Dead or Alive (Kindle Single)
February 22, 2012 by admin · 3 Comments
Dead or Alive (Kindle Single)
What happens after we die? Does our consciousness vanish at the moment of death? Or does it continue in some form? Former Los Angeles Times national correspondent Erika Hayasaki sets out to explore the controversial science behind “near-death experiences.” The journey leads her to forge an unexpected bond with a distant family member who becomes her tour guide, and ends up teaching her not only how awesome it can be to die, but how precious it can be to live.Erika Hayasaki is an assistant professor in the Literary Journalism Department at the University of California, Irvine, an undergraduate degree program dedicated to teaching narrative journalism. She spent nearly a decade as a reporter covering breaking news and writing feature stories for the Los Angeles Times, where she was a staff metro reporter, education writer, and New York-based national correspondent. She is currently working on a nonfiction book about a captivating New Jersey professor, Dr. Norma Bowe, who takes her students on field trips to morgues, cemeteries, maximum security prisons, and funeral homes as part of her self-designed and wildly popular class on death.
What happens after we die? Does our consciousness vanish at the moment of death? Or does it continue in some form? Former Los Angeles Times national correspondent Erika Hayasaki sets out to explore the controversial science behind “near-death experiences.” The journey leads her to forge an unexpected bond with a distant family member who becomes her tour guide, and ends up teaching her not only how awesome it can be to die, but how precious it can be to live.
Erika Hayasaki is an assistant professor in the Literary Journalism Department at the University of California, Irvine, an undergraduate degree program dedicated to teaching narrative journalism. She spent nearly a decade as a reporter covering breaking news and writing feature stories for the Los Angeles Times, where she was a staff metro reporter, education writer, and New York-based national correspondent. She is currently working on a nonfiction book about a captivating New Jersey professor, Dr. Norma Bowe, who takes her students on field trips to morgues, cemeteries, maximum security prisons, and funeral homes as part of her self-designed and wildly popular class on death.
The End of Illness
February 21, 2012 by admin · 3 Comments
The End of Illness
Can we live robustly until our last breath? Do we have to suffer from debilitating conditions and sickness? Is it possible to add more vibrant years to our lives? In The End of Illness, David B. Agus, MD, one of the world’s leading cancer doctors, researchers, and technology innovators, tackles these fundamental questions, challenging long-held wisdoms and dismantling misperceptions about what “health” means. With a blend of storytelling, landmark research, and provocative ideas on health, Dr. Agus presents an eye-opening picture of the human body and all of the ways it works—and fails—showing us how a new perspective on our individual health will allow each of us to achieve that often elusive but now reachable goal of a long, vigorous life. When Dr. Agus decided to pursue a career in oncology, many of his mentors questioned his choice. Why, they asked, would a promising young doctor want to enter a field known for its inescapably grim outcomes? But it was precisely the lack of progress that inspired Dr. Agus to join the war on cancer. He moved away from the modern methods of the medical establishment, which aim to reduce our afflictions to a single point. Instead, as he does in this book, Dr. Agus argues for the adoption of a systemic view—a way of honoring our bodies as complex, whole systems. This outlook informs how we can avoid all illnesses—not just cancer. Dr. Agus empowers us to take charge of our individual health in personal, customized ways we could not have imagined before.
This indispensable book is not only a manifesto—a call for revising the way we think about health—it’s also filled with practical but impossible-to-ignore suggestions, including:
• How taking multivitamins and supplements could significantly increase our risk for cancer over time.
• Why sitting down most of the day, despite a strenuous morning workout, can be as bad as or worse than smoking.
• How sneaky sources of daily inflammation—from high heels to the common cold—can lead to a fatal heart attack, and even rob us of our sanity.
• How three inexpensive medications—aspirin, statins, and an annual flu vaccine—can substantially change the course of our health for the better.
• How taking shortcuts to health via blending fruits and vegetables, and sometimes even by purchasing what we think is “fresh,” could be shortchanging our health.
• The single most important thing we can do today to preserve our health and happiness that costs absolutely nothing.
Dr. Agus also offers insights and access to breathtaking and powerful new technologies that promise to transform medicine in our generation. In the course of offering recommendations, he emphasizes his belief that there is no “right” answer, no master guide that is “one size fits all.” Each one of us must get to know our bodies in uniquely personal ways, and he shows us exactly how to do that so that we can individually create a plan for wellness.
