Best Parasitology

“Engrossing … [An] expedition through the hidden and sometimes horrifying microbial domain.” — Wall Street Journal “Fascinating—and full of the kind of factoids you can't wait to share.” — Scientific American Parasites can live only inside another animal and, as Kathleen McAuliffe reveals, these tiny organisms have many evolutionary motives for manipulating the behavior of their hosts. The horror and revulsion we are programmed to feel when we come in contact with people who appear diseased or dirty helped pave the way for civilization, but may also be the basis for major divisions in societies that persist to this day. "- BookForum “A fascinating account of an extraordinary suite of biological phenomena, only recently come to light and proving that given enough time and enough evolving species to work with, natural selection can accomplish almost anything.”. - Edward O. Wilson , Professor Emeritus, Harvard University, author of Consilience . In company with the best science writers, she shows us that reality can be way more interesting than fiction.”. - Valerie Curtis , Director of the Environmental Health Group of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and author of Don’t Look, Don’t Touch, Don’t Eat “Be prepared to throw away all your preconceptions about the order of life.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"McAuliffe’s article on toxoplasmosis in the 2012 Atlantic “How Your Cat is Making You Crazy” is probably the reason for the word parasites in the title, but the subtitle, “How Tiny Creatures Manipulate Our Behavior and Shape Society,” is a more accurate portrayal of the topic of this excellent book. Here’s an overview of the chapters: 1 – The beginning of the study of parasites and microbs effecting the behavior of animals and humans. 5 – Rabies; toxocara (roundworms), and other parasites that effect “our essential sense of self – our moods, appetites, behaviors, and reasoning abilities.”. 6 – Gut microbiota. 8 – Behavioral immunity – things animals and humans instinctively do to heal our wounds and protect us from parasites. This book offers a lot to think about with far reaching impacts on our personal health and the state of the world."
"How about Hillary Clinton's extended bathroom break during a Democratic primary debate? Do you wonder about whether you have the larger anterior insula relative to total brain size? Remember the following tips: (1) eat vegetables that have been scrubbed throughly; (2) wear gloves while gardening; (3) cook meat well or, if you prefer it rare, freeze it first to kill the microbe's cysts ㅡT.gondii produces thick-walled cysts in the animal's muscle. Ectoparasites and microscopic parasites may exist anywhere around you... and jeopardize you, your partner, and your offsprings.... I bet you will totally lose track of the time while reading."
"McAuliffe surveys current cutting-edge research linking the impact of various parasites not only on the physical health and well-being of their hosts, but also on psychological functioning as well as social and cultural developments. Some of the studies she cites include ones with which I was already familiar – like the jewel wasp which turns a cockroach into a zombie as a living food source for her larva, or the molecule that can change a rat’s protective aversion to the smell of cat urine into attraction."
"Great insight into who might really be behind the wheel."
"Still reading this - as a non-scientist, I read it in small bites, then digest (ha!)."
"The world is stranger than we can ever imagine."
"Not a bad thing but seems to drag out the content form the core facts at hand."

The Yeast Connection Handbook provides general information on the effects that some common foods can have on yeast sufferers, and crucial instructions on detecting the specific foods to which you are particularly sensitive or allergic. "This book makes a compelling case for how a basic excess of yeast in the human body is systemically destroying our chances at healthier lives."
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"I know the American diet is pure trash and this helped answer some of my questions."
"gave as a gift they love it."
"it covers everything, it explains the disease and the ways how to beat it very clearly."
"This is such a helpful book for candida issues as well as food allergies."
"I have the older version of this and bought it for my son."
"This is an excellent book that helps you understand the connection between yeast and other conditions."
"Very interesting."

Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"Instead i was able to loan this to my friend who is doing her NCLEX classes by kaplan."
"I didn't have time to read all of them but the ones that I did contained some great information!"
"This book has proven to be a great study alternative to a textbook."
"Great review book."
