A beautifully writen review book for internal medicine board examination. Logically organized with many pertinent questions. But it is mostly helpful if combined with other study books.

Comprehensive intense text best used as final review a few weeks before boards. Covers a lot of trivia that picks up several exam questions at the last minute. Excellent review.

Most Americans will not want to believe the contents of this book. Scott & Marshall compile mountains of evidence to support their conclusions. This book deserves more attention.

This book has all the possibilities of being an academic pot boiler. Divided into two parts, "Right-Wing Narcoterrorism, the CIA, and the Contras," and "Exposure and Cover-Up" and covering twelve chapters, including a glossary of terms, the book is one part investigative journalism and another academic treatise. In general, the book details the toleration or complicity of the American government with drug traffickers to protect the interests of national security or covert operations.
The book has a number of advantages and disadvantages. First, while perhaps a moot point is that a considerable amount of discussion focuses on South America rather than on Central America as promised in the title. Second, and perhaps an editorial point, while there is a four-and-a- half page glossary of names and organizations at the back of the book, there is a sort of breathless spouting off of a succession of names and organizations in the book. This is distracting and tiresome for the reader. Third, even though there is a phenomenal amount of documentation (i.e., approximately 23 percent of the book (a total of 64 pages) is devoted to notes) and a 14-page index, the authors rely on the same basic sources, including Kerry's subcommittee report and american and mainstream newspaper and magazine coverage; few articles come from the spanish speaking press, and few interviews are conducted with sources. Fourth, while the book is highly descriptive and reads like a murder mystery, it is short on analysis, theory building or testing, and/or recommending policy changes. Regardless, this book is a disturbing and sobering necessity for those wishing to understand the so-called war on drugs in the United States and the reasons U.S. foreign policy in Latin America is problematic, a best.

Jeffrey Ian Ross

Excellent book, responsibly written, clear and readable. The information in it is highly important if you want to understand what is going on. Just buying a second copy because my first got lent.

I have to admit, this book contains an impressive overview of all the Windows DNA technologies. As a reminder, DNA has been there for years and was working under NT4. It has been revamped with trumpets with a new name, .Net, with all those new services. The authors do have this in mind and they will tell you where .Net will be improving features.

I would recommend this book to anybody that wants to know what is Windows DNA/.Net (beside thinking it's everything that Microsoft is providing for developers!). Of course, you cannot have all those technologies into one book and expect the best coverage on all of them. Having that in mind, the authors create an incredible reference for developers that wants to upgrade to a more scalable & distributed environment as well as to take leverage of the new technologies that came with Windows 2000 (for developers that is).

The only thing that I have to mention (and I did to Wrox) was that I personnaly believe that this book, though the readers needs to have professional knowledge of development, would be better inside the Beginning series since this book serves as an overview reference of all those technologies. Wrox will undoubtfully then release multiple Professional books that will go further in those new technologies (such as doing COM+ events or asynchronous components, having XML Business Objects, etc.).

As a bottom line, most of the authors wrote in a confident programming style and it is a very interesting book to go through. ... But I can't wait for the .Net one!

This book comes in handy as a great reference for utilizing these technologies in the real world. If you're looking for a book that you can sit down and read cover to cover to understand the basics, this is not it. If you're an experienced developer who wants to dive into the guts of the technologies, then this is for you.

I recommend this book a chapter at a time (after reading the first 2 review chapters), in order to learn how to implement a technology (like MTS, MSMQ, etc) in the real world.

Windows DNA is an platform and methodology for Enterprise development. It is taking all of what Microsoft offers for industry : server software (SQL Server, Biztalk), development software (Visual Studio) and productivity software (Office, Viso) and making them tightly inter operatable to produce scaleable solutions that can be development very rapidly.

This book covers Microsoft DNA and does so very well. If you have been following the evolution of Microsoft's Enterprise development methodology and related technologies (MTS, COM, etc..) then you should flip though this one before buying to make sure it offers enough new information for your investment. Do this especially if you already have the Wrox title: Professional MTS/MSMQ and you have a good book on ASP or Visual Basic.

If however you are a beginner/intermediate level Visual Basic, ASP or VC++ developer and you want to expand you knowledge from how to build small-to mid-sized client-server or desktop applications to building scalable Enterprise solutions then this book is for you.

