This book throws a penetrating light on the life and work of the physiologist turned neurologist G.G.J. Rademaker against the background of flourishing clinical research in the Netherlands of the early twentieth century. It charts the rise and fall of the branch of experimental neurophysiology of which Rademaker was a master, which was transmitted from Charles Sherrington in England to Rudolf Magnus at Utrecht and then to Rademaker, Magnus's most talented pupil. Reaching its apogee in the 1920s and 1930s, it was replaced after World War II by other less invasive approaches. This biography is a fitting memorial to a man who, though somewhat neglected in his own land, was recognised as a genius by his peers worldwide.

"[T]his is a scholarly, commendable biography and intellectual history. Lay readers will be challenged; psychologists and historians will be grateful."-Library Journal, starred review First published in 1946, Viktor Frankl's memoir Man's Search for Meaning remains one of the most influential books of the last century, selling over ten million copies worldwide and having been embraced by successive generations of readers captivated by its author's philosophical journey in the wake of the Holocaust. This long-overdue reappraisal examines Frankl's life and intellectual evolution anew, from his early immersion in Freudian and Adlerian theory to his development of the "third Viennese school" amid the National Socialist domination of professional psychotherapy. It teases out the fascinating contradictions and ambiguities surrounding his years in Nazi Europe, including the experimental medical procedures he oversaw in occupied Austria and a stopover at the Auschwitz concentration camp far briefer than has commonly been assumed. Throughout, author Timothy Pytell gives a penetrating but fair-minded account of a man whose paradoxical embodiment of asceticism, celebrity, tradition, and self-reinvention drew together the complex strands of twentieth-century intellectual life. From the introduction: At the same time, Frankl's testimony, second only to the Diary of Anne Frankin popularity, has raised the ire of experts on the Holocaust. For example, in the 1990s the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington purportedly refused to sell Man's Search for Meaningin the gift shop.... During the late 1960s and early 1970s Frankl became very popular in America. Frankl's survival of the Holocaust, his reassurance that life is meaningful, and his personal conviction that God exists served to make him a forerunner of the self-help genre.

Tesla was not an ordinary scientist/inventor. His long life, beliefs and unusual psyche are the testimony to his uniqueness. Even today, there are fan clubs, Tesla societies all over the world. Recently an electric car company, the Tesla Motors were founded, bearing his name.I am intrigued and fascinated by Tesla because of mankind's current crisis dealing with energy and the United States energy politics leading the country to ever increasing adventures and wars all around the Globe. Oil is addictive substance to everyday life, especially if immensely rich oil companies dictate foreign policies and renewable energy research.

Ernest Baldini started out as a bullied kid in Detroit, and he could have easily slipped into a life of mediocrity. Instead, he chose a different path--making careful decisions and working hard to eventually become a rocket scientist. Along the way, he survived World War II and learned that money is not the key to fulfilling dreams; instead, it's only another tool to use in building dreams.

Over the course of eighty years and a series of carefully considered choices, he set the bar high in a bid to reach the heavens. Although he rubbed elbows and collaborated with some of the century's greatest scientists and engineers, his life parallels the lives of millions of other Americans whose years have been clouded by wars, disasters, booms, and busts.

Take a trip through history, enjoy modest adventures, and relish the tales of a man with a romantic heart whose love for life never wavered in A Twentieth-Century Argonaut.

Walter Gautschi has written extensively on topics ranging from special functions, quadrature and orthogonal polynomials to difference and differential equations, software implementations, and the history of mathematics. He is world renowned for his pioneering work in numerical analysis and constructive orthogonal polynomials, including a definitive textbook in the former, and a monograph in the latter area. This three-volume set, Walter Gautschi: Selected Works with Commentaries, is a compilation of Gautschi s most influential papers and includes commentaries by leading experts. The work begins with a detailed biographical section and ends with a section commemorating Walter s prematurely deceased twin brother. This title will appeal to graduate students and researchers in numerical analysis, as well as to historians of science. Selected Works with Commentaries, Vol. 1 Numerical Conditioning Special Functions Interpolation and Approximation Selected Works with Commentaries, Vol. 2 Orthogonal Polynomials on the Real Line Orthogonal Polynomials on the Semicircle Chebyshev Quadrature Kronrod and Other Quadratures Gauss-type Quadrature Selected Works with Commentaries, Vol. 3 Linear Difference Equations Ordinary Differential Equations Software History and Biography Miscellanea Works of Werner Gautschi Numerical Conditioning Special Functions Interpolation and Approximation Selected Works with Commentaries, Vol. 2 Orthogonal Polynomials on the Real Line Orthogonal Polynomials on the Semicircle Chebyshev Quadrature Kronrod and Other Quadratures Gauss-type Quadrature Selected Works with Commentaries, Vol. 3 Linear Difference Equations Ordinary Differential Equations Software History and Biography Miscellanea Works of Werner Gautschi

