Reaching Down the Rabbit Hole: A Renowned Neurologist Explains the Mystery and Drama of Brain Disease
Allan Ropper and Brian Burrell
St. Martin's Press
Allan Ropper, professor of neurology at HMS, published this book in September with Brian Burrell, senior lecturer in mathematics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. In Reaching Down the Rabbit Hole, Ropper and Burrell explore the treatment of brain diseases. These ailments are particularly difficult to treat because the brain is being attacked: The organ that gives our bodily ailments meaning must grasp its own sickness—particularly in the case of unusual, debilitating brain illnesses.
Ropper and Burrell take the reader “behind the scenes” of the neurology unit at HMS and discuss case studies with professional diagnosticians. For example, they write about “a college quarterback who can’t stop calling the same play,” and “a mother of two young girls, diagnosed with ALS, who has to decide whether a life locked inside her own head is worth living.”
This book also discusses other aspects of brain disease, such as the social future of patients and how to train the next generation of neurologists.
Blind Spot: How Neoliberalism Infiltrated Global Health
Salmaan Keshavjee
University of California Press
With a foreword by Paul Farmer, Blind Spot, by associate professor and director of the Program in Infectious Disease and Social Change at HMS Salmaan Keshavjee, uses a case study of post-Soviet Tajikistan to illustrate how neoliberal ideology has shaped global health care. It also challenges the current structure of policymaking and the privatization of health care on a global scale.
“All newcomers to the work of global health should read this book. Writing elegantly about the devastating effects of the Bamako Initiative, but more importantly about the history of neoliberalism itself, Keshavjee offers a cautionary lesson to those who are still enthusiastic about allowing market-driven policies to guide our global health network,” said Vincanne Adams, professor of medical anthropology at the University of California San Francisco.
Arthur Kleinman, professor of medical anthropology in the Department of Social Medicine at Harvard, described the book as “quite possibly the most important ethnography of social development under neoliberalism applied to health that has been written to date.”
Thinfluence: The powerful and surprising effect friends, family, work, and environment have on weight
Walter Willett, Malissa Wood and Dan Childs
Rodale Books
Walter Willett, HMS professor of medicine, the Fredrick John Stare Professor of Epidemiology and Medicine and chairman of the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, and Malissa Wood, assistant professor of medicine at HMS, published Thinfluence, along with medical journalist Dan Childs in May 2014. It explores the effects of external factors on weight, rather than viewing weight as a personal choice that people make.
Research often implies that making healthier choices is the best way to approach weight control. Thinfluence relies on the latest research, which suggests that weight is dependent upon several external factors, and not on personal motivation alone.
The book offers a three-step approach to integrating external factors into weight management: analyze, act, influence. If these often-ignored external factors can be identified, they can be acted upon more effectively, and those who experience success can then serve as a positive influence to others who seek the same type of results.
Outsmarting Anger: 7 Strategies for Defusing Our Most Dangerous Emotion
Joseph Shrand
Jossey-Bass
This book, which received the 2014 Books for a Better Life for Psychology Award, goes beyond the negative effects of our own anger and analyzes the effects of others’ anger on our success. Shrand, HMS instructor in psychiatry, explains how this occurs from a psychological standpoint, then offers tools for combating the potential negative effects.
Outsmarting Anger offers these tools in the form of seven steps: recognize rage, envision envy, sense suspicion, project peak, engage empathy, communicate clearly, and trade thanks.
Adolescent Sexual Behavior in the Digital Age: Considerations for Clinicians, Legal Professionals and Educators
Fabian M. Saleh, Albert Grudzinskas and Abigail Judge, eds.
Oxford University Press
Fabian Saleh, HMS assistant clinical professor of psychiatry, relates changes in adolescent sexual behavior to the digital age. Saleh and his co-editors also explore the effects this relationship has on professionals in many fields.
The digital age has made information only more accessible. While this is beneficial overall, it can have specific effects when certain information is made freely available to young people. Adolescent Sexual Behavior in the Digital Age not only discusses the specific ways information impacts young people’s view of sexuality, but also provides suggestions on how to handle these new technologies.
Being Mortal
Atul Gawande
Metropolitan Books
Atul Gawande, HMS professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health knows from personal experience how difficult it is to have an aging parent. However, in his new book, Being Mortal, he implores us to reconsider choosing a nursing home for our loved ones. These institutions are notorious for elder abuse, causing depression in residents and enabling overall neglect of patients as people.
Gawande suggests we make decisions for our aging relatives based on what would make them comfortable, rather than on what would make us comfortable. He also explores the concept of end-of-life care outside the context of a nursing home, and how the medical extension of life affects our loved ones. This book also discusses the importance of physicians and patients having the difficult conversations about end-of-life care.
