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| Volume 46, Number 1, Spring/Summer 1998 |
By Ruth Winter
Conversations About Asthma by Dr. Lawrence M. Lichtenstein, director of the Johns Hopkins Asthma and Allergy Center, and Kathryn S. Brown (NASW) published by Williams and Wilkins.
Asthma affects at least 15 million Americans, a third of them children. Why is it on the rise? Since 1980 asthma rates have more than doubled and killing more than 5,000 annually. Americans spend more than $6 billion a year to ease their asthma symptoms. Dr. Lichtenstein and Brown have produced an informative, easy to understand book that cuts through a lot of confusion about this condition. It presents straightforward facts for the patient and the family members so they can develop an action plan, make better choices, and keep the condition in check. Some of the topics include "Asthma-Proofing Your World," "Managing Your Asthma Day to Day," "Living With Asthma while Pregnant" and "In Everyday Situations." Brown is a Portland, Oregon freelance. She can be reached at brown@nasw.org by phone: 314-442-8730 or by FAX: 314-875-4921. The PR for the book is Tim Gorman: Phone 202-737-3356; FAX 202-737-6344.
A Taste of Malta by Claudia Caruana (NASW) published by Hippocrene Books.
What's cooking with a science writer from Elmont, New York? The culinary traditions of Malta, a tiny island in the central Mediterranean! Caruana, who has written a book about abortion in Italy and teaches textbook development, presents a variety of unique and tempting dishes, from the Sunday dinners her Maltese grandmothers prepared. She also offers classic recipes from today's Maltese chefs. More than a cookbook, Taste of Malta also includes a brief history of the country and mail order resources for certain ingredients. Caruana can be reached by phone at: 212-705-7317 and by e-mail at clauc@aiche.org. Phone for the PR department at Hippocrene is: 718-454-2366 and the FAX-1800-809-3855.
Encounters with the Paranormal: Science, Knowledge, and Belief edited by Kendrick Frazier (NASW) published by Prometheus Books.
Frazier, editor of The Skeptical Inquirer and his colleagues are at "ghostbusting" again. Carl Sagan, three years before his death, warned of an America where the general public was willfully ignorant of science, opting instead to "clutch crystals and religiously consult horoscopes" for answers to life's mysteries and humankind's future, while the great power of technology lay in the hands of a select and powerful few. Sagan stressed that the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) of which he was a member, was one of the only organizations charged with a stern goal of preventing such a catastrophe. Encounters with the Paranormal contains forty-eight wide-ranging selections from the pages of CSICOP's official journal, The Skeptical Inquirer. The selections ponder many questions including: Why do conspiracy theories appeal to so many people? Do psychics really exist? Why do satanic and vampire cults exist? Do polygraph tests really detect lies? Can memories be repressed and then recovered? What can be learned from a cult phenomenon such as Heaven's Gate? What is the relationship between science and wonder? There are many distinguished authors in the book including Sagan, Glenn Seaborg and Susan Blackmore. Frazier can be contacted by phone: 505-828-6210; by FAX: 505-828-2080 and by e-mail: Kcfrazi@sandia.gov.
The Man Who Loved Only Numbers by Paul Hoffman (NASW) published by Hyperion.
Paul Erdos, the most prolific mathematician in history and arguably, the strangest, "left" the world September 23, 1996, at the age of 83. "Left" was Erdos' word for departing this life because he used "died" to apply to someone who stopped doing mathematics. Hoffman says that Erdos felt about numbers the same way some people feel about their children. He loved them unreservedly, but he could not completely understand them. He notes that for the last 25 years of his life, Erdos raced against the specter of old age to prove as many mathematical theorems as possible. "The first sign of senility," Hoffman quotes the mathematician as saying, "is when a man forgets his theorems. The second sign is when he forgets to zip up. The third sign is when he forgets to zip down." Hoffman is the perfect biographer for Erdos because he, himself, is quite a character. By day, he is the publisher of Encyclopaedia Britannica and chairman of Merriam-Webster. By night, he is a science journalist. Under the pseudonym of Dr. Crypton, wearing purple sneakers and a Lone Ranger mask, he has performed mathematical puzzles on the Dave Letterman Show and Entertainment Tonight. A summa cum laude graduate from Harvard, he has also written joke books including What Do Wasps Do Instead of Sex? And How Many Zen Buddhists Does It Take to Screw in a Light Bulb? If you want to know more about his latest book, The Man Who Loved Numbers, you can reach Hoffman by phone at 312-347-7002; by FAX 312-294-2135 or e-mail phoffman@eb.com. The PR for the book is Tracey George at 212-633-4487.
A Different Kind of Health: Finding Well-Being Despite Illness by Blair Justice, Ph.D. (NASW) published by PeAk Press.