'Who would have guessed that a philosopher's life could be so full of adventures?'

Daniel C. Dennett, philosopher and cognitive scientist, has spent his career considering consciousness. I've Been Thinking traces the development of Dennett's own intellect and instructs us how we too can become good thinkers.

Dennett's restless curiosity leads him from his childhood in Beirut to Harvard, and from Parisian jazz clubs to 'tillosophy' on his tractor in Maine. Along the way, he encounters and debates with a host of legendary thinkers, and reveals the breakthroughs and misjudgments that shaped his paradigm-shifting philosophies. Thinking, Dennett argues, is hard, and risky. In fact, all good philosophical thinking is inevitably accompanied by bafflement, frustration and self-doubt. It is only in getting it wrong that we, very occasionally, find a way to get it right.

This memoir by one of the greatest philosophers of our time will speak to anyone who seeks a life of the mind with adventure and creativity.

Biological Systematics has changed dramatically during the past 60 years from a handicraft or art to an accepted branch of science proper, due to the work of Willi Hennig, who was born in 1913. The scientific method of reconstructing phylogenetic relationships of organisms bases on Hennig's approach, the "Phylogenetic Systematics". The method is now so widely accepted and applied that it can firmly be regarded a paradigm, named 'cladistics'. In contrast, the life and personality of its founder is remarkably little known in the scientific community. The present book offers a detailed biography of Willi Hennig, and traces the roots of his thinking from his schooldays until his death in 1976. Some outstanding academic teachers and friends of his are introduced, too. The book offers an insight into the historical development of a 'scientific revolution', and highlights the life and the work of a 'cautious revolutioniser' in a Germany of dictatorship, war, and separation.

The book that finally gives a physician's inside story of the evacuation of Memorial Medical Center following Katrina - a gripping tale of abandonment and survival.

A toxic stew of floodwaters surrounded Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans after Katrina when the levees broke. Over two thousand people were trapped in the squalid conditions without security as the death toll steadily rose inside. Bodies stacked up in the chapel as the temperature soared in the overcrowded hospital and the situation became increasingly desperate. Doctors, nurses, and staff worked around the clock, caring for those inside and trying to evacuate the facility, also known as Baptist Hospital. Allegations of euthanasia would later make headlines across the country and be investigated by state and local officials.

"Code Blue: A Katrina Physician's Memoir" finally tells the inside story of the hellish nightmare those who struggled to survive the ordeal were cast into. Dr. Richard Deichmann, the hospital's chief of medicine and one of the leaders of the evacuation, gives his compelling account of the rapidly deteriorating state of affairs at the hospital. He takes us through the daily horrors and numbing disappointments. This gripping tale of survival, despite betrayal and abandonment by the authorities, may change forever the way you view the threat of a mass disaster.

What Others are Saying about "Code Blue: A Katrina Physician's Memoir"

As a physician who has been on hurricane duty for prior storms, I thought I could imagine what it would be like if we were hit by a severe storm. I was wrong. This book should serve as a warning about what can happen when basic modern conveniences such as power, running water, communications and safety are taken away. - Karen Blessey, MD

With a scalpel's precision, Dr. Deichmann takes us into the faltering heart of a huge New Orleans hospital - his hospital - as Hurricane Katrina chokes off its vital functions, one by one, and patients begin to die.
- Jed Horne, author of "Breach of Faith, Hurricane Katrina and the Near Death of a Great American City." (Random House 2006)

The diagnosis is one no one wants. It is a wretched, horrible illness and carries with it a stigma. No one wants that either. However, I have that disease, always have had mental illness, although my bipolar diagnosis was not handed to me until the age of forty. I hate it, loathe it, want to bury it or throw it into the depths of the sea, but I can't. You see, it is part of who I am.