"I love the format of how the book is written."
"Quick Good read."
Best Physical Anthropology

What makes us Sapiens? Sapiens is a thrilling account of humankind’s extraordinary history – from the Stone Age to the Silicon Age – and our journey from insignificant apes to rulers of the world. Tackling evolutionary concepts from a historian’s perspective, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind , describes human development through a framework of three not-necessarily-orthodox “Revolutions”: the Cognitive, the Agricultural, and the Scientific. His ideas are interesting and often amusing: Why have humans managed to build astonishingly large populations when other primate groups top out at 150 individuals? Because our talent for gossip allows us to build networks in societies too large for personal relationships between everyone, and our universally accepted “imagined realities”--such as money, religion, and Limited Liability Corporations—keep us in line. Though the concepts are unusual and sometimes heavy (as is the book, literally) Harari’s deft prose and wry, subversive humor make quick work of material prone to academic tedium. He’s written a book of popular nonfiction (it was a bestseller overseas, no doubt in part because his conclusions draw controversy) landing somewhere in the middle of a Venn diagram of genetics, sociology, and history. An engrossing read.” (Dan Ariely, New York Times Bestselling author of Predictably Irrational, The Upside of Irrationality , and The Honest Truth About Dishonesty ). “Yuval Noah Harari’s celebrated Sapiens does for human evolution what Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time did for physics.… He does a superb job of outlining our slow emergence and eventual domination of the planet.” ( Forbes ). “Writing with wit and verve, Harari…attempts to explain how Homo sapiens came to be the dominant species on Earth as well as the sole representative of the human genus.… Provocative and entertaining.” ( Publishers Weekly ). “In this sweeping look at the history of humans, Harari offers readers the chance to reconsider, well, everything, from a look at why Homo sapiens endured to a compelling discussion of how society organizes itself through fictions.” ( Booklist Best Books of the Year).
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"Parts of it were downright fascinating such as "imagination" being a keystone to human activity, e.g. corporations, money, and religion. Finally he keeps touching on the fact that animals have paid a terrible price for the rise of sapiens. Incidentally our family has a farm background and I eat no chicken, turkey, pork, or beef. Now I didn't give the book five stars because he makes positive references to the misguided but widely read Jared Diamond. Let me emphasize that on this snowy March day the cat and I are both glad we don't need to go out and scavenge something off the frozen earth."
"A standard history of the human race begins with Paleolithic proto-humans, traces the development of modern man or homo sapiens sapiens, then chronicles the beginnings and expansions of human civilization from agriculture to the present. He asks how "An Animal of No Significance" managed to become the dominant life form, and whether that animal's learning to produce his own food and then to further harness the natural world to his will through science were boons or setbacks, both for that animal and for the rest of the biosphere."
"Harari covers the entire history of the species he calls Sapiens, from their unexceptional rise in Africa to their domination, and ultimate transformation of the world. But Harari is presenting a work that is vast in its scope and aims; in a way, it seems fair to leave this part of the human experience unanswered and contradictory."
"This is a very good book worth waiting. I should say I appreciate very much reuseaworld replaced the order for me when they figured out my order was lost during the very busy holiday delivery."