The Re-Appearance of Sam Webber is a warm, skillfully told tale that vividly illustrates the factors that can influence the development and health of a child in a difficult situation - a child "at risk". Little Sam is a young boy growing up in Baltimore, MD with a single mother, following the abrupt and unexpected departure of his father, Big Sam. A major component of the story is Sam's struggle with his father's disappearance, his eventual acceptance of the possibility that Big Sam may not "re-appear", and his coming to terms with life in the aftermath. The true "reappearance" in this book is the realization by the boy that families can be comprised of many combinations of people and that he will survive. Sam and his mother are supported and integrated into a larger family composed of Ditch and Junie, an unusual couple that employ his mother in their Baltimore flower shop, and Greely, a kindly custodian from Sam's school, who takes the boy under his wing, and provides a strong paternal, if not quite parental influence. Interwoven into the story are the themes of racial tension in Baltimore, the economics of single parenting, and the fears of a child's everyday life. The book does a wonderful job of putting the reader in Sam's shoes, and reminding us of the magnitude of issues a child confronts everyday - things that we tend to forget about as adults. This is an enlightening book that helped me regain my perspective. I enthusiastically recommend it as a thoroughly enjoyable read for adults and young adults alike.

I have recently been raving about Darby, Jonathon Fuqua's second novel, to all of my colleagues in the teaching profession. It is an amazing work of fiction for elementary and middle school readers. I fell in love with the book's content (it deals with racism in the Old South), its characters, and the storyline. Therefore, I decided I should read The Reappearance of Sam Webber. It is book for slightly older kids than Darby, but it is absolutely spectacular, too. It is realized in the most unique language, which could be difficult for some readers but also holds the attention once it is fully grasped. It is a significantly more emotionally charged story than Darby, and deals with grief, loss, race relations, friendship and hope. I was absolutely startled by the clarity of vision and unflinching style in which the novel dealt with events and issues. It is, in some ways, a day-to-day experience for the reader, as Sam suffers, meets people, and slowly comes to terms with the events of his life and his father's departure. It is a sophisticated elegant book that is not for lovers of fast paced and highly suspenseful fiction, but it is a book that will leave you thinking, feeling, and hoping. You will finish it knowing every single character personally. Most of all, you'll feel as if you've lived a small portion of your life in a neighborhood in Baltimore City. It is a great, highly recommended read.

I have recently been raving about Darby, Jonathon Fuqua's second novel, to all of my colleagues in the teaching profession. It is an amazing work of fiction for elementary and middle school readers. I fell in love with the book's content (it deals with racism in the Old South), its characters, and the storyline. Therefore, I decided I should read The Reappearance of Sam Webber. It is book for slightly older kids than Darby, but it is absolutely spectacular, too. It is realized in the most unique language, which could be difficult for some readers but also holds the attention once it is fully grasped. It is a significantly more emotionally charged story than Darby, and deals with grief, loss, race relations, friendship and hope. I was absolutely startled by the clarity of vision and unflinching style in which the novel dealt with events and issues. It is, in some ways, a day-to-day experience for the reader, as Sam suffers, meets people, and slowly comes to terms with the events of his life and his father's departure. It is a sophisticated elegant book that is not for lovers of fast paced and highly suspenseful fiction, but it is a book that will leave you thinking, feeling, and hoping. You will finish it knowing every single character personally. Most of all, you'll feel as if you've lived a small portion of your life in a neighborhood in Baltimore City. It is a great, highly recommended read.

This book is a fascinating read, relating the story of a manager thrust into a run-down recreation club and transforming it into an effective organisation in two years. The location is Saudi Arabia, with significant religious constraints on western management and the substantially western hospital staff for whom the club is run. The author studied for his MBA after this experience and is therefore able to draw out the relationships between the management problems faced and the principles expounded in the management literature. It is therefore an interesting case-study and recommended reading for students struggling to link theory with practice.

At last, a truthful, real-life management book that focuses on the lucrative recreation and leisure profession. This is a well written and fascinating read that marries practitioner oriented reality with academic theory. The results are most interesting. The text focuses on a leisure business turn-around that succeeded under the most difficult of circumstances. While becoming completely immersed in the story, the reader suddenly finds that the basics of modern business management have been grasped. Well done.

Fundamentals of Leisure Business Success has recently been added as required reading at the Kozminski Academy of Entrepreneurship and Management in Warsaw, Poland (rated as the number one business school in Poland - for 6 years running - by Newsweek magazine). The students absolutely love its easy to read style as well as the international aspect of its content (the case study deals with a company that employs workers from over 72 countries).
All in all, FLBS has proven to be a reader-approved business book that dispenses with the grind of academic jargon and presents the study of business from a hands-on practitioner's viewpoint.

NOTE: I wrote this review for the neurology pearls of wisdom, but the comments generally apply to the whole series. Since I thought the warning about some of the inaccuracies may be important for residents to look out for, I'm posting the review here as well. Please bear in mind this is a personal opinion only, but based on using probably every review text out there.

