The Mind-Gut Connection: How the Astonishing Dialogue Taking Place in Our Bodies Impacts Health, Weight, and Mood


Emeran Mayer - 2015
    While the dialogue between the gut and the brain has been recognized by ancient healing traditions, including Ayurvedic and Chinese medicine, Western medicine has failed to appreciate the complexity of how the brain, gut, and more recently, the microbiome—the microorganisms that live inside us—communicate with one another. In The Mind-Gut Connection, Dr. Emeran Mayer, executive director of the UCLA Center for Neurobiology of Stress, offers a revolutionary look at this developing science, teaching us how to harness the power of the mind-gut connection to take charge of our health.The Mind-Gut Connection shows how to keep the brain-gut communication clear and balanced to:• heal the gut by focusing on a plant-based diet• balance the microbiome by consuming fermented foods and probiotics, fasting, and cutting out sugar and processed foods• promote weight loss by detoxifying and creating healthy digestion and maximum nutrient absorption• boost immunity and prevent the onset of neurological diseases such as Parkinson’s andAlzheimer’s• generate a happier mindset and reduce fatigue, moodiness, anxiety, and depression• prevent and heal GI disorders such as leaky gut syndrome, food sensitivities and allergies, and IBS, as well as digestive discomfort such as heartburn and bloating• and much more.

Intuition Pumps And Other Tools for Thinking


Daniel C. Dennett - 2013
    Dennett has engaged questions about science and the workings of the mind. His answers have combined rigorous argument with strong empirical grounding. And a lot of fun.Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking offers seventy-seven of Dennett’s most successful "imagination-extenders and focus-holders" meant to guide you through some of life’s most treacherous subject matter: evolution, meaning, mind, and free will. With patience and wit, Dennett deftly deploys his thinking tools to gain traction on these thorny issues while offering readers insight into how and why each tool was built.Alongside well-known favorites like Occam’s Razor and reductio ad absurdum lie thrilling descriptions of Dennett’s own creations: Trapped in the Robot Control Room, Beware of the Prime Mammal, and The Wandering Two-Bitser. Ranging across disciplines as diverse as psychology, biology, computer science, and physics, Dennett’s tools embrace in equal measure light-heartedness and accessibility as they welcome uninitiated and seasoned readers alike. As always, his goal remains to teach you how to "think reliably and even gracefully about really hard questions."A sweeping work of intellectual seriousness that’s also studded with impish delights, Intuition Pumps offers intrepid thinkers—in all walks of life—delicious opportunities to explore their pet ideas with new powers.

The Scientist in the Crib: What Early Learning Tells Us About the Mind


Alison Gopnik - 1999
    It argues that evolution designed us both to teach and learn, and that the drive to learn is our most important instinct. It also reveals as fascinating insights about our adult capacities and how even young children -- as well as adults -- use some of the same methods that allow scientists to learn so much about the world. Filled with surprise at every turn, this vivid, lucid, and often funny book gives us a new view of the inner life of children and the mysteries of the mind.

Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism


Temple Grandin - 1995
    She also lectures widely on autism—because Temple Grandin is autistic, a woman who thinks, feels, and experiences the world in ways that are incomprehensible to the rest of us. In this unprecedented book, Grandin delivers a report from the country of autism. Writing from the dual perspectives of a scientist and an autistic person, she tells us how that country is experienced by its inhabitants and how she managed to breach its boundaries to function in the outside world. What emerges in Thinking in Pictures is the document of an extraordinary human being, one who, in gracefully and lucidly bridging the gulf between her condition and our own, sheds light on the riddle of our common identity.

Five Patients


Michael Crichton - 1970
    Michael Crichton created the series from his own experiences as a medical doctor in the emergency rooms, operating rooms and wards of Massachusetts General Hospital. Five Patients is Michael Crichton's true account of the real life dramas so vividly portrayed in ER. A construction worker is seriously injured in a scaffold collapse: a middle-aged dispatcher is brought in suffering from a fever that has reduced him to a delirious wreck; a young man nearly severs his hand in an accident; an airline traveller suffers chest pains; a mother of three is diagnosed with a life-threatening disease.