The End of Illness is a bold call for all of us to become our own personal health advocates, and a dramatic departure from orthodox thinking. This is a seminal work that promises to revolutionize how we live.Can we live robustly until our last breath? Do we have to suffer from debilitating conditions and sickness? Is it possible to add more vibrant years to our lives? In The End of Illness, David B. Agus, MD, one of the world’s leading cancer doctors, researchers, and technology innovators, tackles these fundamental questions, challenging long-held wisdoms and dismantling misperceptions about what “health” means. With a blend of storytelling, landmark research, and provocative ideas on health, Dr. Agus presents an eye-opening picture of the human body and all of the ways it works—and fails—showing us how a new perspective on our individual health will allow each of us to achieve that often elusive but now reachable goal of a long, vigorous life.
When Dr. Agus decided to pursue a career in oncology, many of his mentors questioned his choice. Why, they asked, would a promising young doctor want to enter a field known for its inescapably grim outcomes? But it was precisely the lack of progress that inspired Dr. Agus to join the war on cancer. He moved away from the modern methods of the medical establishment, which aim to reduce our afflictions to a single point. Instead, as he does in this book, Dr. Agus argues for the adoption of a systemic view—a way of honoring our bodies as complex, whole systems. This outlook informs how we can avoid all illnesses—not just cancer. Dr. Agus empowers us to take charge of our individual health in personal, customized ways we could not have imagined before.
This indispensable book is not only a manifesto—a call for revising the way we think about health—it’s also filled with practical but impossible-to-ignore suggestions, including:
• How taking multivitamins and supplements could significantly increase our risk for cancer over time.
• Why sitting down most of the day, despite a strenuous morning workout, can be as bad as or worse than smoking.
• How sneaky sources of daily inflammation—from high heels to the common cold—can lead to a fatal heart attack, and even rob us of our sanity.
• How three inexpensive medications—aspirin, statins, and an annual flu vaccine—can substantially change the course of our health for the better.
• How taking shortcuts to health via blending fruits and vegetables, and sometimes even by purchasing what we think is “fresh,” could be shortchanging our health.
• The single most important thing we can do today to preserve our health and happiness that costs absolutely nothing.
Dr. Agus also offers insights and access to breathtaking and powerful new technologies that promise to transform medicine in our generation. In the course of offering recommendations, he emphasizes his belief that there is no “right” answer, no master guide that is “one size fits all.” Each one of us must get to know our bodies in uniquely personal ways, and he shows us exactly how to do that so that we can individually create a plan for wellness.
The End of Illness is a bold call for all of us to become our own personal health advocates, and a dramatic departure from orthodox thinking. This is a seminal work that promises to revolutionize how we live.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
February 2, 2012 by admin · 3 Comments
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. If you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they’d weigh more than 50 million metric tons—as much as a hundred Empire State Buildings. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb’s effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions. Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave.
Now Rebecca Skloot takes us on an extraordinary journey, from the “colored” ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s to stark white laboratories with freezers full of HeLa cells; from Henrietta’s small, dying hometown of Clover, Virginia—a land of wooden slave quarters, faith healings, and voodoo—to East Baltimore today, where her children and grandchildren live and struggle with the legacy of her cells.
Henrietta’s family did not learn of her “immortality” until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists investigating HeLa began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. And though the cells had launched a multimillion-dollar industry that sells human biological materials, her family never saw any of the profits. As Rebecca Skloot so brilliantly shows, the story of the Lacks family—past and present—is inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of.
Over the decade it took to uncover this story, Rebecca became enmeshed in the lives of the Lacks family—especially Henrietta’s daughter Deborah, who was devastated to learn about her mother’s cells. She was consumed with questions: Had scientists cloned her mother? Did it hurt her when researchers infected her cells with viruses and shot them into space? What happened to her sister, Elsie, who died in a mental institution at the age of fifteen? And if her mother was so important to medicine, why couldn’t her children afford health insurance?
Intimate in feeling, astonishing in scope, and impossible to put down, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks captures the beauty and drama of scientific discovery, as well as its human consequences.