Best Physician & Patient Hospice Care

In Being Mortal , bestselling author Atul Gawande tackles the hardest challenge of his profession: how medicine can not only improve life but also the process of its ending Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming birth, injury, and infectious disease from harrowing to manageable. If you said “true,” you’d be right, of course, but that’s a statement that demands an asterisk, a “but.” “We’ve been wrong about what our job is in medicine,” writes Atul Gawande, a surgeon (at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston) and a writer (at the New Yorker). And well-being is about the reasons one wishes to be alive.” Through interviews with doctors, stories from and about health care providers (such as the woman who pioneered the notion of “assisted living” for the elderly)—and eventually, by way of the story of his own father’s dying, Gawande examines the cracks in the system of health care to the aged (i.e. 97 percent of medical students take no course in geriatrics) and to the seriously ill who might have different needs and expectations than the ones family members predict. (One striking example: the terminally ill former professor who told his daughter that “quality of life” for him meant the ongoing ability to enjoy chocolate ice cream and watch football on TV. And in a war that you cannot win, you don’t want a general who fights to the point of total annihilation. You want Robert E. Lee... someone who knows how to fight for territory that can be won and how to surrender it when it can’t.” In his compassionate, learned way, Gawande shows all of us—doctors included—how mortality must be faced, with both heart and mind. “ Being Mortal , Atul Gawande's masterful exploration of aging, death, and the medical profession's mishandling of both, is his best and most personal book yet.” ― Boston Globe. For more than a decade, Atul Gawande has explored the fault lines of medicine . combining his years of experience as a surgeon with his gift for fluid, seemingly effortless storytelling . has provided us with a moving and clear-eyed look at aging and death in our society, and at the harms we do in turning it into a medical problem, rather than a human one.” ― The New York Review of Books. “A deeply affecting, urgently important book--one not just about dying and the limits of medicine but about living to the last with autonomy, dignity, and joy.” ―Katherine Boo. Gawande's book is not of the kind that some doctors write, reminding us how grim the fact of death can be. Rather, he shows how patients in the terminal phase of their illness can maintain important qualities of life.” ― Wall Street Journal (Best Books of 2014). “ Being Mortal left me tearful, angry, and unable to stop talking about it for a week. A surgeon himself, Gawande is eloquent about the inadequacy of medical school in preparing doctors to confront the subject of death with their patients. “We have come to medicalize aging, frailty, and death, treating them as if they were just one more clinical problem to overcome. Being Mortal is not only wise and deeply moving, it is an essential and insightful book for our times, as one would expect from Atul Gawande, one of our finest physician writers.” ―Oliver Sacks. “A great read that leaves you better equipped to face the future, and without making you feel like you just took your medicine.” ― Mother Jones (Best Books of 2014). One hopes it is the spark that ignites some revolutionary changes in a field of medicine that ultimately touches each of us.” ― Shelf Awareness (Best Books of 2014). “A needed call to action, a cautionary tale of what can go wrong, and often does, when a society fails to engage in a sustained discussion about aging and dying.” ― San Francisco Chronicle.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"People of any age want the right to lock their doors, set the temperature they want, dress how they like, eat what they want, admit visitors only when they're in the mood. Yet, nursing homes (and even assisted living communities) are geared toward making these decisions for people in order to keep them safe, gain government funds, and ensure a routine for the facility. In addition, Dr. Gawande shows how end-of-life physical conditions are most often treated as medical crises needing to be "fixed," instead of managed for quality of life when treatment has become futile. He tells a great story of a doctor who convinced a nursing home to bring in two dogs, four cats and one hundred birds!"
"In reading many of his previous books I found he always asked questions: Why do we do things; for what purpose; is this working to achieve the best results for the patient in his physical and cultural circumstance? In speaking of elder care he sadly points out that "Our reluctance to honestly examine the experience of aging and dying has increased the harm and suffering we inflict on people and has denied them the basic comforts they need most". He looks at the "Dying Role" as the end approaches describing it as the patient's ability to "share memories, pass on wisdom and keepsakes, settle relationships, establish legacies and make peace with their God. Gawande shares his deep seated feelings in this book by revealing personal vignettes of how friends and family coped with these powerful and challenging issues."
