The Summer Bookshelf

Recent Books by Faculty of Harvard Medical, Dental, and Public Health Schools

Roderick Anscombe
Virgin Lies
St. Martin’s Press
Roderick Anscombe, HMS assistant clinical professor of psychiatry, has parlayed his clinical and academic experience into publishing novels. In Virgin Lies, he brings back forensic psychiatrist Paul Lucas, who appeared in an earlier book and who specializes in interrogating violent criminals and the insane. This time, Lucas is charged with solving the mysterious disappearance of a little girl in Boston on a hot summer day. Sensing that the girl’s life is in danger, Lucas must work quickly to question the sole witness, a suspicious homeless woman, and the uncooperative suspects before it is too late. But at what lengths will he go to get to the truth? Anscombe’s timely novel touches on issues of torture, interrogation, and the physician’s promise to do no harm.

Gregory L. Holmes, Solomon L. Moshé, and H. Royden Jones Jr., Editors
Clinical Neurophysiology of Infancy, Childhood, and Adolescence
Butterworth Heinemann
The purpose of this textbook, geared toward trainees and clinicians, is to provide parameters for pediatric neurophysiology that encompass the most recent technologies and address the rapid growth of the nervous system from birth to adolescence. In compiling the contents, editors H. Royden Jones Jr., an HMS clinical professor of neurology at Children’s Hospital Boston, Gregory Holmes of Dartmouth Medical School, and Solomon Moshé of Albert Einstein College of Medicine, with dozens of contributors, surveyed the literature and honed the most current perspectives on performance and interpretation of neurophysiologic studies. Included in the technical discussions are descriptions of relevant clinical disorders. The chapters progress from basic principles and maturational change through disorders of cerebral function and neuromuscular disorders to a section on neurophysiologic techniques not elsewhere discussed. The book offers photographs, tracings, diagrams, MR images, and other illustrative material helpful for students and practitioners.

Kenneth A. Arndt and Jeffrey T.S. Hsu, Editors
Manual of Dermatologic Therapeutics
Lippincott Williams & Wilkins
Now in its seventh edition, the Manual of Dermatologic Therapeutics addresses a range of skin disorders, including everything from cosmetic complaints like acne to life-threatening conditions such as melanoma. The book is split into three sections. The first offers approaches to diagnosing common dermatologic diseases, along with frequently used treatments. Part two provides step-by-step instructions for performing simple operative procedures using readily available equipment. Part three provides a formulary of the medications most commonly used in the diseases the book covers. Kenneth Arndt, HMS clinical professor of dermatology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and his co-editor Jeffrey Hsu, have made several updates to this new edition, including the addition of new medications, new guidelines for using established drugs, and new treatment procedures. The manual also includes color photographs of the conditions described.

Allan M. Brandt
The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product that Defined America
Basic Books
In the introduction to his book, Allan Brandt, the Amalie Moses Kass professor of the history of medicine in the Department of Social Medicine, describes seeing the smoking Camel ad in New York City’s Times Square at the age of 7, and how, despite hearing from his parents that smoking was “bad,” he found that sign more fascinating than any other sight in New York. The sign, and his feelings about it, presented a “paradox of pandemic proportion,” Brandt writes, between the demonstrated detriments of smoking and its carefully crafted appeal. He looks at the discovery of the health risks of smoking and the tobacco industry’s tireless campaign to counter these reports. He also examines how tobacco became entrenched in the culture, inserting itself into policymaking, politics, and globalization. From the tobacco fields to the witness stand, the history Brandt reveals in documents that were previously unavailable to the public is a sordid one.

Atul Gawande
Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance
Metropolitan Books
From employees to students to athletes, most people constantly strive to do their best, given the limits of their talents and resources. But doctors face a special pressure since a stumble on the path to recognition can have catastrophic results. In his new book, Atul Gawande, HMS assistant professor of surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, discusses the moral weight of the choices doctors must make, particularly when conditions do not lend themselves to peak performance. The book is divided into three sections: “Diligence,” “Doing Right,” and “Ingenuity,” and in each of these, he offers stories of clinicians, on the battlefields of Iraq, in a U.S. hospital infection-control department, and everywhere in between, who are using these three tools to do their best, even when the outcome is not necessarily ideal. Gawande does not have an easy answer on how to be better, but he does offer nuggets of insight into his own experiences and how he is using them to make a difference in his own performance.