From the Hardcover edition.Amazon Best Books of the Month, February 2010: From a single, abbreviated life grew a seemingly immortal line of cells that made some of the most crucial innovations in modern science possible. And from that same life, and those cells, Rebecca Skloot has fashioned in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks a fascinating and moving story of medicine and family, of how life is sustained in laboratories and in memory. Henrietta Lacks was a mother of five in Baltimore, a poor African American migrant from the tobacco farms of Virginia, who died from a cruelly aggressive cancer at the age of 30 in 1951. A sample of her cancerous tissue, taken without her knowledge or consent, as was the custom then, turned out to provide one of the holy grails of mid-century biology: human cells that could survive--even thrive--in the lab. Known as HeLa cells, their stunning potency gave scientists a building block for countless breakthroughs, beginning with the cure for polio. Meanwhile, Henrietta's family continued to live in poverty and frequently poor health, and their discovery decades later of her unknowing contribution--and her cells' strange survival--left them full of pride, anger, and suspicion. For a decade, Skloot doggedly but compassionately gathered the threads of these stories, slowly gaining the trust of the family while helping them learn the truth about Henrietta, and with their aid she tells a rich and haunting story that asks the questions, Who owns our bodies? And who carries our memories? --Tom Nissley
Amazon Exclusive: Jad Abumrad Reviews The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Jad Abumrad is host and creator of the public radio hit Radiolab, now in its seventh season and reaching over a million people monthly. Radiolab combines cutting-edge production with a philosophical approach to big ideas in science and beyond, and an inventive method of storytelling. Abumrad has won numerous awards, including a National Headliner Award in Radio and an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Science Journalism Award. Read his exclusive Amazon guest review of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks:
Honestly, I can't imagine a better tale.
A detective story that's at once mythically large and painfully intimate.
Just the simple facts are hard to believe: that in 1951, a poor black woman named Henrietta Lacks dies of cervical cancer, but pieces of the tumor that killed her--taken without her knowledge or consent--live on, first in one lab, then in hundreds, then thousands, then in giant factories churning out polio vaccines, then aboard rocket ships launched into space. The cells from this one tumor would spawn a multi-billion dollar industry and become a foundation of modern science--leading to breakthroughs in gene mapping, cloning and fertility and helping to discover how viruses work and how cancer develops (among a million other things). All of which is to say: the science end of this story is enough to blow one's mind right out of one's face.
But what's truly remarkable about Rebecca Skloot's book is that we also get the rest of the story, the part that could have easily remained hidden had she not spent ten years unearthing it: Who was Henrietta Lacks? How did she live? How she did die? Did her family know that she'd become, in some sense, immortal, and how did that affect them? These are crucial questions, because science should never forget the people who gave it life. And so, what unfolds is not only a reporting tour de force but also a very entertaining account of Henrietta, her ancestors, her cells and the scientists who grew them.
The book ultimately channels its journey of discovery though Henrietta's youngest daughter, Deborah, who never knew her mother, and who dreamt of one day being a scientist.
As Deborah Lacks and Skloot search for answers, we're bounced effortlessly from the tiny tobacco-farming Virginia hamlet of Henrietta's childhood to modern-day Baltimore, where Henrietta's family remains. Along the way, a series of unforgettable juxtapositions: cell culturing bumps into faith healings, cutting edge medicine collides with the dark truth that Henrietta's family can't afford the health insurance to care for diseases their mother's cells have helped to cure.
Rebecca Skloot tells the story with great sensitivity, urgency and, in the end, damn fine writing. I highly recommend this book. --Jad Abumrad
Look Inside The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
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Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. If you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they’d weigh more than 50 million metric tons—as much as a hundred Empire State Buildings. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb’s effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions.
Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave.
Now Rebecca Skloot takes us on an extraordinary journey, from the “colored” ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s to stark white laboratories with freezers full of HeLa cells; from Henrietta’s small, dying hometown of Clover, Virginia—a land of wooden slave quarters, faith healings, and voodoo—to East Baltimore today, where her children and grandchildren live and struggle with the legacy of her cells.
Henrietta’s family did not learn of her “immortality” until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists investigating HeLa began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. And though the cells had launched a multimillion-dollar industry that sells human biological materials, her family never saw any of the profits. As Rebecca Skloot so brilliantly shows, the story of the Lacks family—past and present—is inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of.
Over the decade it took to uncover this story, Rebecca became enmeshed in the lives of the Lacks family—especially Henrietta’s daughter Deborah, who was devastated to learn about her mother’s cells. She was consumed with questions: Had scientists cloned her mother? Did it hurt her when researchers infected her cells with viruses and shot them into space? What happened to her sister, Elsie, who died in a mental institution at the age of fifteen? And if her mother was so important to medicine, why couldn’t her children afford health insurance?
Intimate in feeling, astonishing in scope, and impossible to put down, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks captures the beauty and drama of scientific discovery, as well as its human consequences.
From the Hardcover edition.