On Being a Therapist


Jeffrey A. Kottler - 1986
    Jeffrey Kottler provides a candid account of the profound ways in which therapists influence clients and, in turn, are impacted personally and professionally by these encounters. He shows how therapists can learn, develop, and grow during the process of therapy and explains how practitioners can use the professional skills and insights gained from their sessions to address their own personal issues, realize positive change in themselves, and so become better helpers for others. This thoroughly revised edition includes discussion about how the business and practice of therapy has changed in recent years, the effects of technology and managed care, the breakdown of theoretical orientation, and the greater client diversity represented in contemporary practice.

Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy


Cathy O'Neil - 2016
    Increasingly, the decisions that affect our lives--where we go to school, whether we can get a job or a loan, how much we pay for health insurance--are being made not by humans, but by machines. In theory, this should lead to greater fairness: Everyone is judged according to the same rules.But as mathematician and data scientist Cathy O'Neil reveals, the mathematical models being used today are unregulated and uncontestable, even when they're wrong. Most troubling, they reinforce discrimination--propping up the lucky, punishing the downtrodden, and undermining our democracy in the process.

Human Physiology: From Cells To Systems


Lauralee Sherwood - 1962
    Author Lauralee Sherwood has streamlined physiological study without dumbing it down by organizing the material around one central human process: homeostasis. In addition to the easy-to-understand text, Sherwood ties physiological study to real world scenarios in fields like pathophysiology and clinical physiology. Plus, it includes PhysioEdge, the most powerful CD-ROM you can get. PhysioEdge2 is packed with tutorials and fast access to answers. And Personal Tutor with SMARTHINKING (access to a live online human physiology tutor) and InfoTrac (an online university library that will save you a trek across campus), HUMAN PHYSIOLOGY: FROM CELLS TO SYSTEMS is the text you need to succeed in physiology class and get ready for health-related careers.

Welcome to the Universe: An Astrophysical Tour


Neil deGrasse Tyson - 2016
    Inspired by the enormously popular introductory astronomy course that Neil deGrasse Tyson, Michael A. Strauss, and J. Richard Gott taught together at Princeton, this book covers it all--from planets, stars, and galaxies to black holes, wormholes, and time travel.Describing the latest discoveries in astrophysics, the informative and entertaining narrative propels you from our home solar system to the outermost frontiers of space. How do stars live and die? Why did Pluto lose its planetary status? What are the prospects of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe? How did the universe begin? Why is it expanding and why is its expansion accelerating? Is our universe alone or part of an infinite multiverse? Answering these and many other questions, the authors open your eyes to the wonders of the cosmos, sharing their knowledge of how the universe works.Breathtaking in scope and stunningly illustrated throughout, Welcome to the Universe is for those who hunger for insights into our evolving universe that only world-class astrophysicists can provide.

Nutrient Power: Heal Your Biochemistry and Heal Your Brain


William J. Walsh - 2012
    Today's emphasis on psychiatric drugs will not stand the test of time. Recent advances in epigenetics and the molecular biology of the brain have provided a roadmap for the development of effective, natural, drug-free therapies that do not produce serious side effects. Psychiatric medications have served society well over the last fifty years, but the need for drug therapies will fade away as science advances.  Nutrient Power presents a science-based nutrient therapy system that can help millions of people diagnosed with mental disorders. This approach recognizes that nutrient imbalances can alter brain levels of key neurotransmitters, disrupt gene expression of proteins and enzymes, and cripple the body's protection against environmental toxins. The author's database containing millions of chemical factors in blood, urine, and tissues has identified brain-changing nutrient imbalances in patients diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism, behavior disorders, depression, schizophrenia, and Alzheimer's disease. This book describes individualized nutrient therapy treatments that have produced thousands of reports of recovery. Walsh's approach is more scientific than the trial-and-error use of psychiatric drugs and is aimed at a true normalization of the brain.  Depression, schizophrenia, and ADHD are umbrella terms that encompass disorders with widely differing brain chemistries and symptoms. Nutrient Power describes nutrient therapies tailored to specific types. Other book highlights include the Walsh Theory of Schizophrenia, a new way to look at autism, a promising new treatment for Alzheimer's, and recommendations for reducing crime and violence.

