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Eat Right 4 Your Type: The Individualized Diet Solution to Staying Healthy, Living Longer & Achieving Your Ideal Weight

Peter J. D'Adamo

Eat Right 4 Your Type: The Individualized Diet Solution to Staying Healthy, Living Longer & Achieving Your Ideal Weight Peter J. D'Adamo Amazon Price: $16.47
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Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Diets & Weight Loss -> Diets -> Blood Type Diets
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Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Diets & Weight Loss -> Diets -> Weight Loss

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 481 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Worst pseudoscience ever 1 out of 5 stars.
8 of 10 people found this review helpful.

The author is a naturopath who claims he can heal people through diets designed to fit 4 blood types (A, B, 0, AB). If this were the thesis of this book, I would simply accept the author's word for it. Many non-conventional doctors use different media and methods to convey their healing abilities and, while the real nature of their systems baffles scientific analysis, fact is that they can heal. Unfortunately the author reached great success by stitching a delirious "scientific" theory around his thesis. I'll be expressing only few major critiques.

1) The evidence he presents to support his thesis is 100% circumstantial. About a third of the book sounds like this : "John, who was suffering for this and that, came to my office. After putting him on the right diet, his symptoms reverted or regressed". Circumstantial evidence can be used as a starting point but it cannot be used to prove a theory, nonetheless the author sells his theories as if they were the Gospel
2) D'Adamo states that group 0 is the blood group of hunters-gatherers. The group A are the farmers and the group B are the nomads. Well, this is not true. Go in the data bank and look for yourself. As an example, you'll notice that very many hunters-gatherers (Inuit and Ainu among others) have a lower group 0 incidence than peoples who have been farmers for millennia. The only major hunter-gatherer population fitting his scenario is the American Indian (both North and South). Amerindians were bottlenecked during their migration from Kamchatka to Alaska. Obviously, concepts like "genetic drift" are alien to the author.
3) Nowhere in the scientific literature could one find any of his "studies" he claimed were being wrapped up at the time of publication
4) The auhtor's knowledge of the biochemistry of lectins, albeit seemingly sound to most people, is primitive and incomplete. He is not just trying to keep it simple: he dismisses or ignores everything that may hinder his "truth".
5) For D'Adamo's theory to be valid, food lectins must remain functionally intact through the stomach, the intestine and, in many cases, the cooking process. Moreover they should remain invisible to the immune system. This is frankly hard to believe. The author states that lectins do in fact survive digestion (no prove or literature is presented on this) and completely ignores the host immune reaction.
Again, I am not questioning that D'Adamo may have the ability to heal people, however the "scientific" foundation on which this entire book is based is beyond weak: it is simply delirious.

Editorial Review:

Proposes that a person's blood type can both influence health and explain individuals' reactions to foods, and presents four different plans, based on blood type, for diet, exercise, and good health.

What's Your Poo Telling You?

M.D., Anish Sheth, Josh Richman

What's Your Poo Telling You? M.D., Anish Sheth, Josh Richman Amazon Price: $9.95
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By: Chronicle Books
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 37 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Perfect bathroom book 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I first heard about this book on [...] an episode of Internet Superstar, where one of the authors spoke about it with Martin Sargent. It sounded interesting, but not interesting enough to search it out. Recently, I was out with my wife Michele for dinner when I saw the book.

It's a small book, suitable for reading on the toliet, so I picked it up. Once I got home, I went to the obvious reading spot and began to read. Happily, it's actually an informative book, explaining a lot about poo and why people encounter such a variety of poops. 95 small pages long, the book contains a ton of good, easily understandable info on poo.

After reading the book, I'm planning to make sure to eat a bit more fiber and drink a bit more water to be nice to my colon. If you see the book, pick it up, you won't regret it.

Editorial Review:

With universal appeal (everyone poops, after all), this witty, illustrated description of over two dozen dookies (each with a medical explanation written by a doctor) details what one can learn about health and well-being by studying what's in the bowl. A floater? It's probably due to a buildup of gas. Now think back on last night's dinner, a burrito perhaps? . . .All the greatest hits are here: The Log Jam, The Glass Shard, The Deja Poo, The Hanging Chad . . . the list goes on. Sidebars, trivia, over 60 euphemisms for number 2, and unusual case histories all make this the ultimate bathroom reader. Who knew you could learn so much from your poo?

