therapy; Innovations in Kidney; Autoimmune Disease; Infection-Related Glomerular Disease; Sclerotic Diseases; Obstructive Renal Diseases; Chronic Renal Complications; Psychosocial Issues and Life Style Changes for the Renal Patient; and Withdrawal of Treatment (end of life decisions). Authors will come away with the clinical knowledge they need to improve outcomes in the nephrotic patient. (publ.)

Reviewed: LJ 1 Sept. 2018 p. 29.
Description: Sleep consumes a third of our lives, yet we tend to only think about it when it’s proving a struggle–when a baby is born, if we develop insomnia, or when ageing brings new challenges. The latest research tells us that sleep is essential for learning and memory, for mental health and well-being, and for optimal physical health. It plays a crucial role throughout our waking lives, and our relationship with sleep evolves through our different life stages, from baby to child to teenager and beyond. This book leads you on a fascinating journey through the science of sleep. Based on knowledge accumulated over almost two decades as a sleep researcher, Professor Alice Gregory shares real-life stories as well as insightful discussions with other sleep experts. She answers questions such as: Why are certain babies much harder to settle to sleep than others? Why do children experiencing attention deficit hyperactivity disorders often have co-occurring sleep problems? Why do so many adolescents enjoy lying in at the weekends? Are sleep problems an inevitable part of ageing? Why are scientists turning to sleep disorders such as sleep paralysis to try to under-stand paranormal experience? Throughout there are important tips to help you improve your sleep, allowing you to feel better during the time you're awake. (publ.)

Reviewed: Choice (May 2019 vol. 56 no. 9); Top 75 titles recommended for community college libraries.
Description: This comprehensive review of obesity in childhood and adolescence describes the many factors that contribute to obesity, how to prevent it, and how to manage it in those who already experience its effects. Written by specialists in biological, psychological, social, and behavioral fields, these volumes take an interdisciplinary approach to the subject, offering readers a broad understanding of the systemic complexity of obesity from a public health perspective. The public must be aware of the deep and extensive roots of the problem in order to make informed decisions about policies related to school and nutritional practices, health care costs, and more. Factors contributing to obesity in children and adolescents range from obvious ones such as quantity of food consumed and amount of physical exercise undertaken to how friendly the neighborhood environment is for outdoor activities and the affordability of nutritional foods such as fruits and vegetables. With the information in these volumes, readers will feel empowered to help their clients, families, and communities. (publ.)
Holdings Note: 1st ed (2008) at Calmar Library; call no. 618.92398 Obe

Reviewed: Choice (Aug. 2019 vol. 56 no. 12) Recommended for community college libraries.
Description: Obesity–represented by a BMI over 30–may be easy to define, but its causes and consequences and how individuals and agencies should address it are not as clear. Is obesity simply the result of eating more calories than one burns, or are other factors involved? Can an individual be obese and healthy? How does obesity affect psychological and social health? Are public health campaigns targeted at reducing obesity helping or hurting? (publ.)

Description: The opioid epidemic is responsible for the first sustained decline in U.S. life expectancy since the 1960s. In 2016, more than 50,000 Americans died from an opioid overdose–to say nothing of the hundreds of thousands who live with some measure of opioid addiction every day. This book is an accessible, nonpartisan overview of the causes, politics, and treatments tied to the most devastating health crisis of our time. Its comprehensive approach and Q&A format offer readers a practical path to understanding the epidemic from all sides: the basic science of opioids; the nature of addiction; the underlying reasons for the opioid epidemic; effective approaches to helping individuals, families, communities, and national policy; and common myths related to opioid addiction. Written by two expert physicians and enriched with stories from their experiences the cross-hairs of this epidemic, this book is a critical resource for any general reader–and for the individuals and families fighting this fight in their own lives. (publ.)

Description: The assessment, diagnosis, and management of orofacial pain (OFP) disorders is often a complex, multifactorial, and multidisciplinary process. The articles in this issue provide the reader with the most cur-rent information regarding these conditions and appropriate, evidence-based care for patients who are suffering with these afflictions. (introd.)
Note: Received on standing order.

Reviewed: LJ 1 Nov. 2018 p. 37.
Description: A holistic guide to coping with chronic pain, written by a woman suffering from Thoracic Outlet Syndrome; book aims to provide strategies for mitigating the emotional, financial, and social consequences of living with debilitating pain. (publ.)

Description: A call for action on one of the most talked about issues of our time: how skyrocketing rents and home values are pricing out the working and middle-class from urban America. Telling the stories of tenants, developers, politicians, homeowner groups, and housing activists from over a dozen cities impacted by the national housing crisis, this book criticizes cities for advancing policies that increase economic and racial inequality. Shaw also exposes how boomer homeowners restrict millennials’ access to housing in big cities, a generational divide that increasingly dominates city politics. Defying conventional wisdom, Shaw demonstrates that rising urban unaffordability and neighborhood gentrification are not inevitable. He offers proven measures for cities to preserve and expand their working- and middle-class populations and achieve more equitable and inclusive out-comes. (publ.)

Description: This volume represents the highest levels of expertise that spans the new and old disciplines of prosthodontics: fixed, removable, and implant prosthodontics, the periodontal-prosthodontics connection, ceramic and adhesive technologies, sleep apnea, various aspects of the digital workflow, and the Pro-CAT evidence-based dentistry. (pref.)
Note: Library standing order.

