Home health care is growing in importance as Americans seek alternatives to the costs and inconveniences of institutionalized care. Additional research is conducted daily in this field, and researchers need to know about the wealth of information currently available to assist them in their work. This valuable reference overviews the resources available on this topic, and also makes clear the areas needing further study. The authors have provided nearly 400 annotated entries in this bibliography, and have included books, journal articles, and government documents. The entries are grouped in topical chapters, and the descriptive annotations make clear to the reader whether a particular work merits a closer look.

The bibliography begins with an informative introduction that discusses the rapid growth and complex changes of home health care, the economics of providing care, and those areas requiring further research. The introduction offers the specialist and non-specialist alike a brief but illuminating context for the entries that follow. The topical chapters of the bibliography treat works of a general nature, caregiving and caregivers, and the legal and managerial aspects of providing home health care. The author and subject indexes add to the utility of the work and make it an indispensable and convenient tool for all those interested in this important topic.

Cogent, concise, and up-to-date, this comprehensive and multidisciplinary one-volume encyclopedia written by experts from many fields covers all the major aspects of home health care for the elderly in America today. Patients, health care providers, and concerned family members, as well as students, teachers, practitioners, and policymakers in the fields of medicine, nursing, health care, social work, psychology and psychiatry, therapy and rehabilitation, sociology, public policy, and public administration will find this information important to their work in caring for the elderly. The clearly written articles discuss common problems, home care measures, trends, key issues, groups, and agencies. The entries point to sources for further reading. An appendix linking related topics, descriptions of 37 key organizations with addresses, a lengthy bibliography, and a full index make this basic reference easily accessible for broad audiences of readers.

John Heysham Gibbon, Jr., M.D., was the first researcher to develop a heart-lung machine that could fully support an adult's cardiac and respiratory functions during surgical procedures to repair defects in the heart and lungs. The difficulty of such a task can be seen in the number of people who attempted it for over a century: the list is long. Gibbon succeeded on May 6, 1953, when he repaired an atrial-septal defect with the patient supported entirely by the machine for 27 minutes. Ada Romaine-Davis contends that few realize how long Gibbon worked to achieve this success. To rectify the situation, Romaine-Davis here provides a thorough study of Gibbon and his accomplishment. She shows how Gibbon overcame discouragement from his peers and mentors and obtained crucial support from IBM Board Chairman Thomas Watson. She examines each of the models produced by Gibbon and puts his achievement into historical perspective. Gibbon himself chose not to pursue cardiac surgery; he remained a thoracic surgeon. Others went on to develop the knowledge and skills that today make open-heart surgery as safe as other major surgical procedures. As Romaine-Davis amply demonstrates, these pioneers stand on the shoulders of a stubborn, persevering, single-minded genius whose determination to leave a legacy to his profession resulted in the one thing essential for sustained progress in heart surgery: John Gibbon's heart-lung machine. This meticulously researched study will make fascinating reading for physicians-especially surgeons-as well as for students and scholars of medical history and science and technology.