This book is something different: a sustained, incisive and sometimes agonized inquiry into the processes by which medical minds—brilliant, experienced, highly erudite medical minds—synthesize information and understand illness. How Doctors Think is mostly about how these doctors get it right, and about why they sometimes get it wrong: “[m]ost errors are mistakes in thinking. And part of what causes these cognitive errors is our inner feelings, feelings we do not readily admit to and often don’t realize”.

Attribution errors happen when a doctor’s diagnostic cogitations are shaped by a particular stereotype. It can be negative: when five doctors fail to diagnose an endocrinologic tumor causing peculiar symptoms in “a persistently complaining, melodramatic menopausal woman who quite accurately describes herself as kooky”. Read the rest of this entry »

Students need exposure to cases to pass the USMLE Step 2 and the internal medicine shelf exam. This book presents 60 clinical cases illustrating essential concepts in internal medicine. Perfect for the clerkship and the USMLE Step 2, each case includes an extended discussion, definitions of key terms, clinical pearls, and USMLE-style review questions. This interactive learning system helps you to learn instead of memorize.

1. 60 internal medicine cases with complete discussions
2. Clinical pearls highlight key points
3. USMLE-style comprehension questions with each case
4. Primer on how to approach the patient
5. Proven learning system improves shelf exam scores

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This introduction to the history of medicine begins with the evolution of infectious diseases at the end of the last ice age. It describes the origin of science and medicine in ancient civilizations, including China and India. The first third of the book covers the early period that is considered the “classical” history of medicine.

The remainder describes the evolution of modern medicine and surgery up to the present. The final chapter is a history of medical economics and explains the origin of health insurance, HMOs and medical malpractice lawsuits, subjects explained nowhere else in the medical school curriculum. Read the rest of this entry »

Spirituality Simplified is an easy-to-understand overview of basic spiritual principles, supported by passages from the works of many respected spiritual teachers. With insightful content drawn from nearly 40 books covering a variety of topics, Spirituality Simplified provides you with the necessary foundation to make enlightened choices about your own personal spiritual direction.

This valuable book not only gives you a solid introduction to the concept of spirituality, it also serves as a virtual roadmap to other published works that can provide greater detail on the subjects you find most interesting.

Although designed primarily for mainstream readers interested in pursuing a path of spiritual growth, seasoned veterans on this path will find Spirituality Simplified to be a valuable, centralized resource for the wealth of information related to spirituality. Read the rest of this entry »

Psychiatrist and philosopher Roger Walsh looks at seven common practices of the world’s major religions to tease out a guidebook for contemporary spirituality. With gleanings from Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism, Walsh offers seven chapters devoted to enlightenment. For example, “Practice 1″ discusses how readers can reduce cravings and find the soul’s desire (very relevant in an increasingly materialistic world).

Once Walsh has laid out the goals and reasoning behind each practice, he offers an array of exercises, such as how to “Examine the Experience of Craving” or “Reflect on the Cost of Craving”. Although this format is overtly self-help, Walsh has brought forth a wise and highly respectable book that integrates some of the best practices that the world’s religions can offer. The introduction by the Dalai Lama gives Walsh great praise for helping readers become purer in motivation so that they can lead a more fulfilling life in service to love and compassion. Read the rest of this entry »

High school and college students who have a budding interest in architectural design will value this book for its solid foundational orientation and instruction. Author Mo Zell introduces readers to architecture’s visual language, showing them how to think spatially and getting them started in architectural drawing with a series of instructive tutorials.

Presenting three-dimensional design problems, she coaches students through the fundamentals of proportion and scale, space and volume, path and place, and materials and textures. A series of 40 work units covers virtually every aspect of architectural drawing, including:

• Learning to see and sketch with accuracy
• Developing fundamental drawing and modeling skills
• Mastering subjective representation and rules of perspective
• Employing spatial strategies: rendering and diagramming ideas

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Architectural detailing makes a building unique and an architect outstanding. This book provides analysis of both the technical and the aesthetic importance of details in the development of contemporary domestic architecture from 2000 to 2005.

Featuring many of the world’s most highly acclaimed architects, the book presents over 50 of the most recently completed and influential house designs. For each house there are color photographs, plans of every floor, sections and elevations, and numerous construction details. The book also features in-depth information for each project, including the size, the client, the architectural project team, main consultants, and contractors. With CD-ROM. Read the rest of this entry »

Colquhoun, an eminent scholar in the field of architecture, offers here a new account of international modernism that explores the complex motivations behind this revolutionary movement and assesses its triumphs and failures.

The book focuses on the work of the main architects of the movement such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Adolf Loos, Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe, re-examining their work and shedding new light on their roles as acknowledged masters.

Each of the chapters focuses on a theme or a region, ranging from the artistry of Loos to the social engineering of Scandinavia. Though most of the examples are familiar, the author gives them a fresh spin-starting with the cover illustration of Hans Scharoun’s Schminke house of 1933, now restored and used as a day care center. It embodies the daring and idealism that powered the modern movement and is now being rediscovered. Read the rest of this entry »

“Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach” Featuring the Internet explains the engineering problems that are inherent in communicating digital information from point to point. The top-down approach mentioned in the subtitle means that the book starts at the top of the protocol stack–at the application layer–and works its way down through the other layers, until it reaches bare wire.

The authors, for the most part, shun the well-known seven-layer Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) protocol stack in favor of their own five-layer (application, transport, network, link, and physical) model. It’s an effective approach that helps clear away some of the hand waving traditionally associated with the more obtuse layers in the OSI model. The approach is definitely theoretical–don’t look here for instructions on configuring Windows 2000 or a Cisco router–but it’s relevant to reality, and should help anyone who needs to understand networking as a programmer, system architect, or even administration guru. Read the rest of this entry »