I found this book to be very interesting and well-written, but I think it misses the mark as "A Writer's Guide to Hospitals." Maybe it was a bit too ambitious (that's a very broad topic) or maybe the two authors had a different idea of the book's purpose, but I found it vacillated between a soapbox for one author's disenchantment with the medical system in America today (a disenchantment I share) and a good survey of how a hospital works for hospital workers. Here and there I found the type of information I expected to find (what the mood is in certain areas of the hospital, where the power lies, a sample of dialog, and so on), but that was unfortunately the smallest part of the book. The glossaries are helpful and well-written (but not complete -- "Stat" is missing). Though the history section is interesting (I love history), maybe it should have been left out so they could devote more time to what writers need. I'm glad I read it, but didn't really provide me with the info I need for two medical scenes in my novel.

Code Blue is filled with information concerning hospitals and how they are supposed to work, but, as a book (especially a guide to writers), this one badly needs professional triage. It is obvious Drs Wilson and Page know their subject, perhaps too well. It is a slow read, and only one chapter (Mistakes, Complications and Accidents) offers interesting info for new writers. Unless, of course, your plot centers on the future of HMOs. I expected more from these distinguished medical men since they both have contributed two other excellent volumes in the How Dunit Series. Perhaps the most humane jesture is to remove life support from Code Blue, and let it pass on to its final resting place.

"Code Blue" is a great introduction to hospitals for anyone
interested in this topic. While the book's title suggests that it is
intended as a tool for writers, I think that many other people would
like to have a more comprehensive understanding of the practice of
medicine in this venue. This book has been criticized by other
readers, and the common thread in their dissatisfactions seems to stem
from the fact that this book doesn't offer a detailed explanation of
everything that might possibly occur in a hospital. If such a book
were to exist, it would be infinitely long and comparably expensive.
Working within the bounds of practicality, I think that Drs. Wilson
and Page have done a superb job of providing an overview of this
subject. If you're looking for highly detailed knowledge on a
specific subject you will likely need to perform further research, but
that should not be construed as being a criticism of this book.
Bottom line: A well-written and informative guide that will give you
an insider's view of hospitals. (Review by Kevin Pezzi, MD
(doc@ERbook.net), author of "Believe It or Not! True Emergency
Room Stories")

This book ought to be re-titled: A Broadcast Engineering Tutorial for Dumb People. It's not that the book is bad - it isn't - it just lacks any real depth. Important broadcast topics like MPEG compression get skated over in a few lines. Curiously the book tells you more about audio CDs (which we all know about already) than MPEG!

Or perhaps my expectation was wrong. What I wanted was a view of the entire broadcasting industry from 10000 feet: what I got was the view from near-earth orbit with large areas obscured under cloud.

The book is small (21cm by 14cm) and printed in overly large type (like line 2 in an eyesight test). It reads like a pamphlet pretending to be a book - shallow, but somehow bloated out to fill 200 odd pages. Important areas, such as the Internet, video streaming, convergence, interactive TV, the role of software, etc, etc are completely missing.

As you can probably guess by now, I didn't really like the book and do not think it good value for money. In a specialized field like broadcasting there may not be anything better available, which disturbs me. Why is it that you can find 200 reasonable, but almost identical, books on, say, Java Programming, but not a single good general book on Broadcasting? Maybe it's because an author writing about broadcasting would have to start from scratch instead of reworking other people's books. But then that's the state of technical publishing today!

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