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books (fwd) From: Robert J. Woolley (wooll005@tc.umn.edu) Wed Feb 2 21:01:20 2000 Messages sorted by: [ date ][ thread ][ subject ][ author ] Next message: Bernard Cristalli: "Re: Operative Hysteroscopy - any tips" Previous message: Myer S. Bornstein, MD, CPE, FACOG: "Re: Gyn-Hysteroscopy fluid management" ------------ Forwarded Message begins here ------------ From: "Robert J. Woolley" <wooll005@tc.umn.edu> Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2000 18:44:07 -0600 To: FAMILY-L@LSV.UKY.EDU Subject: books I have recently finished two books worthy of recommendation. 1) "The Tennis Partner" by Abraham Verghese. This is non-fiction memoir of an all-too-brief, but intense, friendship between an attending physician and one of his senior medical students. Verghese was new to El Paso, TX, and on the verge of a divorce, so feeling very lonely. He discovered that one of his students, David Smith, shared his passion for tennis. In fact, David had briefly been on the professional tennis circuit before going to medical school, but could not make a living at it. They begin a truly remarkable relationship, with Verghese mentoring David in medicine and the roles reversed on the tennis court twice a week. But unbeknownst to Verghese, David has a dark past of a serious heroin addiction, and over the course of their friendship, the demon returns. We watch through Verghese's eyes as David slides back down the slippery slope, ending in his death. (I'm not spoiling an ending here; the book tells you this end from the beginning.) It is an agonizingly painful journey to share--one of the most painful books I have ever read, due in large part to Verghese's astonishingly open, self-revelatory style. He writes as if to himself, with complete honesty. It is so rare, even in memoirs and autobiographies, for authors to so completely expose themselves, to let the reader so thoroughly inside their heads. We get to see and feel his self-doubts as a physician, husband, father, and friend. It sounds sappy to say this, but it is one of those rare books that is profoundly sad, yet makes me feel like a better person for having read it. 2) "Flu" by Gina Kolata. Kolata is a fine writer, by day a science reporter for the NY Times--one of those rare ones that usually gets medical issues exactly right. I was aware of her reporting work before hearing of this book. She begins with an account of the 1918 worldwide influenze pandemic, sketching the devastation it left behind. She then moves to the subsequent research done trying to find out what was so lethal about this particular flu strain. Unfortunately, the scientific tools of the next couple of decades were inadequate to the task. Only in the last decade have researchers finally had sufficient sophistication to tackle flu viruses with molecular genetic probes, sequencing genes from various strains. Then the problem was that they did not have any of the 1918 flu to work with. The second half or so of the book is the fascinating story of how teams of researchers attempted to get samples--in the pathology collections of a couple of tissue repositories, and in corpses of 1918 flu victims buried in far northern permafrost of Alaska and Norway. Two chapter in the middle detail the decision-making process which, due specifically to the fear of a return of th 1918 strain, led to possibly the greatest public health disaster of all time: the 1976 swine flu vaccination program. It's a fascinating story throughout, well-told and well-documented. It's a rare non-fiction book that one can describe as a "page-turner," but the term fits here. -- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bob Woolley --------------------------------------------------------------------------- St. Paul, Minnesota "Give credit where credit is due: Al Gore is an unusually bad liar. He lies about big things and small, lies even when he has nothing to gain from deception, and lies so extravagantly and incompetently as to insult the intelligence of any American who has successfully completed the 2nd grade. Put him on a polygraph, and the polygraph would blow all its circuits." -- Steve Chapman (Chicago Tribune columnist) ------------ Forwarded Message ends here ------------ -- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bob Woolley --------------------------------------------------------------------------- St. Paul, Minnesota "The test of good law is not whether it will accomplish its purpose if properly administered, but what damage it will do if improperly administered." Sam Ervin, Jr. Next message: Bernard Cristalli: "Re: Operative Hysteroscopy - any tips" Previous message: Myer S. Bornstein, MD, CPE, FACOG: "Re: Gyn-Hysteroscopy fluid management"

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