Pictures of the Mind: What the New Neuroscience Tells Us About Who We Are (FT Press Science)
January 30, 2012 by admin · 3 Comments
Pictures of the Mind: What the New Neuroscience Tells Us About Who We Are (FT Press Science)
This is the eBook version of the printed book.
Neuroscientists once believed your brain was essentially "locked down" by adulthood. No new cells. No major changes. If you grew up depressed, angry, sad, aggressive, or nasty, you'd be that way for life. And, as you grew older, there'd be nowhere to go but down, as disease, age, or injury wiped out precious, irreplaceable brain cells. But over the past five, ten, twenty years, all that's changed. Using fMRI and PET scanning technology, neuroscientists can now look deep inside the human brain and they've discovered that it's amazingly flexible, resilient, and plastic. This book shows you what they've discovered and what it means to all of us. Through masterfully written narrative and stunning imagery, you'll watch human brains healing, growing, and adapting to challenges. You'll gain powerful new insights into the interplay between environment and genetics, begin understanding how people can influence their own intellectual abilities and emotional makeup, and understand the latest stunning discoveries about coma and "locked-in" syndrome. You'll learn about the tantalizing discoveries that may lead to cures for traumatic brain injury, stroke, emotional disorders, PTSD, drug addiction, chronic pain, maybe even Alzheimer's. Miriam Boleyn-Fitzgerald even shows how these discoveries are transforming our very understanding of the "self", from an essentially static entity to one that can learn and change throughout life and even master the art of happiness.
This is the eBook version of the printed book.
Neuroscientists once believed your brain was essentially "locked down" by adulthood. No new cells. No major changes. If you grew up depressed, angry, sad, aggressive, or nasty, you'd be that way for life. And, as you grew older, there'd be nowhere to go but down, as disease, age, or injury wiped out precious, irreplaceable brain cells. But over the past five, ten, twenty years, all that's changed. Using fMRI and PET scanning technology, neuroscientists can now look deep inside the human brain and they've discovered that it's amazingly flexible, resilient, and plastic. This book shows you what they've discovered and what it means to all of us. Through masterfully written narrative and stunning imagery, you'll watch human brains healing, growing, and adapting to challenges. You'll gain powerful new insights into the interplay between environment and genetics, begin understanding how people can influence their own intellectual abilities and emotional makeup, and understand the latest stunning discoveries about coma and "locked-in" syndrome. You'll learn about the tantalizing discoveries that may lead to cures for traumatic brain injury, stroke, emotional disorders, PTSD, drug addiction, chronic pain, maybe even Alzheimer's. Miriam Boleyn-Fitzgerald even shows how these discoveries are transforming our very understanding of the "self", from an essentially static entity to one that can learn and change throughout life and even master the art of happiness.
Tides of Love (Seaswept Seduction Series)
January 16, 2012 by admin · 3 Comments
Tides of Love (Seaswept Seduction/Book One: NOAH)
Will he be able to return and win her heart?
An earth-shattering secret revealed in his recently deceased mother's diary causes harsh words between Noah Garrett and his brother. Desolate and totally bewildered, Noah leaves Pilot Isle and has no contact with his family or even Elle Beaumont, the girl who has been his shadow all through childhood. Now, ten years later, Noah is a renowned biologist and returns to Pilot Isle to head up a research lab. Coming back home opens up old wounds and uncovers buried feelings. Hoping to have a few days to cope with all the old emotions welling up within him, Noah really isn't ready to face anyone yet. However, it's just his luck that the first person he literally bumps into is Elle. The only difference is, Elle is no longer a thin red headed mischievous imp who is constantly in trouble and always needing to be rescued. This Elle is a gorgeous, passionate young woman who sets Noah's blood on fire.
Marielle Claire Beaumont has loved Noah since she was a child. As a sad little girl who'd recently lost her mother and couldn't speak English, Elle met Noah when he saved her from taunts at school. Ever since then Elle has loved Noah unconditionally and followed him around like a little puppy. Her world was shattered when he left so suddenly. His silence all these years has been very difficult, and Elle is stunned when she slams into him so unexpectedly. It's not long before she's disrupting Noah's life again as sparks of passion fly in every direction between the two.
"Passionate love scenes that leave you breathless and singe your senses. TIDES OF LOVE is one book that will grab you from the first page and not let go till you've turned the last. I simply couldn't put it down."
--The Best Reviews
"I picked up Tides of Love...just to give the book a quick peak. That quick peak turned into four hours of reading that didn't stop until I finished the book! A sensuous writing style."
--The Romance Reader
"Descriptive flair...give this one a try!"
--All About Romance
"A powerful relationship novel that explores the heartache and triumph of love."