Best Epidemiology

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • This inspiring, exquisitely observed memoir finds hope and beauty in the face of insurmountable odds as an idealistic young neurosurgeon attempts to answer the question What makes a life worth living? At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from a naïve medical student “possessed,” as he wrote, “by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life” into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality. I’ll go on.’” When Breath Becomes Air is an unforgettable, life-affirming reflection on the challenge of facing death and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a brilliant writer who became both. And part comes from the way he conveys what happened to him—passionately working and striving, deferring gratification, waiting to live, learning to die—so well.” —Janet Maslin, The New York Times. The book brims with insightful reflections on mortality that are especially poignant coming from a trained physician familiar with what lies ahead.” — The Boston Globe. When Paul Kalanithi is given his diagnosis he is forced to see this disease, and the process of being sick, as a patient rather than a doctor--the result of his experience is not just a look at what living is and how it works from a scientific perspective, but the ins and outs of what makes life matter. As he wrote to a friend: ‘It’s just tragic enough and just imaginable enough.’ And just important enough to be unmissable.” —Janet Maslin, The New York Times “Paul Kalanithi’s memoir, When Breath Becomes Air, written as he faced a terminal cancer diagnosis, is inherently sad. It is, despite its grim undertone, accidentally inspiring.” — The Washington Post “Paul Kalanithi’s posthumous memoir, When Breath Becomes Air, possesses the gravity and wisdom of an ancient Greek tragedy. [Kalanithi] is so likeable, so relatable, and so humble, that you become immersed in his world and forget where it’s all heading.” — USA Today “It’s [Kalanithi’s] unsentimental approach that makes When Breath Becomes Air so original—and so devastating. Its only fault is that the book, like his life, ends much too early.” — Entertainment Weekly “[ When Breath Becomes Air ] split my head open with its beauty.” —Cheryl Strayed. “Rattling, heartbreaking, and ultimately beautiful, the too-young Dr. Kalanithi’s memoir is proof that the dying are the ones who have the most to teach us about life.” —Atul Gawande “Thanks to When Breath Becomes Air, those of us who never met Paul Kalanithi will both mourn his death and benefit from his life. Kalanithi strives to define his dual role as physician and patient, and he weighs in on such topics as what makes life meaningful and how one determines what is most important when little time is left. This deeply moving memoir reveals how much can be achieved through service and gratitude when a life is courageously and resiliently lived.” — Publishers Weekly “A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity . Every doctor should read this book—written by a member of our own tribe, it helps us understand and overcome the barriers we all erect between ourselves and our patients as soon as we are out of medical school.” —Henry Marsh, author of Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death, and Brain Surgery “A tremendous book, crackling with life, animated by wonder and by the question of how we should live.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"Ultimately there's not much triumph in it in the traditional sense but there is a dogged, quiet resilience and a frank earthiness that endures long after the last word appears. Dr. Kalanithi talks about his upbringing as the child of hardworking Indian immigrant parents and his tenacious and passionate espousal of medicine and literature. He speaks lovingly of his relationship with his remarkable wife - also a doctor - who he met in medical school and who played an outsized role in supporting him through everything he went through. He had a stunning and multifaceted career, studying biology and literature at Stanford, then history and philosophy of medicine at Cambridge, and finally neurosurgery at Yale. The mark of a man of letters is evident everywhere in the book, and quotes from Eliot, Beckett, Pope and Shakespeare make frequent appearances. Metaphors abound and the prose often soars: When describing how important it is to develop good surgical technique, he tells us that "Technical excellence was a moral requirement"; meanwhile, the overwhelming stress of late night shifts, hundred hour weeks and patients with acute trauma made him occasionally feel like he was "trapped in an endless jungle summer, wet with sweat, the rain of tears of the dying pouring down". The painful uncertainty which he documents - in particular the tyranny of statistics which makes it impossible to predict how a specific individual will react to cancer therapy - must sadly be familiar to anyone who has had experience with the disease. There are heartbreaking descriptions of how at one point the cancer seemed to have almost disappeared and how, after Dr. Kalanithi had again cautiously made plans for a hopeful future with his wife, it returned with a vengeance and he had to finally stop working."