Your Pregnancy Week-by-Week

Glade B. Curtis

Your Pregnancy Week-by-Week Glade B. Curtis List Price: $12.95
By: Da Capo Press Inc
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 362 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Useless and Confusing 1 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

like my title says...useless and confusing. I borrowed this book from my local library before actually buying any books and I hated it. It was confusing. I got the 4th edition of "What to Expect" and loved it! Try it instead!

Editorial Review:

Doctors refer to pregnancy in increments of weeks, not months or trimesters and expectant mothers look for changes and compare the details of their pregnancies based on the same weekly schedule. One of America's bestselling pregnancy books, Your Pregnancy Week by Week provides focused information in this medically appropriate way, which is why it tops the U.S. lists of pregnancy books recommended by mothers. Almost two million copies of this book have already been sold! Now, Your Pregnancy Week by Week is being adapted to make it suitable for the UK market and expectant mothers here will be able to enjoy and benefit from this highly-acclaimed, practical pregnancy book. The new fifth edition is being expanded and brought completely up to date, to reflect all that's new in obstetric practices.

Anatomy Coloring Book, The (3rd Edition)

Wynn Kapit, Lawrence M. Elson

Anatomy Coloring Book, The (3rd Edition) Wynn Kapit, Lawrence M. Elson Amazon Price: $14.82
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By: Benjamin Cummings
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 97 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Often imitated, never duplicated.

  • New! Lay-flat binding makes coloring easier.
  • New! 8 plates have been added: Accessory Structures of the Skin, Temporomandibular Joint, Upper Limb: Shoulder (Glenohumeral) Joint, Upper Limb: Elbow Joints, Lower Limb: Male and female Pelves, Lower Limb: Sacroiliac and Hip Joints, Lower Limb: Knee Joints, Somatic Visceral Receptors.
  • New! 7 additional sections: Skeletal and Articular Systems, Skeletal Muscular System, Central Nervous System, Central Nervous System: Cavities and Coverings, Peripheral Nervous System, Autonomic Nervous System, Human Development.

For over 23 years, The Anatomy Coloring Book has been the leading human anatomy coloring book, offering concisely written text and precise, extraordinary hand-drawn figures. Organized according to body systems, each of the 170 plates featured in this book includes an ingenious color-key system anatomical terminology is linked to detail illustration of the structures of the body.

Wynn Kapit graduated in 1955 from the University of Miami, Florida with honors in Business Administration and Law. He then attended Art Center School in Los Angeles and worked in New York as a graphic designer and advertising art director from 1960-66. He moved to California to pursue a painting career and was given a one-man show at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco in 1968. He then attended the University of California at Berkeley and received a Masters in Painting and worked as a portraitist and teacher of figure drawing.

While taking a class in human anatomy at San Francisco City College, he discovered a way to effectively learn the subject by coloring in drawings, diagrams and names. The teacher of the course, Lawrence Elson, Ph.D. agreed to help him produce a coloring book. Elson wrote and Kapit designed and illustrated The Anatomy Coloring Book, which was published in 1977 and has been a widely-translated bestseller ever since. The Physiology Coloring Book was published in 1987, with the assistance of two professors from Berkeley: Robert Macey and Esmail Meisami. The Geography Coloring Book was published in 1991; Kapit drew the maps and wrote the text. The Anatomy Coloring Book was published in a second edition in 1993, and second editions of Geography and Physiology Coloring Books will be published in 1997.


Lawrence M. Elson received his undergraduate degree from the University of California, Berkeley in Zoology (Pre-Med), and completed his graduate and Ph.D. work in Human Anatomy also at the University of California, Berkeley. Elson has served as an instructor in human anatomy at the City College of San Francisco, an assistant professor of anatomy at Baylor College of Medicine, and as a lecturer at numerous additional universities and professional organizations.

Elson is the founder and president of Coloring Concepts, Inc. (CCI), producer and packager of college level, educational, scientific directed-coloring texts. He is the author/co-author of the Anatomy Coloring Book, Human Brain Coloring Book, Zoology Coloring Book, and Microbiology Coloring Book.

Presently, he is principally functioning as a clinical and forensic anatomist retained as a consultant to governments, provinces, insurance and other corporations, and law firms on causation of injury issues in cases in or anticipated to be involved in litigation.

Future plans include expanding CCI by developing new titles in the physical sciences and other education-related disciplines.