--Romantic Times
"A beautifully written romance! Sizzling love scenes."
--Reviewer Carol Carter
Her eyes flashed. "Let's get this out in the open. I was infatuated, once, a long time ago. Time to move on, Professor. I've refused marriage. According to my father, the grand opportunity to improve my life. And I don't see any good prospects looming on the horizon. Not to break your heart or anything"--she angled her chin, training her stunningly green gaze right on him--"but that hasn't changed since you arrived."
He felt an odd tightness in his chest, although her pledge was exactly what he wanted to hear. "Good. We understand each other." He lifted his hand, staying her impatient jiggling of the door handle. "I'll do this, on one condition."
"Condition?" Her brow scrunched as her canvas boot tapped a tune on the planked floor.
"No more 'Professor' nonsense. Never again from those lovely lips of yours."
Elle raised her hand to her mouth, smoothed her finger over her top lip. "Of course."
Puzzled by what he'd just uttered, Noah dropped to his haunches and flipped through a pile of books. He motioned her behind the door as he approached, a burgundy volume in his hand. "Wait until I have your father's full attention, where you can see our backs are turned. Then run. Don't think, run." He stepped outside, then leaned back in. "Let me amend that. Think. Please. Don't trip crossing the yard or tumble down the staircase and break your leg. Only one doctor in town, I'll wager, and he's someone we want to avoid just now."
Will he be able to return and win her heart?
An earth-shattering secret revealed in his recently deceased mother's diary causes harsh words between Noah Garrett and his brother. Desolate and totally bewildered, Noah leaves Pilot Isle and has no contact with his family or even Elle Beaumont, the girl who has been his shadow all through childhood. Now, ten years later, Noah is a renowned biologist and returns to Pilot Isle to head up a research lab. Coming back home opens up old wounds and uncovers buried feelings. Hoping to have a few days to cope with all the old emotions welling up within him, Noah really isn't ready to face anyone yet. However, it's just his luck that the first person he literally bumps into is Elle. The only difference is, Elle is no longer a thin red headed mischievous imp who is constantly in trouble and always needing to be rescued. This Elle is a gorgeous, passionate young woman who sets Noah's blood on fire.
Marielle Claire Beaumont has loved Noah since she was a child. As a sad little girl who'd recently lost her mother and couldn't speak English, Elle met Noah when he saved her from taunts at school. Ever since then Elle has loved Noah unconditionally and followed him around like a little puppy. Her world was shattered when he left so suddenly. His silence all these years has been very difficult, and Elle is stunned when she slams into him so unexpectedly. It's not long before she's disrupting Noah's life again as sparks of passion fly in every direction between the two.
"Passionate love scenes that leave you breathless and singe your senses. TIDES OF LOVE is one book that will grab you from the first page and not let go till you've turned the last. I simply couldn't put it down."
--The Best Reviews
"I picked up Tides of Love...just to give the book a quick peak. That quick peak turned into four hours of reading that didn't stop until I finished the book! A sensuous writing style."
--The Romance Reader
"Descriptive flair...give this one a try!"
--All About Romance
"A powerful relationship novel that explores the heartache and triumph of love."
--Romantic Times
"A beautifully written romance! Sizzling love scenes."
--Reviewer Carol Carter
Her eyes flashed. "Let's get this out in the open. I was infatuated, once, a long time ago. Time to move on, Professor. I've refused marriage. According to my father, the grand opportunity to improve my life. And I don't see any good prospects looming on the horizon. Not to break your heart or anything"--she angled her chin, training her stunningly green gaze right on him--"but that hasn't changed since you arrived."
He felt an odd tightness in his chest, although her pledge was exactly what he wanted to hear. "Good. We understand each other." He lifted his hand, staying her impatient jiggling of the door handle. "I'll do this, on one condition."
"Condition?" Her brow scrunched as her canvas boot tapped a tune on the planked floor.
"No more 'Professor' nonsense. Never again from those lovely lips of yours."
Elle raised her hand to her mouth, smoothed her finger over her top lip. "Of course."
Puzzled by what he'd just uttered, Noah dropped to his haunches and flipped through a pile of books. He motioned her behind the door as he approached, a burgundy volume in his hand. "Wait until I have your father's full attention, where you can see our backs are turned. Then run. Don't think, run." He stepped outside, then leaned back in. "Let me amend that. Think. Please. Don't trip crossing the yard or tumble down the staircase and break your leg. Only one doctor in town, I'll wager, and he's someone we want to avoid just now."