Reviewed: Choice (Feb. 2019 vol. 56 no. 6) Highly recommended for community college libraries.
Description: This book documents the struggle for equity in health and health care by African American citizens and physicians in Mississippi and the United States. Dr. Richard D. deShazo and the contributors to the volume trace the dark journey from a system of slave hospitals in the state, through Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the civil rights era, to the present day. They substantiate that current health disparities in the state are directly linked to America’s history of separation, neglect, struggle, and dis-parities. Contributors reveal details of individual physicians' journeys for recognition both as African Americans and as professionals in Mississippi. Despite discrimination by their white colleagues and threats of violence, a small but fearless group of African American physicians fought for desegregation of American medicine and society. For example, T.R.M. Howard, MD, in the all-black city of Mound Bayou led a private investigation of the Emmett Till murder that helped trigger the civil rights movement. Later, other black physicians risked their lives and practices to furnish care for white civil rights workers during the civil rights movement. … The introduction and essays address ongoing isolation and distrust among black and white colleagues in Mississippi. This book will stimulate dialogue, apology, and reconciliation, with the ultimate goal of improving disparities in health and health care and addressing long-standing injustices in our country. (publ.)

Reviewed: TLS 13 July 2018 p. 11
Description: Charles Darwin played a crucial part in turning heredity into a scientific question, and yet he failed spectacularly to answer it. The birth of genetics in the early 1900s seemed to do precisely that. Gradually, people translated their old notions about heredity into a language of genes. As the technology for studying genes became cheaper, millions of people ordered genetic tests to link themselves to missing parents, to distant ancestors, to ethnic identities. But … heredity isn’t just about genes that pass from parent to child. Heredity continues within our own bodies, as a single cell gives rise to trillions of cells that make up our bodies. We say we inherit genes from our ancestors–using a word that once referred to kingdoms and estates–but we inherit other things that matter as much or more to our lives, from microbes to technologies we use to make life more comfortable. We need a new definition of what heredity is and, through Carl Zimmer’s lucid exposition and storytelling, this resounding tour de force delivers it. (publ.)

Reviewed: TLS 17 Aug. 2018 p. 26.
Description: For as long as writer Porochista Khakpour can remember, she has been sick. For most of that time, she didn’t know why. All of her trips to the ER and her daily anguish, pain, and lethargy only ever resulted in one question: How could any one person be this sick? Several drug addictions, three major hospitalizations, and over $100,000 later, she finally had a diagnosis: late-stage Lyme disease. This is Khakpour’s memoir of her arduous, emotional journey–as a woman, a writer, and a lifelong sufferer of un-diagnosed health problems–through the chronic illness that perpetually left her a victim of anxiety, living a life stymied by an unknown condition. Di-vided by settings, Khakpour guides the reader through her illness by way of the locations that changed her course–New York, LA, New Mexico, and Germany–as she meditates on both the physical and psychological impacts of uncertainty, and the eventual challenge of accepting the diagnosis she had searched for over the course of her adult life. With candor and grace, she examines her subsequent struggles with mental illness, her addiction to the benzodiazepines prescribed by her psychiatrists, and her ever-deteriorating physical health. (publ.)

Reviewed: TLS 17 Aug. 2018 p. 27.
Description: Wendy Mitchell had a busy job with the British National Health Service, raised her two daughters alone, and spent her weekends running and climbing mountains. Then, slowly, a mist settled deep inside the mind she once knew so well, blurring the world around her. She didn’t know it then, but dementia was starting to take hold. In 2014, at age fifty-eight, she was diagnosed with young-onset Alzheimer’s. In this groundbreaking book, Mitchell shares the heartrending story of her cognitive decline and how she has fought to stave it off. What lay ahead of her after the diagnosis was scary and unknowable, but Mitchell was determined and resourceful, and she vowed to outwit the disease for as long as she could. As Mitchell learned to embrace her new life, she began to see her condition as a gift, a chance to experience the world with fresh eyes and to find her own way to make a difference. Even now, her sunny outlook persists: She devotes her time to educating doctors, caregivers, and other people living with dementia, helping to reduce the stigma surrounding this insidious disease. Still living independently, Mitchell now uses Post-it notes and technology to remind her of her routines and has created a “memory room” where she displays photos–with labels–of her daughters, friends, and special places. It is a room where she feels calm and happy, especially on days when the mist descends. (publ.)

Description: Whether it’s alcohol, tobacco, recreational drugs, or prescription medications, substance abuse can have devastating consequences for an individual’s short- and long-term health. It can also have far-reaching impacts on psychological well-being, relationships, and finances. This book provides clear, concise information for readers interested in or struggling with this difficult subject. It explores the substances most frequently abused in the United States, the causes and effects of their abuse, treatment options, and the role that popular culture and the media have in shaping our understanding of these behaviors. The author provides readers with a basic understanding of substance abuse, especially as it relates to teens and young adults, plus resources and guidance for overcoming it. (publ.)

