This is a great book for medical students, residents, and even attending physicians, who wish to have succinct description of key medical syndromes and their therapies. It is perfect for getting an overview; this might be all you need in a particular instance, or else the discussion in this text will provide a great framework for further, more detailed, study from one of the standard large textbooks of medicine or a journal article. I have found that my understanding of an advanced treatment of a topic is greatly improved by having a simplified overview first, and this book is unbeatable at that.If you take a weekend and read it cover-to-cover, you will find that on Monday morning, your knowledge and confidence in internal medicine is greatly improved.

I have been getting this book for years. This issue is just a great as ever. The World Alamanc is easier to use and has much more information that similar books. I highly recommend this book.

Andrew Hoffman is to Mark Twain what Albert Goldman was to Lenny Bruce, John Lennon and Elvis Presley-- which is to say a parasitical graverobber who projects his own weirdness onto his subject.

There are way too many legitimate biographies of Clemens for this book to be taken seriously.

Q: If you are writing a biography of a famous author, using recycled material, what can you add to make it sell anyway? A: Claim that the author was gay! (Some people say that you could add insight, but Mr. Hoffman disagrees). Hoffman bases his assumption of homosexuality on the following "evidence": 1. Mark Twain had very close male friends. 2. Mark Twain lived with his male friends. 3. Mark Twain went on road trips with his male friends. (Fraternity brothers beware, Hoffman is coming after you next!) This is just another example of people who don't want to do their research. I'm sure Hoffman looked a lot at the life of Samuel Clemens, but it seems he didn't do his background material. Many, many people from this era are assumed gay because of the extremely affectionate letters they wrote to their same-sex friends. Guess what? That's just the way they wrote. There are better biographies out there, and they're not too hard to find.

This book is captivating from cover to cover. I highly recomend it not only for the subject matter but also for serious students of social history of the 19th Century. The author really did his research.