Atlas of Human Anatomy


Frank H. Netter - 1989
    In over 540 beautifully colored and easily understood illustrations, it teaches the complete human body with unsurpassed clarity and accuracy. This new edition features 45 revised, 290 relabeled and 17 wholly new plates, drawn fully in the tradition of Frank Netter, and includes more imaging and clinical images than ever before. Six Consulting Editors have worked together to ensure the new edition's accuracy and usefulness in the lecture theatre, classroom and dissection lab. Ninety plates from the book as well as a powerful and varied bank of ancillary material, unique to this atlas, are available online through www.netteranatomy.com.Includes uniquely informative drawings that allow you - and have allowed generations of students - to learn structures with confidence. Associates normal anatomy with an application of that knowledge in a clinical setting. Offers a strong selection of imaging to show you what is happening three dimensionally in the human body, the way you see it in practice.Provides clinically applicable information right from the start, to mirror the way that most anatomy courses are now taught.At www.netteranatomy.com, you'll access...- Over 90 of the most important anatomy illustrations from the book.- Interactive Anatomy Dissection Modules.- Radiographs, CT scans, MRIs, and angiograms, with labels on/off buttons for self testing.- QuickTime movies of stacked, transverse, and sectional images from the Visible Human Project (VHP).- Review Center with Identification Spot Tests and USMLE-style multiple-choice questions.- Integration links to other STUDENT CONSULT titles.- and more!

The Selfish Gene


Richard Dawkins - 1976
    Suppose, instead of thinking about organisms using genes to reproduce themselves, as we had since Mendel's work was rediscovered, we turn it around and imagine that "our" genes build and maintain us in order to make more genes. That simple reversal seems to answer many puzzlers which had stumped scientists for years, and we haven't thought of evolution in the same way since. Drawing fascinating examples from every field of biology, he paved the way for a serious re-evaluation of evolution. He also introduced the concept of self-reproducing ideas, or memes, which (seemingly) use humans exclusively for their propagation. If we are puppets, he says, at least we can try to understand our strings.

Neurofitness: The Real Science of Peak Performance from a College Dropout Turned Brain Surgeon


Rahul Jandial - 2019
    Rahul Jandial is on the cutting edge of the latest advancements in neuroscience. This fascinating book draws on Dr. Jandial’s broad-spectrum expertise and brings together the best of various fields-–surgery, science, brain structure, the conscious mind–-all to explain the bigger picture of brain health and rejuvenation. It is a journey into his operating room, around the world on his surgical missions, inside his laboratory, and to the outer edges of neuroscience to reveal the latest brain breakthroughs that are turning science fiction into reality, translating their implications for everyday life. Busting myths along the way, Jandial helps readers get wired for success at work and school, perform better when the pressure is on, boost memory, control stress and emotions, minimize pain, stick to a healthy eating plan, unleash creativity, raise smarter kids, and stay sharp as they age. Combining the treatment guidelines he gives his patients, the most promising concepts from frontier science, and the smartest super-achiever hacks, he provides practical takeaways for optimizing brain function and leading a healthier, happier, more productive life.

Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise


K. Anders Ericsson - 2016
    Rest assured that the book is not mere theory. Ericsson's research focuses on the real world, and he explains in detail, with examples, how all of us can apply the principles of great performance in our work or in any other part of our lives."-- Fortune Anders Ericsson has made a career studying chess champions, violin virtuosos, star athletes, and memory mavens. Peak distills three decades of myth-shattering research into a powerful learning strategy that is fundamentally different from the way people traditionally think about acquiring new abilities. Whether you want to stand out at work, improve your athletic or musical performance, or help your child achieve academic goals, Ericsson's revolutionary methods will show you how to improve at almost any skill that matters to you."The science of excellence can be divided into two eras: before Ericsson and after Ericsson. His groundbreaking work, captured in this brilliantly useful book, provides us with a blueprint for achieving the most important and life-changing work possible: to become a little bit better each day."--Dan Coyle, author of The Talent Code "Ericsson's research has revolutionized how we think about human achievement. If everyone would take the lessons of this book to heart, it could truly change the world."--Joshua Foer, author of Moonwalking with Einstein

When the Dogs Don't Bark: A Forensic Scientist’s Search for the Truth


Angela Gallop - 2019
    With ever-more sophisticated and powerful techniques at their disposal, forensic scientists have an unprecedented ability to help solve even the most complex cases. Angela Gallop has been a forensic scientist for over 40 years. After joining the Forensic Science Service, the first crime scene she attended was for a case involving the Yorkshire Ripper. As well as working on a wide range of cases in many countries around the world, she is now the most sought-after forensic scientist in the UK, where she has helped solve numerous high-profile cases.