Reviewed: Choice (Nov. 2018 vol. 56 no. 3) Outstanding academic title; Top 75 books highly recommended for community college libraries.
Description: Unnecessary use of antibiotics in both humans and animals accelerates the evolution of drug-resistant bacteria, with potentially catastrophic personal and global consequences. Our best defenses against infectious disease could cease to work, surgical procedures would become deadly, and we might return to a world where even small cuts are life-threatening. The problem of drug resistance already kills over one million people across the world every year and has huge economic costs. Without action, this problem will become significantly worse. Following from their work, authors William Hall, Anthony McDonnell, and Jim O’Neill outline the major systematic failures that have led to this growing crisis. They also provide a set of solutions to tackle these global issues that governments, industry, and public health specialists can adopt. In addition to personal behavioral modifications, such as better handwashing regimens, they argue for mounting an offense against this threat through agricultural policy changes, an industrial research stimulus, and other broad-scale economic and social incentives. (publ.)

Reviewed: Choice (Dec. 2018 vol. 56 no. 4) Recommended for community college libraries.
Description: Since the late nineteenth century, medicine has sought to foster the birth of healthy children by attending to the bodies of pregnant women, through what we have come to call prenatal care. Women, and not their unborn children, were the initial focus of that medical attention, but prenatal diagnosis in its present form, which couples scrutiny of the fetus with the option to terminate pregnancy, came into being in the early 1970s. This book examines the multiple consequences of the widespread diffusion of this medical innovation. Prenatal testing, Ilana Löwy argues, has be-come mainly a risk-management technology–the goal of which is to prevent inborn impairments, ideally through the development of efficient therapies but in practice mainly through the prevention of the birth of children with such impairments. (publ.)

Review: PW 26 Nov. 2018 p. 49; NPR "Your Health" 25 Apr. 2019.
Description: A heart-wrenching and provocative memoir about how the essential parts of one young woman’s early life–her mother’s work as a surgeon and her spiritual practice–led her to become a doctor and to question the premise that medicine exists to prolong life at all costs. Dr. Sunita Puri’s parents grew up in urban India, in extreme poverty. Yet they managed not only to reach America, but her mother become a renowned anesthesiologist too. As a young girl, Puri realized that the gulf between her parents’ experiences and her own was nearly impossible to bridge, save for two elements: medicine and faith. Puri spent her childhood in nurse’s lounges waiting for her mother to exit the OR, and also in deep conversation with her parents about the role of faith in shaping a compassionate life. As a young woman, Puri followed her mother into medicine. But as the years of her training passed, Puri began to question medicine’s power. Were patients’ lives being saved, or merely prolonged? What did doctors understand when patients use words like “warrior,” “survive,” “recover”? Eventually, Puri’s questions led her to palliative care–a new field, one at work translating the border between medical intervention and quality of life care. By helping patients think through radical medical decisions, Puri balanced the pull of her family’s faith and the incessant and sterile push of Western medicine. (publ.)

Reviewed: LR June 2018 p. 29.
Description: Over the past fifteen years the number of prescriptions has increased threefold–an additional 300 million annually–so it is now not unusual for those in their seventies to be taking half a dozen (or more) different drugs. This might be justified were it driven by a flood of new, effective treatments for the relief of common medical conditions–but that is not the case. There has been a fundamental shift in the rationale of drug treatment–we no longer only treat symptoms, we aim to control more aspects of physiology than ever before: blood pressure, glucose levels and cholesterol must all be brought within “normal” levels in order to reduce the risk of heart at-tacks and strokes. Drugs, however, are not without side effects, and one in four acute admissions to hospitals are now caused by adverse reactions to medication. Drawing on fifty years’ experience in medical practice, James Le Fanu reveals the truth about medicine’s metamorphosis from modest beginnings in alleviating pain to the massive global phenomenon it is to-day, sounds the alarm about the dangers of over-medication, and shows us how the future of medicine can be if we’d just stop taking the pills. (publ.)

Description: Although transgender individuals have always existed, their fight for acceptance and equal rights is just beginning. Within this larger context, one area of emerging concern is their health–physical, psychological, and social. From legislation determining public restroom access to insurance coverage of hormone therapy for transitioning individuals to harassment and discrimination, transgender people face a number of challenges that can negatively affect their well-being. This book explores definitions of sex and gender, the history of transgender awareness and activism, physical and psychological health concerns specific to transgender individuals, and how identifying as transgender can have different effects on individuals’ health at different stages in their life. It also examines issues and controversies related to the health and well-being of transgender individuals. The author also provides a variety of useful materials, including case studies, a timeline of critical events, a glossary, and a directory of re-sources. (publ.)

Reviewed: Choice (May 2019 vol. 56 no. 9) Top 75 Titles recommended for community college libraries.
Description: Author and chef Anthony Warner scrutinizes the explanations of experts in every field, speaks to those who dedicate their lives to helping obese people and to others who live with their own larger bodies every day. As he lays out the best evidence available, he rails against quack theories preying on the desperate and considers whether we are blaming our own bodies for other people's ignorance and cruelty. What remains is the unvarnished truth about one of the great preoccupations of our age. (publ.)

Reviewed: Choice (May 2019 vol. 56 no. 9); Top 75 Titles recommended for community college libraries.
Description: Providing accurate, accessible information on vaccines and the controversies that surround them, this book outlines the history of vaccine regulation and interactions between vaccines and the immune system, and thoughtfully considers each vaccine debate. Explains in depth the uses, dosage, adverse events, contraindications, and limitations of every vaccine. Traces the rise of vaccine resistance from the 1800s to the present. Considers the role of the government in vaccination requirements. Discusses the debate about whether vaccines cause neuropsychological disorders such as autism spectrum disorder and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. Examines the appropriateness of the current recommended childhood vaccines. (publ.)

