Review: Honey, Mud, Maggots and Other Medical Marvels: Science Behind Folk Remedies and Old Wives' Tales

Honey, Mud, Maggots and Other Medical Marvels: Science Behind Folk Remedies and Old Wives' Tales by Robert Root-Bernstein

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



This is a fascinating overview of the scientific basis and potential benefits of such folk remedies as honey-sugar wound bandaging, geophagy, circumcision, maggots, leeches, and more. I wish the section on quackery was more in depth, but the section on how the economics of health care in American means low-cost and proven folk remedies can never be offere on scale as their is not the profit possibility to support approval. One potential example is Dinitrochlorobenzene (DNCB), a chemical used in color photography processing, that could be beneficial to those dealing with AIDS.



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Review: College Algebra: An Early Functions Approach

College Algebra: An Early Functions Approach by Robert Blitzer

My rating: 0 of 5 stars



There are things I like and don't like about this text. I like the preliminaries/review section and the material on LP and linear system inequalities. I am unhappy with the thin coverage of root function inequalities (such a good area to discuss range and domain) and using the TI calculators to do linear regression (great real world applicability.) I also like the material on exponential models which builds mathematical sophistication in modelling and interpreting common models.

I appreciate the more detailed coverage than I find typical of linear systems, LP optimization and Gauss - Jordan.

Binomial Theorem before Counting Theory seems crazy to me, like it's section 8.1 which bombards the reader with summation and sequence notation including recursion before they are introduced to the basics of arithmetic sequences (8.2). This is on par for books in the field when to me geometric series should be before or immediately after exponential functions, etc.

Where are the related rate/work rate problems? That's like a crucially missing section, IMO. I am on the fence about the exclusion of parametric equations. I may have a nostalgic yearning for them in excess of their true value.



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Review: The Assassination of Gaitan: Public Life and Urban Violence in Colombia

The Assassination of Gaitan: Public Life and Urban Violence in Colombia by Herbert Braun

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This is a thoroughly researched, fast-paced account of the Colombian politician’s on-again-off-again political career, culminating in a sudden, pointless assassination. Coming after the "Thousand Days" civil war era, this act of violence triggered extensive violence and rioting in Bogotá. The author works hard to make clear the murky politics of the era, the key players, and the high-strung state of the populace at a time when the Pan America Conference brought many to the country, including a riot-participating Fidel Castro.



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Review: Infinity and Truth

Infinity and Truth by Chitat Chong

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Based on the talks given at the Workshop on Infinity and Truth (Institute for Mathematical Sciences, National University of Singapore, 2011), the book brings together nine papers on the foundations of mathematics. This volume is largely thought-provoking and engaging in tackling questions formally unsolvable within ZFC, such as Projective Determinacy and the Continuum Hypothesis, and pondering if the foundations of mathematics lean to any one philosophical view...

[See my full review at MAA Reviews]



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Review: Napoleon's Army in Russia: The Illustrated Memoirs of Albrecht Adam - 1812

Napoleon's Army in Russia: The Illustrated Memoirs of Albrecht Adam - 1812 by Jonathan North

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



This is a moving and compelling collection of text and illustrations from one of the most fascination large-scale human endeavours to me: Napoleon's ill-fated invasion of Russia. This much more made the event and its conglomeration of people stretched over miles and countries much like the Crusades of earlier centuries. I found this work a much more compelling depiction than [b:War and Peace|656|War and Peace|Leo Tolstoy|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1413215930s/656.jpg|4912783].



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Review: Consolations in Travel

Consolations in Travel by Humphry Davy

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I discovered this English chemist and inventor, best remembered today for his discoveries of several alkali and alkaline earth metals as well as contributions to the discoveries of the elemental nature of chlorine and iodine. accidentally. Reading that he traveled in his final days and wrote his final musings to completion days before his death compelled me to read this interesting little work. I see it in three acts.

Act I: A stunningly imaginative tour of the solar system populated by fantasy beings and led by a supernatural
"Genius"

Act II: Italy travelogue and discussions of natural wonders like land-forming calcium deposits, Roman ruins, volcanoes, and the mysterious olm ( or proteus ) salamander.

Act III: Some fumbling grappling with the question of "what is time?" that descends into a lauding of the powers of chemistry and applied physics for improving and understanding the world.



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Review: This Time Together: Laughter and Reflections

This Time Together: Laughter and Reflections by Carol Burnett

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I have fond memories of The Carol Burnett Show, watching it with grandmother, finding it hilarious and familiar. I have always been impressed with Burnett and pause to hear her wit when she makes the rare TV appearance. The fact she herself narrates this book - including with a Tarzan yell - makes it warm, friendly, and entertaining; it is a Burnett performance. Culled largely from her one-woman stage show Q&A this is a series of vignettes about funny things that happened to her and famous people she met and worked with (Beverly Sills, Tim Conway, Hal Prince, Joan Crawford, etc.). I think many of the stories would be only "meh" without her delivery. Many are things I never knew like the early death of her daughter Carrie Hamilton in 2002 (at age 38) of lung and brain cancer, her reluctance to do movies, the existence of an unnamed benefactor that recalls the germ of Nina Simone's career.



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Review: Dr. Mutter's Marvels: A True Tale of Intrigue and Innovation at the Dawn of Modern Medicine

Dr. Mutter's Marvels: A True Tale of Intrigue and Innovation at the Dawn of Modern Medicine by Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Well, after reading this I gotta see the The Mütter Museum in Philadelphia to see the medical oddities curated there from this amazingly innovative doctor's collection. The book's horrifying tales of thigh-high antebellum leg amputations sans anesthesia with special helpers tasked to hold down each other of the patient-victim's limbs make me glad to be alive in these "modern" times. The onset of sterile conditions for surgical procedures dawns in this man's career with his own concern for cleanliness apparently as much a symptom of OCD-like fastidiousness on his part than true scientific/medical knowledge. And to think accepting the even crude and unreliable anesthesia techniques (ether, laughing gas, laudanum, etc.) was decried by people like Charles D. Meigs, an influential obstetrician who loathed Mütter’s "overly" modern medical opinions and felt a painful childbirth was a Biblical requirement.



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Review: The Powerhouse: Inside the Invention of a Battery to Save the World

The Powerhouse: Inside the Invention of a Battery to Save the World by Steve Levine

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



[a:Steve Levine|446216|Steve Levine|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] has done an excellent job with small chapters and effective writing at making a potentially boring and tedious tale researchers in action (I am looking at you, [b:Bell Labs: Life in the Crown Jewel|13576717|Bell Labs Life in the Crown Jewel|Narain Gehani|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1333506643s/13576717.jpg|19159494]) engaging reading. But, to find it all ended up as a "sin of omission" that "crossed the line over into deception" when Envia's Kumar put out a falsehood at a news conferences ending up in extracting four million dollars from GM and crippling damage to GM, well, that's like a movie that ends up telling all it was a dream. Maybe if I had known more of recalled more news on this I would have read it as something like true crime not what I expect it was turning into: a successful race for innovation where America comes up from the rear in partnership of government sponsorship, brilliant scientists drawn from the world, and motivated entrepreneurs. This would have come more from hipping the reader to this mendacity at the beginning and unraveling the undercurrents of its motivation and effects. Apparently, Levine has uncovered nothing there,so is left with the science and (dashed) hopes.

(I received the book for free through Goodreads First Reads.)



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