Fall 2007 Bookshelf

Olusoji Adeyi, Phyllis J. Kanki, Oluwole Odutolu, and John A. Idoko
AIDS in Nigeria: A Nation on the Threshold
Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies
AIDS is spreading rapidly in Nigeria, and it is likely that soon more AIDS patients will call Nigeria home than any other country in Africa. Developed by the AIDS Prevention Initiative in Nigeria (APIN), an HSPH program, the book considers the disease in the perspective of cultural, sociological, and geographical situations specific to the country. Phyllis Kanki, HSPH professor of immunology and infectious diseases and director of APIN, and her co-editors have compiled the work of leading Nigerian HIV experts to serve as a guide for responding to the country’s epidemic. The book is organized into three parts. The first discusses the impact of the AIDS epidemic, not only in terms of medicine and epidemiology, but also the impact on families, cultural values, and individuals within a community. The second covers controlling the spread of HIV, including the role public health measures and civil action organizations have to play. The third section discusses plans for the future, with chapters on policies and government programs, HIV vaccine research, and the future impact of AIDS in the military. Interspersed among scholarly articles are the stories and photographs of Nigerians touched by AIDS, which vividly portray the human cost of the epidemic.

William C. Aird, Editor
Endothelial Medicine
Cambridge University Press
“This volume was born out of a yearning to develop a synthesis of the field of endothelial biology from bench to bedside, writes William Aird, HMS associate professor of medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, in the preface to this weighty volume. In the ensuing nearly 2,000 pages, Aird and invited contributors devote themselves to several goals, including to celebrate the history of the field from the official discovery of the endothelium in the early 19th century to the present; approach the endothelial cell as an input–output device that takes biochemical and biomechanical stimuli and transforms them into changes in gene and protein expression, leukocyte trafficking, antigen presentation, and other changes; engage diverse fields to create new knowledge; and create a virtual community of scientists interested in the endothelium to bridge the bench-to-bedside gap. “The endothelium has enormous, as yet untapped, diagnostic and therapeutic potential,” Aird writes.

Deirdre Barrett
Waistland
W. W. Norton & Company
To fight obesity, we need to stop listening to our bodies, writes Deirdre Barrett, HMS assistant clinical professor of psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at Cambridge Hospital. Fat and sugar cravings served humans well when we lived in a hunter–gatherer society, providing the drive to seek out these scarce essential nutrients. Thousands of years later, we still crave those things, but the difference is foods laden with sugar and fat are easily obtained 24 hours a day, and they require little physical activity to get them. With chapter subheads like “What We Can Learn from Anorexics,” Barrett pulls no punches, recommending a radical change in our diet and exercise habits. She also calls for changes to policy and the marketing and sale of unhealthy foods.

Cynthia S. Kaplan, Blaise A. Aguirre, and Michael Rater
Helping Your Troubled Teen: Learn to Recognize, Understand, and Address the Destructive Behavior of Today’s Teens
Fair Winds Press
Teenage rebellion is nothing new. But the authors of Helping Your Troubled Teen, all HMS clinical instructors at McLean Hospital, note that they are seeing more kids in crisis than ever before, with problems that would have been unimaginable 10 years ago. Children today have instant access to information through the internet and text messaging and are able to communicate with people of all ages and backgrounds, making it harder than ever for parents to control what their children are exposed to. The book, directed at parents, outlines the types of problems the authors are seeing in their practices today, such as cutting, substance abuse, school violence, and the impact of technology, and it discusses treatment options and home-based solutions. The book also includes case studies, information on the role parents must play in recovery, and stories from teens themselves who have struggled with these issues.