Reviewed: LJ 1 Sept. 2018 p. 72; Choice (Mar. 2019 vol. 56 no. 7) Top 75 books highly recommended for community college libraries.
Description: In 1994, Peter J. Hotez’s nineteen-month-old daughter, Rachel, was diagnosed with autism. Dr. Hotez, a pediatrician-scientist who develops vaccines for neglected tropical diseases affecting the world’s poorest people, became troubled by the decades-long rise of the influential anti-vaccine community and their inescapable narrative around childhood vaccines and autism. The alleged link between the two was first espoused in a fraudulent scientific paper, long since retracted, but the story shows no signs of letting up. As a result, we’ve seen deadly and disabling outbreaks of vac-cine-preventable diseases around the country, and Texas, where Hotez lives, is at particular risk. In this book, Hotez draws on his experiences as a pediatrician, vaccine scientist, and father of an autistic child. Outlining the arguments on both sides of the debate, he examines the science that refutes the concerns of the anti-vaccine movement, debunks current conspiracy theories alleging a cover-up by the CDC, and critiques the scientific community’s failure to effectively communicate the facts about vaccines and autism to the general public, all while sharing his very personal story of raising a now-adult daughter with autism. A uniquely authoritative ac-count, this important book persuasively provides evidence for the genetic basis of autism and illustrates how the neurodevelopmental pathways of autism are under way before birth. Dr. Hotez reminds readers of the many victories of vaccines over disease while warning about the growing dangers of the anti-vaccine movement, especially in the United States and Europe. A former US Science Envoy for the Department of State, he also explains what's at stake if the movement continues to gain ground. (publ.)

Reviewed: TLS 8 June 2018 p. 3; LR June 2018 p. 30.
Description: A palliative care physician draws on stories from her own practice to explain how to enable a gentle and peaceful death and how modern medicine, augmented by traditional palliative approaches, can re-store dignity, humanity, and meaning to the end of life. (publ.)

Reviewed: NYT/BR 25 Mar. 2018 p. 21; NYT 14 Mar. 2018 p. C1; TLS 4 May 2018 p. 28; LR Sept. 2018 p. 40.
Description: For any woman who has experienced illness, chronic pain, or endometriosis comes an inspiring memoir advocating for recognition of women's health issues. In the fall of 2010, Abby Norman’s strong dancer’s body dropped forty pounds and gray hairs began to sprout from her temples. She was repeatedly hospitalized in excruciating pain, but the doctors insisted it was a urinary tract infection and sent her home with antibiotics. Unable to get out of bed, much less attend class, Norman dropped out of college and embarked on what would become a years-long journey to discover what was wrong with her. It wasn't until she took matters into her own hands–securing a job in a hospital and educating herself over lunchtime reading in the medical library–that she found an accurate diagnosis of endometriosis. Norman describes what it was like to have her pain dismissed, to be told it was all in her head, only to be taken seriously when she was accompanied by a boyfriend who confirmed that her sexual performance was, indeed, compromised. (publ.)

Description: With candor and compassion, Srivastava provides an approachable and authoritative reference. She begins with the big questions, like what cancer actually is, and she moves on to offer very practical advice on how to find an oncologist, what to expect during and after treatments, and how to manage pain, diet, and exercise. She discusses in detail the different therapies for cancers and why some cancers are inoperable, and she skillfully addresses the emotional toll of the disease. She speaks clearly and directly to cancer patients, caretakers, and their loved ones, offering straightforward information and insight, something that many oncologists can’t always convey in the office. (publ.)

Description: More than 80,000 new chemicals have been developed and released into the global environment during the last four decades. Today the World Health Organization attributes more than one-third of all childhood deaths to environmental causes, and as rates of childhood disease skyrocket–autism, asthma, ADHD, obesity, diabetes, and even birth defects–it raises serious, difficult questions around how the chemical environment is impacting children’s health. This book offers an accessible guide to understanding and identifying the potential sources of harm in a child’s environment. Written by experts in pediatrics and environmental health and formatted in an easy to follow question-and-answer format, it offers parents, care providers, and activists a reliable introduction to a hotly debated topic. (publ.)

Reviewed: LJ Dec. 2017 p. 115
Description: A medical investigative journalist presents an unsettling ex-pose of the under-regulated medical device industry, revealing the corruption, greed, and deceit that have combined to render medical interventions a leading cause of death in America. (publ.)
Holdings Note: Copy at Calmar library; 2nd copy purchased for Peosta.

Description: Electronic health records are widely regarded as the “connective tissue” of any modern healthcare system. For some they represent a “dangerous enthusiasm” and for others a key enabler of “disruptive innovation.” Many governments have made major policy and financial investments in digitizing health records but their implementation has frequently run into opposition from doctors, had lukewarm responses from patients, and raised considerable concerns for privacy advocates and others worried by the security of sensitive health data and the risks of national databases. This book draws upon the concept of “orders of worth” to reveal the moral dimensions of the medical division of labor and to delve deeper into understanding why electronic records have been so difficult to implement and the sources of opposition to them. (publ.)