"He says this, “The secret is to know that the deck is stacked, that you will lose, that your hands or judgment will slip, and yet still struggle to win …You can’t ever reach perfection, but you can believe in an asymptote toward which are ceaselessly striving. In the foreword by fellow doctor and writer Abraham Verghese, that doctor writes, “He (Paul) wasn’t writing about anything—he was writing about time and what it meant to him now, in the context of his illness.” And in the afterword by his wife Lucy, the meaning of that time becomes even clearer."
"The beautifully written epilogue, which was written by his wife Lucy, will break your heart, and give you hope at the same time. It never occurred to me that you could love someone the same way after he was gone, that I would continue to feel such love and gratitude alongside the terrible sorrow, the grief so heavy that at times I shiver and moan under the weight of it.""
Best Tropical Medicine

Field Guide to Wilderness Medicine - based on Dr. Auerbach’s critically acclaimed text Wilderness Medicine - offers fast-access solutions to all of the medical situations that can occur in non-traditional settings . Get the wilderness medicine skills you need now with new chapters on foot problems and care, global humanitarian relief and disaster medicine, Leave No Trace principles, and high-altitude medicine, as well as lists to prepare a variety of survival kits for different settings and patient populations. This book is actually portable, small enough to keep in a first aid kit or to take on a trip, but packed with concise and useful information on nearly every subject and scenario imaginable. "-Ericl Ellingson, MD(Regions Hospital and Level 1 Trauma Center) Doody Review: 4 stars Dr. Paul S. Auerbach, FACEP, FAWM, is the Redlich Family Professor of Surgery in the Division of Emergency Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"Very fast shipping- I had an earlier edition but this newest one was great- an excellent resource!"
"fab."
"Cool book to have on any camping hiking or just to have by the toilet."
"Great reviews and discussions for wilderness treatment."
"Amazing amount of information."
Best Communicable Diseases

The Hot Zone tells this dramatic story, giving a hair-raising account of the appearance of rare and lethal viruses and their "crashes" into the human race. And in 1989 Philippine monkeys in a Reston, Va., research lab, found to be infected with Ebola, were the target of a U.S. Army-led biohazard task force that decontaminated the lab, exterminating hundreds of monkeys to prevent the possible airborne spread of the disease to humans. In a horrifying and riveting report, portions of which appeared in the New Yorker , Preston ( American Steel ) exposes a real-life nightmare potentially as lethal as the fictive runaway germs in Michael Crichton's The Andromeda Strain.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"I'm writing this review now because, 1- the current (July 2014) outbreak of Ebola is "the deadliest in recorded history," and 2- I've NEVER forgotten the book. The thing that is so terrifying is the way the poor people who contract the disease die."
"I learned a lot about the virus. After reading this book, im able to read between the headlines of what is being said and more importantly, what's NOT being said. Medical researchers working with the virus give share their information."
"I bought this book in its hard-cover version when it first came out, quite a few years ago, and what with the recent Ebola crisis in Africa and now in the news here in the U.S., I wanted to re-read it. I am dismayed that the CDC is still "learning" how to contain this disease, when the knowledge has been in use by the U.S. Army, and various charitable organizations in Africa for many years."
"A scary, eye opening book about Ebola. He describes in detail the Ebola Reston outbreak in Maryland."
"A must read for anyone who wants the scientific truth about this disease, how it can be spread & how easily & quickly it can mutate."
"Although twenty years old, the information is timely and so. pertinent for our age when Ebola is devastating Africa and may be advancing thought the world."
"Because you will be terrified every time you have a tiny headache. Because you will want strangers to stay far away from you, especially if they are breathing. Because you will realise that your government, our government, the government will probably be unable to stop a proper Ebola virus. Because you will forgive the sometimes over detailed writing because you are completely absorbed in the horror. Because this is not fiction, this is real, this is here, this is now. And this is a gripping, interesting, well put together, well researched non-fiction book that reads like an adventure, a horror and a thriller all at once. Viruses are clever little buggers and best we be afraid."