Emergency Laughter: Stories of Humor Inside Ambulances and Operating Rooms


Mike Cyra - 2015
    Whether he's assisting trauma surgeons who are singing “Take me out to the ballgame” while removing a well-placed iconic symbol of America’s greatest past time, learning how fast he can run after being shot at by an angry couple who called for an ambulance, working with a prankster-loving urologist who demonstrates how bladder problems were diagnosed before modern urinalysis, or screaming like a little girl while doing night rounds with a dead flashlight on a psychiatric ward, Cyra’s comedic style of storytelling will make your cheeks sore. Emergency Laughter: Stories of Humor Inside Ambulances and Operating Rooms shows why most health care professionals have such a twisted sense of humor and how critical laughter is to the survival of both patient and care giver.

The Diabetes Code: Prevent and Reverse Type 2 Diabetes Naturally


Jason Fung - 2018
    Jason Fung forever changed the way we think about obesity with his best-selling book, The Obesity Code. Now he has set out to do the same for type 2 diabetes.Today, most doctors, dietitians, and even diabetes specialists consider type 2 diabetes to be a chronic and progressive disease—a life sentence with no possibility of parole. But the truth, as Dr. Fung reveals in this paradigm-shifting book, is that type 2 diabetes is reversible. Writing with clear, persuasive language, he explains why conventional treatments that rely on insulin or other blood-glucose-lowering drugs can actually exacerbate the problem, leading to significant weight gain and even heart disease. The only way to treat type 2 diabetes effectively, he argues, is proper dieting and intermittent fasting—not medication.

Intensive Care: A Doctor's Journey


Danielle Ofri - 2013
    Her vivid prose brings the reader into bustling hospitals, tense exam rooms, and Ofri's own life, giving an up-close look at the fast-paced, life-and-death drama of becoming a doctor. She tells of a young man uncertain of his future who comes into the clinic with a stomach complaint but for whom Dr. Ofri sees that the most useful "treatment" she can offer him is SAT tutoring. She writes of a desperate struggle to communicate with a critically ill patient who only speaks Mandarin, of a doctor whose experience in the NICU leaves her paralyzed with PTSD, and of her own struggles with the fear of making fatal errors, the dangers of overconfidence, and the impossible attempts to balance the empathy necessary for good care with the distance necessary for self-preservation. Through these stories of her patients, colleagues, and her own experiences, Intensive Care offers poignant insight into the medical world, and into the hearts and minds of doctors and their patients. These stories are drawn from the author’s previous books and one is from her forthcoming book, What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine.excerpted from Amazon.com Book Description

Uncaring: How the Culture of Medicine Kills Doctors and Patients


Robert Pearl - 2021
    But they don’t always know how to care for them.Hardly anyone is happy with American healthcare these days. Patients are getting sicker and going bankrupt from medical bills. Doctors are burning out and making dangerous mistakes. Both parties blame our nation’s outdated and dysfunctional healthcare system. But that’s only part of the problem.In this important and timely book, Dr. Robert Pearl shines a light on the unseen and often toxic culture of medicine. Today’s physicians have a surprising disdain for technology, an unhealthy obsession with status, and an increasingly complicated relationship with their patients. All of this can be traced back to their earliest experiences in medical school, where doctors inherit a set of norms, beliefs, and expectations that shape almost every decision they make, with profound consequences for the rest of us.Uncaring draws an original and revealing portrait of what it’s actually like to be a doctor. It illuminates the complex and intimidating world of medicine for readers, and in the end offers a clear plan to save American healthcare.

The End of My Addiction


Olivier Ameisen - 2008
    The End of My Addiction is both a memoir of Ameisen's own struggle with alcoholism and a groundbreaking call to action--an urgent plea for research that can rescue millions from the scourge of addiction, and spare their loved ones the collateral damage of the disease.

Surgeons Do Not Cry


Ting Tiongco - 2008
    But as it is often said nothing ever really happened unless it is written down. There are so many stories to tell of the agonies and triumphs of both doctors and patients, who have peopled this venerable institution through the ages. I wrote the stories because I firmly believe that healing is a mutual process; that the healer is very often himself healed as he goes about caring for the ailing person. So the stories bite both ways.”

Case Files: Family Medicine


Eugene C. Toy - 2006
    Case Files: Family Medicine reviews 60 high-yield family medicine cases, each with USMLE-format review questions and clinical pearls that highlight key concepts. In this score-boosting resource, you'll find must-know family medicine cases in an interactive and memorable format written by experienced educators.

Mayo Clinic Essential Diabetes Book


Mayo Clinic - 2009
    If you are at risk of the disease, you'll learn about lifestyle changes that may keep you from developing diabetes.

The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry


Jon Ronson - 2011
    The Psychopath Test is a fascinating journey through the minds of madness. Jon Ronson's exploration of a potential hoax being played on the world's top neurologists takes him, unexpectedly, into the heart of the madness industry. An influential psychologist who is convinced that many important CEOs and politicians are, in fact, psychopaths teaches Ronson how to spot these high-flying individuals by looking out for little telltale verbal and nonverbal clues. And so Ronson, armed with his new psychopath-spotting abilities, enters the corridors of power. He spends time with a death-squad leader institutionalized for mortgage fraud in Coxsackie, New York; a legendary CEO whose psychopathy has been speculated about in the press; and a patient in an asylum for the criminally insane who insists he's sane and certainly not a psychopath. Ronson not only solves the mystery of the hoax but also discovers, disturbingly, that sometimes the personalities at the helm of the madness industry are, with their drives and obsessions, as mad in their own way as those they study. And that relatively ordinary people are, more and more, defined by their maddest edges.