Reviewed: PW 15 Jan. 2018 p. 51; NYT 14 Mar. 2018 p. C1; LJ 15 Feb. 2018 p. 78; NPR ("Fresh Air" 3/27/2018)
Description: More than twenty years after the law decreed that women be included in all health-related research and drug development, doctors are still operating with a lingering knowledge gap when it comes to women’s health. And they’re not immune to unconscious biases and stereotypes that can undermine the doctor-patient relationship. The consequences can be catastrophic: Too often, women are misdiagnosed, poorly treated, and find their complaints dismissed as “just stress” or “all in your head.” Meanwhile, they’re getting sicker. Feministing.com website editorial director Maya Dusenbery brings together scientific and sociological research, interviews with experts within and outside the medical establishment, and personal stories from regular women to provide the a comprehensive, accessible look at how sexism in medicine harms women today. (publ.)

Reviewed: Choice Oct. 2017 vol. 55 no. 2 (Highly Recommended; Top 75 titles recommended for community college libraries); CHE 11 Aug. 2017 (new books); TLS 17 Nov. 2017 p. 38
Description: Describes how a tooth’s “foodprints”–distinctive patterns of microscopic wear and tear–provide telltale details about what an animal actually ate in the past. These clues, combined with groundbreaking re-search in paleoclimatology, demonstrate how a changing climate altered the food options available to our ancestors, what Ungar calls the biospheric buffet. When diets change, species change, and Ungar traces how diet and an unpredictable climate determined who among our ancestors was winnowed out and who survived, as well as why we transitioned from the role of forager to farmer. By sifting through the evidence–and the scars on our teeth–Ungar makes the important case for what might or might not be the most natural diet for humans. (publ.)

Description: This video demonstrates easy clinical use of scanners, how to get the scans to a laboratory nearby or to one in your facility, a comparison of in-office and in-lab milling, overcoming common challenges, and the financial and clinical advantages of scanning impressions.
Note: Faculty request.

Reviewed: Choice Jan 2018 vol. 55 no. 5 (recommended for community college libraries)
Description: The population of the world grew from 1 billion in 1800 to 7 billion in 2012, and over the past 50 years the mean temperature has risen faster than ever before. Both factors continue to rise, as well as health inequalities. Our environment is changing rapidly, with tremendous consequences for our health. … We cannot exclude the possibility that the allied forces of poverty, social inequalities, climate change, industrial food and lack of governance will lead to a deterioration in the health of large sectors of the population. In low-income countries, while many of the traditional causes of death (infectious diseases) are still highly prevalent, other threats typical of affluent societies (obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases) are increasing. Africa is not only affected by malaria, TB and HIV, but also by skyrocketing rates of cancer. The book argues that the current situation requires effective and coordinated multinational interventions guided by the principle of health as a common good. An entirely competition-driven economy cannot–by its very nature–address global challenges that require full international cooperation. A communal global leadership is called for. (publ.)
Note: Translated from the Italian with some revisions; Originally published as: Salute Senza Confini: Le Epidemie della Globalizzazione [Tempi Moderni Ser.] (Turin: Codice, 2014).

Reviewed: NYT/BR 27 Aug. 2017 p. 13; LR Sept. 2017 p. 41
Description: A neuroscientist reveals his work with patients believed to be brain dead to explain how up to twenty percent of them were still consciously alive, sharing insights into what life may be like for such patients and its moral implications. …In 2006, Adrian Owen led a team that discovered this lost population and made medical history, provoking an ongoing debate among scientists, physicians, and philosophers about the meaning, value, and purpose of life. (publ.)

Reviewed: LJ 1 March 2018 p. 97; PW 26 Mar. 2018 p. 108; LR May 2018 p. 22; TLS 29 June 2018 p. 29.
Description: A memoir about the experiences of a nurse in London, focusing on the overlooked importance of kindness and compassion. (publ.)

Description: Thanks to remarkable advances in modern health care attributable to science, engineering, and medicine, it is now possible to cure or manage illnesses that were long deemed untreatable. At the same time, however, the United States is facing the vexing challenge of a seemingly uncontrolled rise in the cost of health care. Total medical expenditures are rapidly approaching 20 percent of the gross domestic product and are crowding out other priorities of national importance. The use of increasingly expensive prescription drugs is a significant part of this problem, making the cost of biopharmaceuticals a serious national concern with broad political implications. Especially with the highly visible and very large price increases for prescription drugs that have occurred in recent years, finding a way to make prescription medicines–and health care at large–more affordable for everyone has become a socioeconomic imperative. (publ.)
Note: Free online copy added to NICC library catalog; URL: https://doi.org/10.17226/24946 (may be downloaded or read online).

Reviewed: Choice Oct. 2017 vol. 55 no. 2 (Top 75 Titles Recommended for community college libraries)
Description: We spend a third of our lives in bed, but how much do we really understand about what happens when we go to sleep? What s the right amount? Why do we experience jet lag? Is snoring normal? Enter Dr. Meir Kryger, a world authority on the science of sleep, with a comprehensive guide to the science of slumber that combines detailed case studies, helpful tables, illustrations, and pragmatic advice. (publ.)