BRS Physiology (Board Review Series)

Linda S Costanzo

BRS Physiology (Board Review Series) Linda S Costanzo Amazon Price: $35.05
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 67 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Best title in the series! 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I think this is the best BRS there is. I used this book for course exam prep as well as board review. It is a great tool to highlight important concepts, and it explains things in a simple and effective way with the right amount of information.

Vital 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This book is an amazing tool for my Medical School Physiology class, it will be a vital piece of my USMLE study regimen.

Editorial Review:

Thoroughly updated for its Fourth Edition, BRS Physiology is an excellent aid for students preparing for the USMLE Step 1. The book concisely reviews key physiological principles and includes clinical correlations throughout to emphasize connections between basic physiology and clinical medicine. Numerous illustrations, tables, and flow charts help students visualize material quickly and aid in long-term retention. End-of-chapter USMLE-style questions and a comprehensive end-of-book exam test the student's problem-solving skills, and clearly explained answers guide the student through the correct steps in reasoning. This edition features increased coverage of pathophysiology, new questions, and a new two-color design and artwork.

It's So Amazing! A Book About Eggs, Sperm, Birth, Babies, and Families

Robie H. Harris

It's So Amazing! A Book About Eggs, Sperm, Birth, Babies, and Families Robie H. Harris Amazon Price: $15.63
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By: Candlewick
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 74 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Great book- Real life. 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

I have read mostly positive reviews about this book and I agree. We used this book for my daughter's Kindergarten body project when she wanted to know about where babies come from and I had no problem reading it to a 5 year old and a 7 year old, mixed genders.

Though I know some have suggested that there is a political agenda in the book regarding abortion and homosexuality, I feel this book is unbiased and promotes proper family values for the following reasons:

1. There is a focus on the love aspect of relationships along with the physical aspects of sex and reproduction. There is no way a child will walk away from this book thinking sex is appropriate between strangers. It is clear, from the writing, that this is something to share within a serious relationship.

2. There is a mention of homosexuality. It is very brief. It does not encourage homosexuality and more than it discourages homosexuality. It does not go into graphic detail of how two men or two women have intercourse. It simply points that some people in same sex relationships have children together. This is fact and is stated as such.

3. Abortion is not glorified. It is mentioned that some people end their pregnancies through abortion. Again, this is stated as fact- not glorified or demonized. It is reality and is mentioned as such.

4. There is also a part that describes sexual abuse. It is very sensitive and is written to encourage children to seek out help if they are in a bad situation.

These are difficult, often controversial, issues. They are handled with loving care by the authors. Two thumbs up!

Editorial Review:

Uses bird and bee cartoon characters to present straightforward explanations of topics related to sexual development, love, reproduction, adoption, sexually transmitted diseases, and more.

The Magic School Bus Inside the Human Body (Magic School Bus TV Tie-ins)

Joanna Cole

The Magic School Bus Inside the Human Body (Magic School Bus TV Tie-ins) Joanna Cole By: Scholastic
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

packed with information 5 out of 5 stars.
8 of 9 people found this review helpful.

Ms. Frizzle is taking her class on a memorable field trip through the human body in this entertaining book featuring the beloved eccentric teacher and her curious class. My only complaint is that the pages are so busy with information that it's impossible to sit and really read the whole book, but perhaps it's best to let a child's curiosity guide you through a number of readings rather than trying to get everything in at one sitting. Concepts are expressed clearly and with humor. Justly popular with young students.

a great book out of a great series - a review by Eli (age 7) 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

This book is really out of this world. I have been hooked on the magic school bus series. I can't wait to read more books in the series. The inside the human body book is full with very interesting facts and I learned so much from reading it. Arnold doesn't know where the bus is and is trying to find it. He doesn't even know that it is actually inside him. Then Arnold sneezes and finds the bus right next to him. He doesn't understand how he didn't see it before.

Very Educational 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

My daughter has been reading Magic School Bus books in school and we bought this one for her this past Christmas. She probably enjoys this one more than any other so far. It is well written and very educational with great illustrations. If your young reader likes science, then this is definitely a great choice!

How the Mind Works

Steven Pinker

How the Mind Works Steven Pinker List Price: $29.95
By: W. W. Norton & Company
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 166 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

A treatise on evolutionary psychology 4 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Steven Pinker, director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at MIT, argues that the mind is a computational computer. He uses Darwin's concept of reverse engineering to show how most of man's mental and emotional traits evolved.