Justice, former science writer and professor of psychology at The University of Texas-Houston Health Science Center's School of Public Health, maintains "being healthy does not mean being free of disease, chronic illness or pain." Entertainer Naomi Judd, who was diagnosed with a life-threatening liver disease in 1990, says in the foreword "This book provides the evidence on how a growing number of people like me can consider themselves healthy, although their medical records show they have a disease. It tells how it is possible for a sense of well-being and illness to coexist and for joy to be experienced despite pain." Justice, now associate dean for academic affairs at UT's Science Center, points out "Only 12 percent of the population reports having no pain or other symptoms. When surveys are made of the United States population, 50 percent of us have 'a medical condition on any given day.' Yet 80 percent of us rate ourselves as 'well' or 'healthy.'" In the book he describes how some benefit or value can be found in adversity and how the "wounded well" can find a sense of well being despite physical illness or pain. Justice can be reached by phone at 713-500-9026; by FAX at 713-500-9020 and by e-mail at: bjustice@utsph.sph.uth.tmc.edu. Gay McFarland, the PR for the book can be reached by phone at 713-500-3033 or by e-mail: gmcfarla@admin4.hsc.uth.tmc.edu.
Other Worlds: The Search for Life In the Universe by Michael Lemonick (NASW) published by Simon and Schuster.
Are we alone in the universe? Until just a short while ago, the answer was out of reach, according to Lemonick, a Harvard grad and a senior writer at Time, but in the next decade we may know the answer. In his book he provides vivid profiles of the leading scientists involved in the investigation. He writes, "Without hard data, the question of humanity's place in the universe is purely a philosophical one. Unencumbered by facts, you can take either side of the question and present convincing arguments both for and against the existence of intelligent alien life. And until 1995 there were essentially no facts...Yet after decades centuries, millennia without actual information, it has suddenly and dramatically begun to flow." As Lemonick reveals, we know for certain that planets orbit stars other than our sun, and that life might exist in such inhospitable places as a moon of Jupiter. He says that no longer are the arguments in favor of life elsewhere purely theoretical and he documents spectacular recent discoveries in his book. He received the American Association for the Advancement of Science-Westinghouse writing award for cover stories on superconductivity and on elementary-particle physics. He says, however, his first love, is astronomy. Lemonick can be reached by phone at 212-522-2746; by FAX at 212-522-4799 and by e-mail mlemonick@aol.com. The PR for the book is Kerri Kennedy at 212-698-7537.
The Commonsense Guide to Weight Loss For People With Diabetes, by Barbara Caleen Hansen, Ph.D., and Shauna S. Roberts, Ph.D. (NASW) published by The American Diabetes Association.
A New Orleans freelance, Roberts specializes in writing about diabetes and is contributing editor of the Diabetes Advisor. Like many aspects of life with diabetes, losing weight takes extra effort and thoughts, she says. How will losing weight, for example, affect insulin or diabetes pill dose? Can people with diabetes use weight loss drugs? She and her co-author, director of the Obesity and Diabetes Research Center at the University of Maryland Medical School, give those answers and many more. Roberts can be reached by phone at 504-861-2898; by FAX at 504-861-2977 and by e-mail at ShaunaRoberts@nasw.org. The PR for the book is Margaret Heimbold at 703-838-2820 FAX 703-838-2826.
Am I Crazy, Or Is It My Shrink?: How to Get the Help You Need by Larry E. Beutler, Bruce Bongar, & Joel N. Shurkin (NASW) published by Oxford University Press.
Shurkin, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, and his psychologist co-authors identify what is known and not known about various psychotherapeutic approaches and treatments. They point out that there are more than 400 treatment options available and that psychotherapy is used to treat problems ranging from the serious to the exotic to the mundane. They explain which ones are effective for different patients and problems. The book also identifies some of the ineffective practices of therapists and misuses of psychotherapy. Among the issues covered in the book:
Shurkin can be reached by phone at 408-438-3877; by FAX at 408-438-4848 and by e-mail at joel@nasw.org. The PR for the book is Jennifer Brawer at 212-726-6107 or by e-mail jrb@oup-usa.org.
Great Feuds in Science: Ten of the Liveliest Disputes Ever by Hal Hellman (NASW) published by John Wiley & Sons.
While scientists often brilliantly illuminate or solve life's puzzles, like the rest of us, they are susceptible to pride, greed, jealousy, religious or patriotic influences, even blindness or irresistible urge to be right. Hellman tells the lively stories of ten of the most outrageous and intriguing disputes from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. He selects a mix of famous and lesser-known clashes . He describes the possibly unintended personal slight that may have prompted Pope Urban VIII's anger at Galileo in their famous battle over the evidence that the earth revolves around the sun. The surprising role of remarkable coincidences I the history of science revealed in the story of the raging battle between Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz over their simultaneous invention of calculus. His last chapter involves Derek Freeman versus Margaret Mead and in an epilogue he points out controversy over whether or not homosexuality is a disease. Hellman, a Leonia, New Jersey freelance, can be reached by phone at 201-947-5534 or by e-mail at 76121,1663@compuserve.com. The PR for the book is Joanna McKeever at 212-850-6569 and by e-mail at jmckeeve@wiley.com.