Reviewed: NYT 11 Apr. 2018 p. C5; Economist 21 Apr. 2018 p. 75; TLS 25 May 2018 p. 4; LR July 2018 p. 49; LJ Aug. 2018 p. 36.
Description: Drawing on varied sources, from personal experience and sociological trends to pop culture and current scientific literature, science author and healthcare journalist Barbara Ehrenreich examines the ways in which we obsess over death, our bodies, and our health. Both funny and caustic, Ehrenreich then tackles the seemingly unsolvable problem of how we might better prepare ourselves for the end–while still reveling in the lives that remain to us. Ehrenreich is the author of previous bestseller, Nickel and Dimed (NICC call no. 305.569 Ehr). (publ.)

Reviewed: NYT/BR 27 Aug. 2017 p. 15
Description: In medical charts, the term “N.A.D.” (No Apparent Distress) is used for patients who appear stable. The phrase also aptly describes America’s medical system when it comes to treating the underprivileged. Medical students learn on the bodies of the poor–and the poor suffer from their mistakes. Rachel Pearson confronted these harsh realities when she started medical school in Galveston, Texas. Pearson, herself from a working-class background, remains haunted by the suicide of a close friend, experiences firsthand the heartbreak of her own errors in a patient’s care, and witnesses the ruinous effects of a hurricane on a Texas town’s medical system. In a free clinic where the motto is “All Are Welcome Here,” she learns how to practice medicine with love and tenacity amidst the raging injustices of a system that favors the rich and the white. (publ.)

Reviewed: PW 24 Apr. 2017 p. 84

Description: Physician-assisted death is now legal in six states, and is the subject of intense political and legal battles across the country. As our population ages, the debate continues. What are the main dividing lines in this debate? What are the principal ethical questions involved? Philosopher and ethicist L.W. Sumner equips readers with everything they need to know to take a reasoned and informed position on these and similar questions. He provides much-needed context by situating physician-assisted death within the wider framework of end-of-life care, and explains why the movement to legalize it now enjoys such strong public support by reviewing the movement’s successes to date, beginning in Oregon in 1994 and now extending to twelve jurisdictions across three continents. (publ.)

Description: Millions of Americans use e-cigarettes, even as rates of smoking combustible tobacco cigarettes continue to decline among youth and adults. In 2016 youth e-cigarette use was substantially higher than cigarette smoking or use of any other tobacco product. The Center for Tobacco Products of the Food and Drug Administration requested that the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine convene a committee of experts to conduct a review the available evidence of the health effects related to the use of e-cigarettes and identify future federally funded re-search needs. The resulting report is a comprehensive and systematic re-view of the literature that evaluates the evidence about e-cigarettes and health, highlights gaps that are a priority for future research, and makes recommendations to improve the quality of this research. (publ.)
Note: Free online copy added to NICC library catalog; URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.17226/24952 (may be downloaded or read online).

Reviewed: LRB 29 June 2017 p. 29; TLS 21 July 2017 p. 33; Choice Nov. 2017 vol. 55 no. 3 (Highly Recommended; Recommended for community college libraries).
Description: This achingly jawdropping book follows the evolution of dentistry throughout the world from the Bronze Age to the present day, presenting captivating and grim illustrations of the tools and techniques of dentistry through the ages. Organized chronologically, The Smile Stealers interleaves beautiful and gruesome technical illustrations and paintings from the Wellcome Collection’s unique archive of material from Europe, America and the Far East with seven authoritative and eloquent themed articles from medical historian Richard Barnett. (publ.)
Contents: Introduction: you know the drill -- The natural and ancient history of the teeth -- Pulling teeth in Medieval Europe -- Fauchard and the dentistes -- Enlightened extractions -- A new era in tooth-pulling -- The skull beneath the skin -- The smile of success.

Reviewed: CHE 22 Sept. 2017 (new books)
Description: From race-based pharmaceutical prescriptions and marketing, to race-targeted medical “hot spotting” and the Affordable Care Act, to stem-cell trial recruitment discourse, Subprime Health is a timely examination of race-based medicine as it intersects with the concept of debt. (publ.)

Reviewed: Choice Jan 2018 vol. 55 no. 5 (Recommended for community college libraries)
Description: The stories of a dozen athletes (including Joan Benoit, Michael Jordan, Brandi Chastain, and Tommy John) whose injuries and recovery advanced the field of sports medicine. (publ.)

Reviewed: The Lancet 7 Oct. 2017 p. 1637; Lanceet 21 April 2018 p. 1569; TLS 1 Dec. 2017 p. 18.
Description: As soon as Adam Kay set foot on a hospital ward for the first time, he realized there's quite a lot they don’t teach you at medical school … His diaries from the NHS front line–scribbled in secret after long nights, endless days and missed weekends–are hilarious, horrifying and heart-breaking by turns. (publ.)

Holdings Note: Duplicate copy donated to Peosta by Calmar library.

Reviewed: TLS 18/25 Aug. 2017 p. 34.
Description: This multidisciplinary volume investigates different abortion and reproductive practices across time, space, geography, national boundaries, and cultures. The authors specialize in the reproductive politics of Australia, Bolivia, Cameroon, France, “German East Africa,” Ireland, Japan, Sweden, South Africa, the United States, and Zanzibar, with historical focuses on the pre-modern era, nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as the present day. This timely work complicates the many histories and ongoing politics of abortion by exploring the conditions in which women have been forced to make these life-altering decisions. (publ.)

Reviewed: PW 26 June 2017 p. 67
Description: Endocrinologists Wood & Peters present a reference for those with type 1 diabetes, as well as for their families and friends.