More Letters From The Pit: Stories of a Physician’S Odyssey in Emergency Medicine


Patrick J. Crocker - 2020
    

Guinness World Records 2013 Gamer's Edition - Sample Chapter


Guinness World Records - 2012
    The Gamer’s Edition is the ultimate guide to videogames, packed full of the most up-to-date news, achievements and developments in the gaming world, illustrated with the best and most exciting imagery from this year’s top titles. Complete with fascinating facts, figures and features on the most popular games, the latest edition also includes gameplay tips and hints, retro facts from classic games, and your favorite characters battling it out against each other in our new "Vs" feature. One of the features we’ve included here brings you the results of our readers' poll of the most visually stunning videogame graphics ever. As game graphics become ever more stylized, fast-moving and impressive, we guide you through a visual feast of the 50 titles you ranked as the very greatest. To participate in the poll for next year’s book, please visit www.guinnessworldrecords.com/gamers. We’d love to hear from you, and you could win yourself a prize!

A Mind of Its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives


Cordelia Fine - 2005
    Indeed, the brain's power is being confirmed every day in new studies and research. But there is a brain we don't generally hear about, a brain we might not want to hear about…the "prima donna within."Exposing the mind's deceptions and exploring how the mind defends and glorifies the ego, Dr. Cordelia Fine illustrates the brain's tendency to self-delusion. Whether it be hindsight bias, wishful thinking, unrealistic optimism, or moral excuse-making, each of us has a slew of inborn mind-bugs and ordinary prejudices that prevent us from seeing the truth about the world and ourselves. With fascinating studies to support her arguments, Dr. Fine takes us on an insightful, rip-roaringly funny tour through the brain you never knew you had.

The Sleeved Life: A Patient-to-Patient Guide on Vertical Sleeve Gastrectomy Weight Loss Surgery


Pennie Nicola - 2012
    Pennie combines her personal experience with the latest research to answer your most pressing questions about the gastric sleeve. Questions include: Why did you choose the sleeve instead of other weight loss surgery options? How do I begin looking for a sleeve surgeon? What does a typical pre-op diet look like? What is surgery day like? What will my diet look like after surgery? How do you handle the stigma of weight loss surgery? How is my goal weight determined? How many calories do you eat, on average? Are there any foods you can’t eat? How much food can you eat in one sitting? Does hunger come back? Can the sleeve get stretched out? How do you deal with weight loss stalls? How many vitamins do you take every day? How much weight should I expect to lose with the sleeve? What does a maintenance diet look like?

In the Little World: A True Story of Dwarfs, Love, and Trouble


John H. Richardson - 2001
    Kopits takes me into an examining room and leans against the stainless steel bench and asks me what I'm writing about this time. When I tell him what I saw in Australia, he immediately starts to nod. "This is a great subject," he says. Then he stops, as if caught by the subject himself.I wait.After a moment, he continues. "What you are looking into is the abyss. This takes you to the very heart of a human being, to the deepest aspect of the soul.He gives me one of his solemn looks. "Because the thing is, you have to confront yourself."(from In the Little World) In 1997, almost by accident, John H. Richardson found himself sharing a hotel with more than a thousand dwarfs. Over the course of a single week, he witnessed love and anger, fear and bravery, arrogance and humility, even a bizarre romantic deception -- the entire spectrum of human emotion in one concentrated dose. But at the end of the week, he discovered that leaving the "Little World" wasn't as simple as checking out of a hotel. In fact, his journey would last a full two years.At a time when bigger often seems synonymous with better, and physical beauty serves as currency, the world of dwarfs usually passes beneath our notice. Now, in this groundbreaking work, awardwinning author John H. Richardson brings the Little World into focus.He introduces us to characters like a saintly but obsessed doctor and a mother who sacrifices her family to save her dwarf daughter. He follows two dwarf lovers from first meeting through the struggle to overcome their fear and shame and find the confidence to love each other. He becomes personally involved in a tangled and often confrontational friendship with a female dwarf. Through these stories and musings ranging from classic theories of beauty to the history of the disability movement to postmodern theories of difference, Richardson presents a world that is a skewed reflection of our own -- and offers us a glimpse into the essential human condition.

Inside Oregon State Hospital: A History of Tragedy and Triumph (Landmarks)


Diane Goeres-Gardner - 2013
    In desperate attempts to cure their patients, physicians injected them with deadly medications, cut holes in their heads, and sterilized them. Years of insufficient funding caused the hospital to decay into a crumbling facility with too few staff, as seen in the 1975 film "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." Today, after a $360 million makeover, Oregon State Hospital is a modern treatment hospital for the state's civil and forensic mentally ill. In this compelling account of the institution's tragedies and triumphs, author Diane Goeres-Gardner offers an unparalleled look at the very human story of Oregon's historic asylum.