David Ludwig with Suzanne Rostler
Ending the Food Fight
Houghton Mifflin
Children are experiencing an increasing rate of obesity, which translates into obesity-related illnesses once seen mostly only in adults, such as type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure. As it gets easier and easier for children to obtain high-calorie, high-fat, high-sugar foods, parents can feel like the struggle to get a child to eat well is a losing battle. David Ludwig, HMS associate professor of pediatrics and director of the Optimal Weight for Life program at Children’s Hospital Boston, offers a prescription for both overweight children and their families to end the fights over food and develop behaviors and strategies that will enable the child to maintain a healthy weight all the way into adulthood. As a pioneer of the low-glycemic movement, Ludwig advocates a diet of mostly whole grains, healthy fats, and nonstarchy fruits and vegetables. The book includes easy recipes and shopping lists directed at parents who think cooking with fresh ingredients is too difficult or time consuming.

Medha N. Munshi and Lewis A. Lipsitz, Editors
Geriatric Diabetes
Informa Healthcare
Geriatric patients and their caregivers face a unique set of challenges when it comes to the treatment of diabetes. Cognitive, physical, emotional, and social changes can affect how successfully the patient is able to manage the disease, and observational studies have shown that older adults with diabetes suffer age-related conditions, such as frailty, incontinence, and cognitive impairment, at a higher rate than do those without. Editors Medha Munshi, HMS instructor in medicine, and Lewis Lipsitz, HMS professor of medicine, both at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, have compiled a comprehensive guide to geriatric diabetes, addressing the ways in which the disease presents differently in older patients, the comorbidities that can occur with geriatric diabetes, and the effect the aging process has on patients’ abilities to self-manage the disease. The book presents detailed descriptions of conditions associated with geriatric diabetes and offers strategies for clinicians to overcome age-related obstacles and tailor their care to the specific needs of an older patient.

Elizabeth A. Rider, Ruth H. Nawotniak, and Gary Smith
A Practical Guide to Teaching and Assessing the ACGME Core Competencies
HCPro
In order to receive accreditation from the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), residency programs must assess and document resident performance in what are known as the core competencies: medical knowledge, patient care, professionalism, interpersonal and communications skills, practice-based learning and improvement, and systems-based practice. Elizabeth Rider, HMS assistant professor of pediatrics at Children’s Hospital Boston and Massachusetts General Hospital, and her co-editors have created a guide to the best practices for teaching, documenting, and assessing these skills, some of which seem more like personality traits than something learnable. The guide, however, treats them all as teachable and measurable, offering tools for teaching all six competencies and advice on how to document and assess performance. In addition, the guide provides sample forms that can be used for evaluation and documentation, all of which are available on the included CD-ROM for easy printing.

Michael W. Shannon, Stephen W. Borron, and Michael J. Burns
Haddad and Winchester’s Clinical Management of Poisoning and Drug Overdose, 4th Edition
Saunders Elsevier
Patients who have experienced a poisoning or drug overdose need immediate and accurate medical attention. Since 1983, Clinical Management of Poisoning and Drug Overdose has sought to be an authoritative guide for clinicians and a comprehensive textbook for students on the diagnosis and treatment of toxic exposure. The text runs the gamut of poisoning emergencies, from snakebites to street drugs, and includes the best practices for identification and treatment, written by practicing toxicologists. In the fourth edition of the book, editors Michael Shannon, HMS professor of pediatrics at Children’s Hospital Boston, and Michael Burns, HMS assistant professor of medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, along with Stephen Borron of the University of Texas, San Antonio, have added information about new toxins and antidotes that have emerged since the 1998 edition. In addition, the editors have included discussions of health care issues that have recently come to the forefront, such as the new sections on disasters and terrorism and performance enhancers.

Irwin E. Thompson
Memories & Milestones
Acanthus Publishing
After spending 30 years as a clinician and HMS professor, founding Boston IVF along the way, Irwin Thompson, now retired, is spending life post-medicine pursuing artistic endeavors. In Memories & Milestones, Thompson pairs vivid, mostly abstract paintings with short, fragmented poems, each informing and complementing the other. His favored medium is oil, though he also makes use of acrylic and mixed media. The poems and paintings in this collection reflect themes of the origins of life, nature, and environmentalism. The imagery also reveals the spirit of a scientist and doctor. Though his current work initially appears to be a significant departure from his former career, on his website Thompson explains in his artist’s statement that, as a clinician in the field of reproductive biology, he has “always been involved in some form of creative activity.”