Reviewed: Choice Jun 2018 vol. 55 no. 10 (Recommended for community college libraries)
Description: Examines the reasons why stark differences in health and well-being persist, even as the health care industry and access to health care grow. The third edition of this powerful book retains the accessible style and focus on inequality from previous editions while featuring significant new material throughout. After an overview of key themes, the book introduces the concept of epidemiology–measuring the number of people who are sick or dying–and offers an overview of health trends over time. (publ.)
Holdings Note: No previous eds. at NICC.

Reviewed: FA 79(1) Jan./Feb. 2018 p. 154
Description: Explains how political incentives, polarization, and the misuse of professional authority have undermined efforts to tackle the medical evidence problem and curb wasteful spending. The authors paint a portrait of a medical industry with vast influence over which procedures and treatments get adopted, and a public burdened by the rising costs of health care yet fearful of going against “doctor’s orders.” The book shows how the government’s efforts to promote evidence-based medicine have become mired in partisan debates. It also proposes sensible solutions that can lead to better, more efficient health care for all of us. (publ.)

Reviewed: Choice Oct. 2017 vol. 55 no. 2 (Highly Recommended)

Reviewed: FA 97(2) March/Apr. 2018 p. 171.
Description: Immunization is regarded by many as one of the greatest advances in modern civilization. The widespread use of vaccines has led to increases in life expectancy, reductions in the occurrence of childhood diseases, and is generally credited with saving millions of lives annually. But since their discovery two centuries ago, vaccines have been dogged by pockets of persistent distrust among those who are skeptical of their science or who find compulsory immunization at odds with personal liberty. The rise of these voices in contemporary culture has contributed to trends of vaccine delay and vaccine hesitancy in some communities–a chasm between the general population and the scientific establishment that has persisted and grown at times across the last several decades. (publ.)

Description: We have lost the ability to deal with death. Most of our friends and beloved relations will die in a busy hospital in the care of strangers, doctors, and nurses they have known at best for a couple of weeks. They may not even know they are dying, victims of the kindly lie that there is still hope. They are unlikely to see even their family doctor in their final hours, robbed of their dignity and fed through a tube after a long series of excessive and hopeless medical interventions. This is the starting point of Irish gastroenterologist Seamus O’Mahony’s The Way We Die Now, a thoughtful, moving and unforgettable book on the western way of death. Dying has never been more public, with celebrities writing detailed memoirs of their illness, but in private we have done our best to banish all thought of dying and made a good death increasingly difficult to achieve. (publ.)

Description: Direct care workers will become essential to many more families over the next twenty-five years. Yet these workers tend to be low-paid, poorly trained, and receive little respect. The author presents an innovative policy agenda that reconceives direct care workers’ work role and improve both the quality of their jobs and the quality of elder care. (publ.)

Reviewed: NYT 25 Mar. 2018 p. SR4 (op/ed excerpt)
Description: As a critical care doctor treating people at their sickest, Daniela Lamas is fascinated by the story: what comes after for those whose lives are extended by days, months, or years as a result of our treatments and technologies? … She explores the complex answers to this question through intimate accounts of patients and their families. A grandfather whose failing heart has been replaced by a battery-operated pump; a salesman who found himself a kidney donor on social media; a college student who survived a near fatal overdose and returned home, alive but not the same; and a young woman navigating an adulthood she never thought she’d live to see–these moving narratives paint a detailed picture of the fragile border between sickness and health. (publ.)

Reviewed: LJ 1 Nov. 2017 p. 94
Description: Memoir of a nurse who has cared for the very ill and dying for over 30 years.

Description: Summarizes the findings of scientific research studies to provide readers with straightforward information on a wide variety of healthy habits and the factors that may make them difficult to follow.
Contents: Food and healthy eating – Exercise and physical activity – Medical care and avoiding medical issues – Mental, emotional, and social health – Sex and dating – Other lifestyle choices.

Reviewed: Choice Aug 2016 vol. 53 no. 12 (Highly Recommended; Top 75 Books for Community Colleges; Outstanding Academic Title)

Reviewed: Choice Aug 2017 vol. 54 no. 12 (Essential; recommended for community college library collections); TLS 18/25 Aug. 2017 p. 34.

Participants: Gordon J. Christensen, Presenter.
Note: “The Gordon J. Christensen career development program;” Intended audience dental practitioners & dental assistants.
Note (2): Faculty Request.

Reviewed: WSJ 29/30 Apr. 2017 p. C5; NYRB 13 July 2017 p. 47; NPR 10 Apr. 2017 ("Fresh Air") How U.S. Health Care Became Big Business.

Exploration and discussion of the natural, medical, psychological, and political facets of fertility.

Reviewed: CHE 17 Mar. 2017 (new books)

Reviewed: Choice Oct. 2017 vol. 55 no. 2 (Top 75 Titles recommended for community college libraries)

When Damon Tweedy first enters the halls of Duke University Medical School on a full scholarship, he envisions a bright future where his segregated, working class background will become largely irrelevant. Instead, he finds that he has joined a new world where race is front and center. (publ.)

Reviewed: CHE (new books); Choice Jun 2017 vol. 54 no. 10 (Community College Recommended; Highly Recommended)

Holdings: NICC/Peosta has 2nd ed. (1997); call no. 610.73 Gal.
Note: New edition will replace 2nd edition.