It started in childhood and carried on throughout all my adult years. This is my story. It includes the teeter-totter ups and downs as well as the psychotic times and paranoia, hallucinations, and feelings of grandeur. My whole life is illuminated for you to read.

When Michael Collins decides to become a surgeon, he is totally unprepared for the chaotic life of a resident at a major hospital. A natural overachiever, Collins' success, in college and medical school led to a surgical residency at one of the most respected medical centers in the world, the famed Mayo Clinic. But compared to his fellow residents Collins feels inadequate and unprepared. All too soon, the euphoria of beginning his career as an orthopedic resident gives way to the feeling he is a counterfeit, an imposter who has infiltrated a society of brilliant surgeons.
This story of Collins' four-year surgical residency traces his rise from an eager but clueless first-year resident to accomplished Chief Resident in his final year. With unparalleled humor, he recounts the disparity between people's perceptions of a doctor's glamorous life and the real thing: a succession of run down cars that are towed to the junk yard, long weekends moonlighting at rural hospitals, a family that grows larger every year, and a laughable income.
Collins' good nature helps him over some of the rough spots but cannot spare him the harsh reality of a doctor's life. Every day he is confronted with decisions that will change people's lives-or end them-forever. A young boy's leg is mangled by a tractor: risk the boy's life to save his leg, or amputate immediately? A woman diagnosed with bone cancer injures her hip: go through a painful hip operation even though she has only months to live? Like a jolt to the system, he is faced with the reality of suffering and death as he struggles to reconcile his idealism and aspiration to heal with the recognition of his own limitations and imperfections.
Unflinching and deeply engaging, "Hot Lights, Cold Steel" is a humane and passionate reminder that doctors are people too. This is a gripping memoir, at times devastating, others triumphant, but always compulsively readable.

From a childhood exposed to public health to his career as a doctor, the author follows a wandering path from internal medicine to infectious diseases, preventive medicine, outpatient clinics, and public health. Along the way he encounters patients with rare or unusual twists, earns scars from the War against Poverty, and has memorable experiences with medical students. In addition, he helped establish the Emory School of Public Health at Emory University, where he was the Chairman of Preventive Medicine until his retirement in 1990. Few, if any of these experiences were planned. He found that many were accidental, some were unwelcome, but all were rewarding in the end.

In "What's Up, Doc?," Dr. Sellers shares the ups and downs of his forty-four year career in medicine.

Life doesn't always follow the path that one expects it to. In this memoir, author David Marty narrates the story of his life's path and the challenges he overcame on the journey. "Living Beyond Rainbows" presents a candid view of what it's like to be a gay professional. It tells the emotional story of a gay man who confronts the realities of his parents' death, his mid-life crisis, self-employment, diabetes, sexual addiction, and his HIV diagnosis in 2006. Through his narrative, Marty communicates the importance of self-esteem and the need for strong role models, providing personal examples of his enduring relationship and bond with Esther, a remarkable older woman who helps him make sense of his own destiny.Marty's story puts a real face on AIDS and sexual addiction, demystifies HIV, and replaces fear and ignorance with honesty and information. "Living Beyond Rainbows" conveys the many lessons Marty has learned on his journey, but most importantly-that life is a gift.

A surgeons view of the war in Iberia
Charles Boutflower was the son of a Yorkshire vicar born in 1782. He studied surgery at the University of Edinburgh and joined the 40th Regiment of Foot-then a Somerset regiment-in 1801 as an assistant surgeon. He served with that regiment in the West Indies, South America and thereafter during the Peninsular War against Napoleon's invading French armies. It is from his time in Spain that his Journal is particularly drawn. Although Boutflower was a medical man his writings are well rounded and comprehensive giving the reader much insight into the campaigns he experienced, scenes of the battlefield and his own perspective on the course of the war in general. Boutflower was promoted to surgeon in 1812 and took his place on Sir Rowland Hill's staff. This is a valuable contribution the our understanding of the war Wellington's Army fought and will be much appreciated by students and casual readers alike.