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The Art of Seeing

The Art of Seeing Review: This wonderful book draws you in from the opening page and doesn’t let you go. I was constantly amazed at Ms. McGovern’s seemingly effortless ability to weave together the smallest details and observations until they add up to something moving and even astounding. The way these two complex and incredibly well drawn sisters know each other and at the same time refuse to know each other and themselves is both maddening and remarkably true to life. Perhaps the most brilliant turn of all here is the ending not contrived or sensationalist but deeply, movingly satisfying.

The Art of Seeing Review: The Art of Seeing is a fast, hilarious and heartbreaking read. McGovern’s characters are endearingly well-drawn, and the relationship between Jemma and Rozzie brings up the complicated emotional lines between siblings. There are laugh out loud moments throughout, but the real prize is the author’s subtlety when it comes to depicting the rich sweetness of sisterhood.

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Austen Country

This is a great Jane Austen documentary, that delves deeper into Austen’s life; Informative and educational, as well as interesting, narrarated by a man with a fun British accent! This DVD tours the countryside, showing places and things having to do with Jane and her life. It offers some insight into Jane’s views on things, what society and life was like for her at that time, and where she would have vacationed, what she would have done, etc.

Austen Country Review: While there is a wealth of facts and items of interest presented here they are given in such a dry manner as to cause one’s mind to wander. In particular, the narrator has all the charm and charisma of Miss Austen’s least desirable male characters I would prefer a Mr. Collins sermon to this dull and droning creature! Perhaps A&E, the BBC or another organization will take the content of this well intentioned but compromised shoestring production and do something that engages and entertains while it educates.

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Health Behavior and Health Education

Health Behavior and Health Education Reviews: Fast shipping, good price excellant transaction. I ourchased the book for a health promotiionc class this summer. The book was informative ans through. It contained the most recent theory regarding health promotion.

Health Behavior and Health Education Reviews: This book was purchased for a graduate course and served its purpose well. Don’t be intimidated by its thickness, this book is as comprehensive as it is enjoyable.

Health Behavior and Health Education Description: This fourth edition of the classic book, Health Behavior and Health Education: Theory, Research, and Practice provides a comprehensive, highly accessible, and in-depth analysis of health behavior theories that are most relevant to health education. This essential resource includes the most current information on theory, research, and practice at individual, interpersonal, and community and group levels. This edition includes substantial new content on current and emerging theories of health communication, e-health, culturally diverse communities, health promotion, the impact of stress, the importance of networks and community, social marketing, and evaluation.
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Gracefully Insane

Gracefully Insane Review: Alex Beam’s Gracefully Insane is written with a twofold purpose in mind. On the one hand, Beam introduces readers to the rolling hills and well-appointed grounds of a MacLean, psychiatric hospital of the rich and famous; its residents often referred to the hospital as a university, to themselves as alumni. On the other hand, through the lens of Maclean one sees the evolution of the history of psychiatric practice in America. Here, for the most part, MacClean was neither better nor worse than most.

If it was fashionable to dunk patients in vats of cold water or harness them into gyrating chairs, such practices could be found. About the only fashion that could not be accomodated is that practiced today: where the emphasis is on the efficacy of pharmacological medicine. With the end of the extended observation stay, this bastion of outliers gradually loses its psychiatric niche. Still, Gracefully Insane is worth a leisurely read, if only to glimpse Ray Charles, Sylvia Plath, James Taylor and the other members of its distinguished alumni.

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Death on the Learning Curve

Death on the Learning Curve Review: I read Death On the Learning Curve while recovering from ankle surgery and I thoroughly enjoyed it. In fact, someday in the future, I plan on reading it again! It was a hard book to put down and I couldn’t wait to see the outcome of the medical drama. I now understand how hard it is for interns to make decisions that could cost another’s life.

Death on the Learning Curve Review: The struggles, challenges, and rewards of being a medical intern are realistically and graphically portrayed in Pierce Scranton’s “Learning Curve”. The vivid accounts of medical conditions and procedures described in the book are offset by the constant reminders that doctors are, after all, human! The downside of that humanness is that medical mistakes can and are made, resulting in adverse affects on patients…sometimes in death. The upside of the humanness of doctors is that most of them really do CARE deeply about healing their patients, and they work so very hard toward that end.