Pinker also shows how the mind was designed by natural selection to solve the kinds of problems our ancestors faced in their hunter/gatherer existence, which may be why we have such trouble explaining such esoteric concepts as consciousness and sentience.

Pinker does not have a whole lot of respect for Freud, B.F. Skinner, or the Standard Social Science Model, which views the mind as a blank slate at birth. He disdains a moral approach when discussing natural selection, which gets him in trouble with feminists among other value-laden "isms". Instead, he argues for a "module-packed mind" that "allows both for innate motives that lead to evil acts and for innate motives that can avert them."

When discussing the computational mind, Pinker spends a lot of time on the eye. He shows how the eye evolved from light sensitive skin tissue, how humans developed stereoscopic vision leading to a bigger brain, how the brain tricks us into believing that matter is solid, and how seeing in color and in three dimensions led to more brain capacity. Pinker even shows us how the "Mind's eye" works. The eye connects to the brain, but the brain also connects to the eye.

Emotions began with the family and extended to non-family because foragers lived in groups. We love people who carry our genes. Pinker shows how the emotions evolve from the family to non-family relationships using reciprocal altruism. If you grant a favor to another (such as supplying him with meat) and he later returns the favor, you like him. If he cares for you when you are sick with no apparent compensation, you grow to love him. Cheaters inspire other emotions such as anger and resentment and the list grows. Guilt happens when we're cheating and we know it. Sympathy is an emotion for gaining gratitude. Body language ensures that emotions are hard to fake. Most people have scam detectors; you can tell the difference between a real smile and that of a beauty contestant.

Pinker also discusses bi-products of natural selection such as religion, music, philosophy and art. As mentioned earlier, we are blessed (or cursed) with a forager's brain. "The intellect evolved to crack the defense of things in the natural and social world," not answer such questions as "Why do bad things happen to good people?" We are lucky our stone-age minds do as well as they do when tackling complex scientific problems.

Editorial Review:

A fascinating, provocative book exploring the mysteries of human thought and behavior, How the Mind Works uses "reverse engineering"--determining what natural selection designed the mind to accomplish in a hunting-and-gathering environment--to explain how the mind stores and uses information.

Cook Right for Your Type : The Practical Kitchen Companion to Eat Right 4 Your Type, Including More Than 200 Original Recipes...

Peter J. D'Adamo

Cook Right for Your Type : The Practical Kitchen Companion to Eat Right 4 Your Type, Including More Than 200 Original Recipes... Peter J. D'Adamo Amazon Price: $24.45
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Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Diets & Weight Loss -> Diets -> Blood Type Diets

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 52 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

4 Blood Types, 4 Diets. That was the call that brought more than 300,000 people out to buy the most innovative diet book of the decade, the first to tell us what everyone instinctively knows: that different people need different diets. After nearly twenty years of research, Dr. D'Adamo revealed the connection between blood type, diet, and health. Now, with the help of a team of chefs, Dr. D'Adamo presents a book chock-full of background and delicious recipes for each blood type. For meat eaters or vegetarians, thirty-day meal plans help you integrate the diet into your life, and there's plenty of advice for eating well on the run. Cook Right 4 Your Type is the essential guide for living with a sensible diet individualized for you while still allowing you to eat foods that seem like major indulgences. From lamb stew to lemon squares, from braised vegetables to delicious soups, you'll barely notice you've started a regimen designed to optimize your health, your weight, and your total well-being.

The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language (Perennial Classics)

Steven Pinker

The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language (Perennial Classics) Steven Pinker Amazon Price: $10.20
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 109 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

A Thorough and Entertaining Introduction to Language 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

As someone who has had a fascination about languages, this book was the perfect choice for my undergraduate neuroscience class--it's objective is to elucidate how the mind creates language. The prose is extremely well-written and complex ideas clearly explained. Pinker takes the reader on a very fun and thought-provoking journey, providing fascinating insights for both the casually-interested reader and linguists alike. I will highlight on some key points presented throughout.