Reviewed: NYT/BR 8 Jan. 2016 p. 1; WSJ 31 Dec. 2016 p. C5

Reviewed: Choice Oct. 2017 vol. 55 no. 2 (Top 75 Titles recommended for community college libraries.)

Holdings: NICC/Peosta has vol. 16 (1972) – Present. 4 vols./yr.
Content Note: Each volume is devoted to a special topic.

Description: Why do some parents refuse to vaccinate their children? Why do some keep guns at home, despite scientific evidence of risk to their family members? And why do people use antibiotics for illnesses they can't possibly alleviate? When it comes to health, many people insist that science is wrong, that the evidence is incomplete or inconclusive, and that unidentified hazards lurk everywhere to harm us.

Reviewed: WSJ 8 Dec. 2016 p. A15; TLS 22 Sept. 2017 p. 3; NYT/BR 23 Dec. 2018 p. 17.

Reviewed: Choice Jan 2017 vol. 54 no. 5 (Highly Recommended; Top 75 Titles for Community Colleges)

Reviewed: CHE 17 Mar. 2017 (new books)

Reviewed: Choice May 2016 vol. 53 no. 9 (highly recommended)

Reviewed: CHE 21 May 2017 (new books)

Holdings: To replace older ed. in library (3rd ed.; 2013; on reserve).
Note: Selected in consultation with Nursing faculty.
Use Note: Multiple copies on reserve. HESI exam required by NICC nursing program for admission.

Holdings: To replace older ed. in library (2nd ed.; 2009).
Note: Selected in consultation with Nursing faculty.
Note (2): Older ed. has slightly different title: Evolve Reach Comprehensive Review for the NCLEX-PN® Examination; call no. 610.73076 EVO.

Reviewed: Choice (Community College Core Collection in Allied Health Recommended)

Reviewed: NYT/BR 4 Dec. 2016 p. 26 (100 Notable Books 2016); Winner of The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction 2017.

Holdings: To replace older ed. in library (6th ed.; 2010).
Note: Selected in consultation with Nursing faculty.
Publication: Forthcoming April 2017 per phone call to publisher; (1-800-933-7277 x1) 14 Feb. 2017 (vl)

Holdings: To replace older ed. in library (7th ed.; 2010).
Note: Selected in consultation with Nursing faculty.

Reviewed: CHE 13 Jan. 2016
Description: This book shows how living in a highly racialized society affects health through multiple social contexts, including neighborhoods, personal and family relationships, and the medical system. Black-white disparities in health, illness, and mortality have been widely documented, but most research has focused on single factors that produce and perpetuate those disparities, such as individual health behaviors and access to medical care. (publ.)

Reviewed: NYT/BR 23 Apr. 2017 p. 18

Note: See also Math & Statistics section of this list.

Holdings: To replace older ed. in library (3rd ed.; 2015).
Note: Selected in consultation with Nursing faculty.

Reviewed: WSJ 21/21 May 2017 p. C6

Holdings: To replace older ed. in library (19th ed.; 2009).
Note: Selected in consultation with Nursing faculty.

Holdings: To replace older ed. in library (16th ed.; 2011).
Note: Selected in consultation with Nursing faculty.

Note: See also Math & Statistics section of this list.
Holdings Note: Updates and replaces 3rd ed. (1997); call no. 610.72 Mun (withdrawn from collection).

Holdings: To replace older ed. in library of similar work: NCLEX-PN questions & answers made incredibly easy! (2nd ed.; 2006).
Note: Selected in consultation with Nursing faculty.

Holdings: To replace older ed. in library (7th ed.; 2010).
Note: Selected in consultation with Nursing faculty.

Holdings: NICC/Peosta has vol. 7 (1972) – Present. 4 vols./yr.
Note: Each volume has a particular thematic focus.

Holdings: Copy at Calmar; call no. 616.398 Ste

"A hospice chaplain shares the meaning the dying make of their lives, to help us understand what is ultimately important and to make the most of our own still-being-lived lives"---Provided by publisher

Note: Faculty Request.

Reviewed: CHE 24 Mar. 2017 (new books

Note: Faculty Request.

Note: Faculty Request (Dentistry).
Series Note: Practical Clinical Courses; D3919

Note: Reprinted from the “Reflections” column in the AJN: American Journal of Nursing.
Holdings: NICC has AJN in print for the most recent 5 years only.

Note: Winner of Bancroft Prize in American History and Diplomacy, 2017.

Reviewed: Choice (Community College Core Collection in Allied Health)
Contents: With regard to food – Sugar and spice and all things nasty – Modified foods: genetic or atomic? – The metrics of food and health – Personalized nutrition: fitting into your genes – Plastic babies: the phenomenon of epigenetics – Your inside is out: food, the gut and health – A tsunami of lard: the global epidemic of obesity – Greying matters – Food and health: the science, policy and politics – My food, your poison: who sees what in food? – How the other half dies – Mankind and mother earth – Projections and reflections.

Reviewed: Choice (Highly Recommended; Community College Core Collection in Allied Health)

Reviewed: NYT/BR 26 Mar 2017 p. 21; LJ Dec. 2017 p. 31 (Best Books 2017).

Reviewed: Choice May 2016 vol. 53 no. 9 (Highly Recommended; Recommended for Community Colleges)

Reviewed: Literary Review March 2017 p. 36

Reviewed: CHE 10 Mar. 2017 (new books)