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An Imperfect Lens

An Imperfect Lens Review: An Imperfect Lens is atmospheric tale set in Alexandra, Egypt in 1883; the main character a lethal disease, cholera: ”unseen pulsing crescent moonshapes,” that are steadily breeding in the exposed sewage, killing the city’s poor, gradually finding its way into the houses of the rich. Feeding in the stomachs of the innocent, death is almost instantaneous a sharp pain in the stomach, lips tinged with blue, a loss of bowel control, the body shriveled, turned grey like slate.

Paranoia is rife; the wealthy see it as a sign of the city’s drinking and lack of morality, the less fortunate see it as a mark of God’s will, a way for the rich to rid the city of an unwanted population. How is the disease transmitted. By air or bird droppings, or perhaps even food. People are instructed to always rinse their hands, and never eat unwashed food from market stalls. But the microbes continue to spread, on the edges of bed linen, on the shoes of unsuspecting servants, splashing in the city’s puddles, streams and open sewers, on the surface of fruit, the edges of plates and cutlery.

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The Complement System

The Complement System Description: Novel Roles in Health and Disease surveys the advances in basic and applied research on the complement system over the past few years. Complement is a major protein network in blood that has been traditionally conceived as part of the immune system, a proinflammatory cascade engaged in nonspecific antimicrobial defence. However, it became clear recently that this system also plays an essential role in specific, adaptive immune responses, as well as in many basic physiological processes including cardiovascular regulation, pregnancy and tissue regeneration, just to mention a few. Complement proteins are widely involved in the immune evasion tactics of infectious microbes and cancer cells, and derangement of complement function contributes to numerous autoimmune, allergic and acute catastrophic diseases.

Because pharmacological manipulation of the complement system provides therapeutic benefit in many of these conditions, we may be very close to widespread clinical use of a new class of drugs influencing complement activation or action. In fact, complementology may be one of the most versatile and dynamic subdisciplines in medicine today.

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Health Care Mess

Health Care Mess Review: This book does a good job at pointing out how broken the American health care system is. I really enjoyed the retrospective look at how we got where we are today. Some of the reasons for the problems are pointed out well, as in the discussion of community rating of insurance. Unfortunately, the book misses some of the most important reasons for the health care mess. The solutions proposed also strike me as at best unworkable.

The book’s authors are big fans of national health insurance. As they point out, national health insurance does have some things going for it. However, I just don’t see how national health, if implemented in today’s health care climate, would bring about any savings at all. The Medicare program is the closest thing we have now to national health insurance; far from saving us money, from what I see its costs are completely out of control and headed through the roof. The book never discusses this. The book makes no mention at all of how to deal with bringing down costs at the high end; the 5% or so of patients who create probably 80% or more of all health care costs. The fact is that at some point you have to be willing to say no, we are going to send this patient to a hospice to die instead of treating him, because his treatment is just too expensive.

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Total Health Program

Total Health Program Reviews: This book gives a broad overview of several health topics!! It is a great resource promoting health and well-being by keeping you healthy and out of a doctor’s office. This is all about prevention which is great. I was a milk addict so am trying to rid that habit for example as I don’t have access to raw milk in my area. Some of these topics will seem strange to you as the mainstream media and mainstream medical community are all about surgeries and pills. There is a lot to focus on that should be new info.

Although there are many recipes in this book, very few are practical due to either cost, or attainable recipe items depending upon where you live and how much you can afford to spend. Organic grass-fed meat tastes great but is very expensive for an example. Not all families especially one income families can afford the meat nor perhaps all the organic foods listed nor have access to them. You may have to pick and chose what you can afford if costs are an issue. Dr. Mercola does promote many health-related products but you can buy many of them here at Amazon or at your local health food stores. He does sell items on his own site and has some of his own products as well.

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Men’s Health Guide To Peak Conditioning

Men’s Health Guide To Peak Conditioning Reviews: This was probably a waste of my money. If you’ve been weight training for any length of time the material in this book will not be of any great value. If you are new to the iron game, then the routines presented in this book are sound enough to get you started on the right track. The best chapter I found in the book was the one on how to lace up your sneakers for different sporting events!

Men’s Health Guide To Peak Conditioning Reviews: I really enjoyed this book and it’s been an excellent resource for me during the last 8 months while I’ve gotten serious about fitness. It has TONS of useful information and it’s presented in a very clear and easy-to-use fashion. There are sections about aerobic fitness, strength training, training for certain sports, weight loss, nutrition and anything else you’d want or need. Lots of suggestions about setting up a fitness program, buying equipment, how to do the specific exercises correctly and safely, etc.

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