The idea behind Boston Medical Publishing's "pearls of wisdom" series (not to be confused with the higher quality Hanley & Belfus' "Pearls" Series)is a good one: publish a series of books in the various specialties that consist entirely of questions and answers in the various subtopics within those specialties.
However, the execution is weak for the following reasons:

1. Inaccuracies/mistakes.
I recently looked through the pediatrics text (latest, 2nd edition) at my bookshop (it was one of the few subjects initially available there). During some 20 minutes of browsing, I found 2 definite errors, and one ambiguity. Medicine is one field where I think there should be an *extremely* low tolerance for less than sterling writing. Note: the mistakes I found were not gray areas - they were not in complex management issues where there can be more than one right answer. These were clear cut factual errors that could have been avoided by more careful editing.

2. Poor referencing.
I know the authors state in their preface (which is a standard preface used in all the different subjects in the series!) that their intention wasn't to reference. But I think in this day and age of Evidence based medicine, literature citations are of paramount importance - not only to demonstrate a thorough understanding of the literature on all the topics, but so that readers may reach for the best review/original paper where necessary. In this regard, the "Secrets" series published by Hanley and Belfus are simply outstanding. They reference (often with multiple citations) each and every question/answer!!

3. Coverage
A minor, but not unimportant criticism is the coverage. I found that for the price I paid, the coverage of topics could have been better. If the authors could increase the questions by 2/3, I feel they will have a MUCH better book. Questions should stress more pathology, diagnostics (esp. diff diagnosis and clinical approach), and management.

4. For its shortcomings, the price (about USD 88.00) is astonishing. These books are merely a compilation of questions and answers for exam review, not comprehensive full colour textbooks! I do not understand why it should cost that much, when cost of production should be low - no pictures, no diagrams, no references even. Just one line questions and several line answers. The price is, i feel, unfair.

Conclusion:
Buy it only if:
1. You are prepared to double check every answer/statement against authoritative textbooks and the literature.
2. You can afford to throw your money on a good, but less than ideal product.
3. You want to get your hands on every review book available for revision purposes.

This is an excellent book! The information is in a quick question and answer format categorized by system (i.e. cardiology). This book is perfect for quick learning sessions when on call, as a break while studying, or for complete board preparation. I highly recommend it.

IT IS VERY HELPFULL, AND AN EXCELLENT REVIEW BOOK, I RECOMMED IT FOR EVERYBODY.

If you're looking for something to help you review emergency medicine in general, or to review for your boards, do no buy this book. I have read through it myself and talked with two colleagues who have also used it- we all agree that it is filled with useless minutia not relevant to the practice of medicine either in real life or as would appear on board exams. There are a lot of other texts on the market today that are better in terms of their focus and relevance.

One other thing that is not reflected in the description: this book contains only questions and answers. The format is text- not multiple choice. There is no general overview in any section so the only information you get is contained within the terse answers that contain almost no explanations.

I have read several books in prep for the written boards. I found this book to be the most comprehensive. Questions are short answer so that a great deal of information can be covered quickly. I read it twice in about 20 hours.

They nailed about 1/3 of the questions I saw on boards.

I read this text twice and scored in the 94% on written EM boards. This book is updated frequently. Several residents used it for the inservice and blew it away. GREAT BOOK

This book contains many questions in basic chemistry for the MCAT. All relevant topics are covered; however, I feel that this is not the best book for review. The main objection I have is that the question format is NOT what appears on the MCAT. Most MCAT questions are based on a reading passage and very few of the Examcracker's questions are in that form. Those that are based on a passage are very simple when compared to the real MCAT questions. I scored well on the physical sciences section but it was because I worked through real MCAT practice exams. Do not use this book as your sole source for chemistry preparation. I've said this dozens of times to friends, "If you purchase a 'comprehensive' review book make sure you also use old college books, old college notes, and work through old MCAT exams."

I believe Examcrackers produces the best MCAT prep materials. I made the mistake of taking another prep company. It took me quite long to realize the other prep company did not prepare me at all. I used this book to help me understand the concepts for the g. chem on the MCAT.

I challenge anyone to find a better series of teaching tools than the 1001 series from Examkrackers. I have been collecting all of the available MCAT prep material for the last two years and I am very adamant when I say there is a lot of bad/misguided/bs out there for sale. The authors of the 1001 books have gone to great lengths to make these books excellent learning tools.

The 1001 series are not passages like the real MCAT, they are problems that allow you to hone in on your weaknesses and fix them. The mini-passage format allows the user to get accustom to the MCAT style of questioning. If you are able to understand all 1001 questions in this book, then there is no reason not to score perfect on the MCAT Physical Science section.

The 1001 books are about the concepts and they force the student to think intuitively. This, my friends, is how to succeed on the MCAT.

I know JSF is supposed to be the new "wunderkind," but I have to break away from the pack and say that "Everything is Exaggerated."