Michael I. Good, Editor
The Seduction Theory in Its Second Century: Trauma, Fantasy, and Reality Today
International Universities Press
In 1998, a symposium was convened to discuss the topic “The Seduction Hypothesis One Hundred Years Later: Trauma, Fantasy, and Reality Today,” to explore Freud’s seduction theory and the place of seduction in psychoanalytic theory and practice. Michael Good, the book’s editor and HMS associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Massachusetts Mental Health Center, has assembled a collection of papers by the symposium’s contributors, along with edited transcripts of the panel discussions and a detailed introduction discussing the history of seduction, from the theory’s peak in popularity to its reemergence in analytical practice today. The contributors represent many schools of psychiatry, and their discussions include historical, theoretical, and clinical approaches. The book concludes with a postscript by Good, in which he examines the difficulties of applying psychoanalytic theory to real patients, specifically addressing the controversies and questions surrounding trauma, fantasy, and reality.

Ichiro Kawachi and Sarah Wamala, Editors
Globalization and Health
Oxford University Press
Globalization is extending its reach into every corner of our lives, and some of the implications for health have received a lot of attention. The SARS and tuberculosis scares, to cite recent examples, are a sobering reminder that a dangerous virus can travel halfway around the world in a matter of hours. In Globalization and Health, Ichiro Kawachi, HSPH professor of social epidemiology, along with his co-editor Sarah Wamala of the Karolinska Institute, has put together a collection of studies that examine and analyze the impact elements of globalization outside the realm of medicine that are nonetheless leaving a mark on world health, such as the rapidly growing use of automobiles worldwide and the ever-expanding divide between rich and poor. The book is divided into three parts, each focusing on a particular theme: “The Health Consequences of Globalization,” “Monitoring the Impact of Globalization on Health,” and “The International Responses to Globalization.” The resulting text, as the editors note in the introduction, strives to serve as a guide for the priorities that must be addressed in the arena of health politics.

Sheldon Peck
The World of Edward Hartley Angle, MD, DDS: His Letters, Accounts and Patents
The E.H. Angle Education and Research Foundation
Edward Angle is considered a pioneer in the field of orthodontics. Credited with making orthodontics a specialty, Angle was also the first to classify the different forms of malocclusion, and he established the first school of orthodontics, the Angle School of Orthodontia in St. Louis, in 1900. Sheldon Peck, HSDM associate clinical professor of developmental biology and secretary of the Angle Society, has assembled from the society’s archives a collection of Angle’s papers from 1889 to 1910. The book set contains four volumes, largely dedicated to Angle’s correspondence, which has been reprinted as closely to the originals as possible. Volume one also contains a short biography of Angle’s personal and professional life and facsimiles of selected writings. Volume three contains reproductions of Angle’s patent documents, including certificates and illustrated diagrams and a comprehensive bibliography of works by and about Angle. The final volume contains ledgers from his orthodontic appliance business.

Helmut Remschmidt, Barry Nurcombe, Myron L. Belfer, Norman Sartorius, and Ahmed Okasha, Editors
The Mental Health of Children and Adolescents: An Area of Global Neglect
John Wiley & Sons
In developing and developed countries alike, children and adolescents with mental health issues are not receiving adequate treatment. In response to this growing problem, the World Health Organization and the International Association for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Allied Professions formed the World Psychiatric Association’s Presidential Programme on Child Mental Health to create awareness, promote prevention strategies, support the development of services for these children, and promote evidence-based treatment methods. Myron Belfer, HMS professor of psychiatry in the Department of Social Medicine, along with his co-editors, has compiled a selection of reviews and studies produced by the program while it was in operation from 2002 to 2005. The book includes papers on the epidemiology of childhood mental health disorders, the findings of a feasibility study examining the effectiveness of remote training programs, and the success of mental illness prevention strategies on school dropout rates.

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