This text provides a quick, concise review of the pimary topics covered on emergency medicine exams. I found it to be a good way to prepare for inservice exams and the written boards.

"Andromache," set in the aftermath of the Trojan War and focusing on the widow of Hector, is one of the weakest of the extant plays of Euripides. In truth, the work is better considered as anti-Spartan propaganda, written circa 426 B.C. near the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, although it present a tragedy. However, the scenes are much more episodic than we usually find in Euripides; the first part of the tragedy is essentially a supplicant play, but then it changes dramatically. The play has one of Euripides' strongest beginnings, with its strong attacks on Sparta, represented by Menelaus. But even as propaganda Euripides elevates his subject for what he sees is not merely a war between two cities, but rather a clash between two completely different ways of life.

Once again, Euripides uses the Trojan War as a context for his political argument. Andromache, the widow of Hector, is the slave of Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles, who is married to Hermione, the daughter of Menelaus and Helen. The setting is the Temple of Thetis, the mother of Achilles, somewhere between Pithia and Pharasalia in Thessaly. Andromache has born Neoptolemus a son, and the barren Hermione accuses the Trojan woman of having used witchcraft and seeks her death. Andromache has taken refuge as this temple where Hermione and Menelaus try to get her to come out by threatening to kill her son. However, the title character disappears from the play and everybody from Peleus, the father of Achilles, to Orestes, the cousin of Hermione, shows up, mainly to talk about Neoptolemus, who is at Delphi. Thetis shows up as the deus-ex-machina and the play ends rather abruptly.

The interest in "Andromache" is clearly for the anti-Spartan propaganda. As a tragedy there is little her beyond a progression of characters who all talk about doing something they end up not doing. If there is supposed to be a series of object lessons offered by each of these characters, then that idea is pretty much lost on contemporary audiences. Jean Racine wrote his own version of the myth of Andromache, as did William Congreve, Gilbert Murray, and Gabriele D'Annunzio. Racine's play "Andromache" is certainly superior to that of Euripides, which is probably the only time you can say that about the French neo-classical playwright. "Andromache" is clearly the least of the extant plays of Euripides.

I heard an interview on Ex Libris with Susan Stewart and soon after ordered The Forest. I like the way she uses language. There's a back and forth motion in her lines with words and ideas. Slaughter is at the beginning and about the slaughtering of a cow and how the slaughtering changes the cow to the point that it is no longer recognized as a cow, but as products to be used by people. The Forest is also about the same type of thing. We have what appears to be forests, but the forests that we know now have been controlled by people for so long that we don't know what real forests are. We only know facsimiles of forests. In places, she gets very academic and the voice that draws me in to listen is covered over. Overall, her mysterious and quiet voice speaks these poems that I will read again, entranced.

While well written I did not find this book very informative. I bought it because I believed it would discuss WHY and HOW woman's heart disease is different. It doesn't, except for statements like "Both diagnosis and treatment are often delayed in women, and women are refered for surgery and rehabilitation less often. This could be a factor of access to care, which is also affected by financial concers, psychosocial stress, and family demands that could cause a woman to pay less attention to her own health care needs." It does NOT discuss one of the main problems, which is the treating doctor himself ("Did you have a fight with your husband, Dear.") Or dicuss things like the fact that the Stress Test can be a killer. This is a phamphlet that will tell you what a very patient doctor might. Sorry, there is a lot more I need to know, and the doctors still aren't talking.

The pages of this book are so badly designed that I couldn't force my eyes to read it. How can the authors' advice on graphics, layout and design be credible when their book design is so obviously lacking?

I was very excited about this book. Unfortunately it reads as though it were written by a graduate student has gone mad on speed. The simplest ideas are obfuscated by hideous prose. Here's an example: "In order to maintain imposture as a notion, we must also maintain a ficiton of seamless subjectivity." Otherwise stated: In order to act you have to pretend convincingly. Try it yourself, each page is packed with enough tangled syntax, overwrought diction, and unnecessary allusions to give a decent editor nightmares. Who is in charge of those grants, anyway? This is smart??!!