The best things that can be said for Foer are that he is clearly both well-read and well-connected. First, part of this book is virtually lifted from the far-superior (and less-well-known in the US) _See Under: Love_ by David Grossman (an Israeli writer); it is virtually literary plagiarism. Second, with a brother who writes for The New Republic, Joyce Carol Oates as his writing teacher in college, and Dale Peck as a family friend, JSF starts with the benefit of being extraordinarily well-connected for his age in the world of the literati, which cannot help but play into his success. I don't begrudge him the latter, but think this is a clear playing out of the Yiddish aphorism, "you'd always rather have mazel (luck) than sechel (wisdom)."

While JSF has clear potential to be a terrific writer, that potential is infrequently realized within the context of this book. He prostitutes the Jewish experience in Eastern Europe for his own gain by writing an account of a shtetl based on little research and much sarcasm. To someone who doesn't know anything about Jewish history in Eastern Europe, I am sure that JSF's rendering has the resonance of a Chagall painting. To anyone who does, it's a virtual Jewish minstrel show and degrades the history of the Jewish people in Eastern Europe. JSF, the satirical portrait of shtetl life has been done. The writer's name is Shalom Aleichem, and what made him so great was not only his language, but that even the most bitter elements of his portrayal were infused not by self-loathing, but by love.

My favorite moment in the book does not rest on Alex's butchering of the English language, but rather on a passage in which one character recounts a massacre to Alex, who translates for JSF's character. This slow, unfolding portrayal of how history is created is terrific to read and watch. Unfortunately, it stands out amidst the rest of a book (and, truthfully, a writer) which takes itself far too seriously for what it has to offer.

"Everything is Illuminated" is a remarkable, erratically brilliant book. Despite its flaws, it is one of the most adventurous, funniest, and most moving books IÕve read lately.

The novel weaves three strands together in an intricate mesh of ÔfactÕ and fantasy. The first is the novel-within-a-novel written by the character Jonathan Safran Foer, a fictionalized and fantastic history of FoerÕs ancestors and the Ukrainian village of Trachimbod that ranges from the 18th century up to the villageÕs destruction by the Nazis in 1942. The second is narrated by FoerÕs ersatz Ukrainian translator Alex Perchov, who recounts their search for Trachimbod in hilariously mangled English. The last strand consists of AlexÕs letters to Jonathan, written as the two young men trade chapters of their narratives back and forth.

This is a complex, ambitous novel that never lets its technical fireworks detract from an exploration of memory and identity that is warm, immediate, and deeply felt. Highly recommended.

Yes, yes, there has been a lot of hype about this book -- book critics seem to falling over themselves to anoint Foer a literary genius. I listen, it perks me ears, but ultimately I am suspicious of such a wave of over-the-top attention. There seems to be some "hot young novelist" every year that gets shoved into the role. I resisted getting the book because of all this. But I loved that New Yorker story that ran last summer, and then several friends have read the book and were practically shoving it in my face. I'm glad they did.
I sincerely loved this book. It's not perfect, to be sure. But it is a book that challenges in all the best ways. Foer weaves three narratives--Alex's much talked about mangled English, his letters to a character named Jonathan Safran Foer, and Jonathan's fictional history of his family's village--in a way that surprises at every turn. I was worried, at the beginning, about the clever conceit at the hear of the book. I wondered if Foer could sustain the trick. Would it be ONLY clever? But what's so wonderful is the way each story bounces off of, connects with, diverges from, the other stories. In this way, Foer doesn't tell a straight story about the Holocuast, exploiting and pulling at our heart strings in all the cliched sentimental ways. Instead, he creates something wildly new, approaching a horrific event from many perspectives, and capturing the profound and difficult truth of memory--that it rewrites the past but in the process reshapes us and binds us in surpising ways to that history.
I can't begin to lay out all the ways this story works. Most importantly, it affected me -- a week after finishing the book, I can't stop thinking about it. Crystalline images, which Foer paints in shockingly beautiful detail,keep coming back to me. The character of Brod alone is worth the price of admission. The humor still resonates; the sadness of the book still has me thinking. The most I can say about this book is that I've given four copies away in the past week alone; I WANT others to read it, just so we can talk about it. I found it that moving and that rich.
There's obviously a lot of people out there resentful of Foer's success -- what else to make of their claims about his personal connections winning him acclaim? Pointing to his family, going to Princeton, etc. I'm sorry, but I really can't imagine that Francine Prose, in the New York Times, Janet Maslin, and all the other critics are doing Foer somekind of family favor. It's absurd. I wanted to hate this book, I am suspicious when the media machinery begins to grind away -- but clearly the critics are responding to the book, and they are rightfully admiring of it. It IS extraordnary. The book is not perfect, but there's no question Foer is a brilliant young writer. I can see making criticisms, but whatever you do, read the book, respond to IT, not the stupid stories about the author's connections. Foer has so much in him, such honestly and depth, and a wild, untamed imagination -- I can't wait to see what he does next.