The first sections illustrate the key themes that Pinker will elaborate on throughout the rest of the book. He presents language as being an evolutionary adaptation that is unique to humans, just as much as a trunk is an adaptation for elephants or sonar for a bat. It is an instinct that we innately are born with. One of the myths about language is the notion that language is taught or transmitted, whether from mother to baby, or from one civilization to another. In actuality, children seem to be born with "Universal Grammar," a blueprint for all grammars on earth. "Virtually every sentence is a brand new combination of words. Therefore a language cannot be a repertoire of responses; the brain must contain a recipe or program that can build an unlimited set of sentences out of a finite list of words (9)." Likewise, there has yet to be a civilization found that is devoid of language. For example, a group of a million people had inhabited an area isolated from the rest of the world in New Guinea for forty thousand years, yet had independently developed their own language, as discovered when first contact was made in the 1920s.

Another important concept presented is "mentalese", a euphemism for a theory of thinking known as "computational/representational theory of mind." It essentially negates the common myth that thought is dependent on language and its corollary, that since people of different backgrounds than us have different languages, they must think differently. There is thought to be a universal "mentalese," and to "know a language" is simply being able to translate mentalese into strings of words in that language.

The second section of the book is a comprehensive summary of the basic parts of language, with plentiful information regarding syntax, phrase structure, morphemes, and more. A key point made is the recent discovery of a common anatomy in all the world's languages, called "X-bar theory." With the general set of rules, children do not have to "learn" lists and lists of rules for each language via rote memorization, but are born knowing the linguistic framework. They are then able to go from speaking a few isolated words to complex yet grammatically coherent sentences in a matter of months.

In the next section, Pinker introduces the concept of the "parser", which is the mental program that analyzes sentence structure during language comprehension. Grammar is simply a protocol, which does not necessitate understanding. In a nutshell, as the person reads a sentence, the parser will group phrases, building "phrase trees", consistent with linguistic rules (for example, a noun phrase is followed by a verb phrase). It is interesting that grammatically correct yet poorly constructed sentences can cause a person great difficulty in comprehension--the rationale is that the parser will not present the person with the correct phrase tree, among copious possible combinations.

Pinker goes on to describe the differences between languages. Despite grammatical difference between languages, such as subject(S)/verb(V)/object(O) order (SVO, SOV, etc), fixed-word-order/free-word-order (if phrase order can vary or not), there are striking similarities. The most prominent are implications--if a language has X, it will have Y. For example, if the basic order of a language is SOV, it will have question words at the beginning of the sentence (234).

Pinker cites three processes that act on languages that result in the differences that we see evident in languages today: innovation, learning, and migration. For example in the case of migration, though the roots of English are from Northern Germany, the existence of thousands of French words in English is the legacy of the invasion of Britain by the Normans in 1066. One of the most broad-reaching relationships between current modern languages can be traced back to the possible existence of a proto-Indo-European language, whose modern-day descendents span from Western Europe to the Indian subcontinent.


Over the final chapters, Pinker elaborates on the amazing explosion of language acquisition in children during their first three years. He explains the significance of Broca's and Wernicke's in language, by examining different cases of aphasia with patients having damage to those areas. Our current understanding of the brain does not allow us to be able to predict what the impact of damage to these areas are from patient to patient--it is frequently witnessed that patients with damage in identical places to these areas have different types of aphasia.

As a final note, Pinker makes a distinction between prescriptive rules, such as grammatical rules that we are taught in school, and descriptive rules, the way people actually talk. In response to the former, he makes a claim that using non-standard English such as "I can't get no satisfaction" versus the standard English "I can't get any satisfaction" is not wrong linguistically, as it is simply a different dialect with an internally consistent grammar. The evident double-negative (which is "wrong" in standard English) is simply a remnant of Middle English, where double-negatives were ubiquitous. As long as the grammatical rules of any language are consistent and systematic, as in the seemingly wrong non-standard English, they follow the descriptive rules and are linguistically correct.


Overall, The Language Instinct is a great read for anyone even remotely interested in the topic. The scope is immense, from basic linguistics, to language development, to language evolution, to genetics, to overall mind design. In addition to being introduced to very important linguistic concepts, you will have an amazing amount of entertaining examples to share in any setting.

Editorial Review:

In this classic study, the world's leading expert on language and the mind lucidly explains everything you always wanted to know about languages: how it works, how children learn it, how it changes, how the brain computes it, and how it envolved. With wit, erudition, and deft use it everyday examples of humor and wordplay, Steven Pinker weaves our vast knowledge of language into a compelling story: language is a human instinct, wired into our brains by evolution like web spinning in spiders or sonar bats. "The Language Instinct" received the William James Book Prize from the American Psychological Association and the Public Interest Award from the Linguistics Society of America.

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