General Books

Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, Revised and Expanded Edition

Oliver Sacks

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Subjects -> Entertainment -> Music -> Reference -> General
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Music -> Reference -> General AAS
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Music -> Theory, Composition & Performance -> Appreciation

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 85 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Disturbances 4 out of 5 stars.
1 of 6 people found this review helpful.

Ulysses Grant knew two songs: one was the Yankee Doodle, the other was not. That's my kind of pun. I keep telling my Chinese friends that I do not believe in their tones. Tones are just a trick to fool dumb foreigners like me into thinking that the language is unlearnable.
Nabokov, one of my main heroes, tells us in his memoirs that music, for him, was just an arbitrary succession of more or less irritating sounds.
In other words, I am not left alone with my amusia.
I am happy that my affliction is not quite as bad as Nabokov's (whose son became an opera singer, by the way). I do enjoy listening to music and I love concerts. I just don't hear tones and I was the worse singer in living memory in my high school. Only the Bundeswehr appreciated my talent for marching songs. Reading Sacks shows me that it could have been much worse.
The multitude of possible problems is huge. Sacks gives us dozens of case studies, some studied intensively, some just based on correspondence. Music can be the cause or at least trigger of problems, like in some epileptic attacks, or the consequence of problems, like in some hallucinations. Music can be a problem when it disappears or when it intrudes. Music is used as a therapy for many problems.
The book is a veritable phenomenology of musical problems of the brain.
Which leads me to my mild criticism: after some of the stories, the telling of case after case wears you out. There seems to be no handle for explanations yet. Science seems to have a lot of pieces for the puzzle, but is still quite far away from a comprehensive understanding of our brain and mind.
One chapter with special fascination is the one on synesthesia. Nabokov had it as a child, though not in a version involving music. Sacks tells us, that Nab's mother had it too, which is mentioned in Speak, Memory, and that his wife and son had it as well. Transcending the brain, but still short of explanations.
A case that Sacks is not mentioning, that I 'encountered' in my literary excursions, is Kenzaburo Oe's son, who was born with a brain damage, who grew up as a handicapped child in a loving family, and who developed artistic talents as a composer. (Oe's Rise Up O Young Men recommended as an extended case study.)
Disturbances: Wilhelm Busch, a popular German writer/comedian/cartoonist (Max & Moritz) of the late 19th century had this to say about music: it is often considered disturbing because it is always coming along with noise.

Editorial Review:

Amazon Best of the Month, December 2007: Legendary R&B icon Ray Charles claimed that he was "born with music inside me," and neurologist Oliver Sacks believes Ray may have been right. Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain examines the extreme effects of music on the human brain and how lives can be utterly transformed by the simplest of harmonies. With clinical studies covering the tragic (individuals afflicted by an inability to connect with any melody) and triumphant (Alzheimer's patients who find order and comfort through music), Sacks provides an erudite look at the notion that humans are truly a "musical species." --Dave Callanan

The Migraine Brain: Your Breakthrough Guide to Fewer Headaches, Better Health

Carolyn Bernstein, Elaine McArdle

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

You know that your migraine isn't just a headache. But you may not know that migraine actually is a neurological disease. Affecting one in five women, one in twenty men, and one in twenty children, it's a debilitating, complex, and chronic condition that manifests in a combination of symptoms that can include excruciating head pain as well as other distinctive physical and emotional effects. Yet it's also a disease that you can get control of, improve, and manage, as Dr. Carolyn Bernstein has discovered in her seventeen years as a Harvard Medical School faculty member and practicing neurologist.

Praised for her excellence and compassion, the founder of the Women's Headache Center near Boston, and a migraine sufferer herself, Dr. Bernstein has helped hundreds of her patients get better. Now, with The Migraine Brain, the most comprehensive, up-to-the-minute book on migraines ever written, you will be able to do the same -- reduce the frequency and intensity of your migraines, learn how to prevent and curtail them and how to recover from them more quickly, and mitigate migraine's effects on every aspect of your life: in the workplace and at home and during sex and travel. Every migraine is different because everyone who gets a migraine has a distinctive "Migraine Brain" with its own sensitivities and triggers. That's why it's so important for you to develop a personalized wellness plan to radically reduce the number and severity of your migraines.

Dr. Bernstein also explains why migraines happen, why they are so often misdiagnosed, and why so few people get the right treatment for them. She reveals the latest research that shows that Migraine Brains share a hypersensitivity to stimuli -- the Migraine Brain can actually look different from others on a brain scan -- and is more likely to experience a cascade of neurological reactions that give rise to the common clusters of migraine symptoms. This breakthrough medical knowledge makes treatment and recovery possible with new migraine-specific drugs as well as with complementary treatments such as yoga, biofeedback, and an exercise regimen.

With the extraordinarily thorough recommendations of The Migraine Brain in your hands, you will be fully equipped with all the latest information you need to understand migraines and to help your family and co-workers understand that migraine isn't just a headache: it's a serious, yet treatable disease.

The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science (James H. Silberman Books)

Norman Doidge

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 106 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

The Brain That Changes Itself. 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Our daughter had a serious brain injury in 2003. The content of this book provided us with very contemporary, moreover, encouraging information.

Human brain life 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Having had a serious brain injury 17 months ago, and, very fortunately completely recovered, I am more fascinated than ever with the human brain. This book is so informative. It is amazing what the brain does, and so relatively little is still known about it. This guy has come up with a fantastic review of the brain. All power to him. It is so encouraging for someone, like me, who has had a brain trauma.

"LOU"

Editorial Review:

An astonishing new science called neuroplasticity is overthrowing the centuries-old notion that the human brain is immutable. In this revolutionary look at the brain, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Norman Doidge, M.D., provides an introduction to both the brilliant scientists championing neuroplasticity and the people whose lives they’ve transformed. From stroke patients learning to speak again to the remarkable case of a woman born with half a brain that rewired itself to work as a whole, The Brain That Changes Itself will permanently alter the way we look at our brains, human nature, and human potential.

The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat: And Other Clinical Tales

Oliver Sacks

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 111 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

In his most extraordinary book, "one of the great clinical writers of the 20th century" (The New York Times) recounts the case histories of patients lost in the bizarre, apparently inescapable world of neurological disorders. Oliver Sacks's The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat tells the stories of individuals afflicted with fantastic perceptual and intellectual aberrations: patients who have lost their memories and with them the greater part of their pasts; who are no longer able to recognize people and common objects; who are stricken with violent tics and grimaces or who shout involuntary obscenities; whose limbs have become alien; who have been dismissed as retarded yet are gifted with uncanny artistic or mathematical talents.

If inconceivably strange, these brilliant tales remain, in Dr. Sacks's splendid and sympathetic telling, deeply human. They are studies of life struggling against incredible adversity, and they enable us to enter the world of the neurologically impaired, to imagine with our hearts what it must be to live and feel as they do. A great healer, Sacks never loses sight of medicine's ultimate responsibility: "the suffering, afflicted, fighting human subject."

Clinical Neuroanatomy Made Ridiculously Simple (3rd Edition; Book & CD-ROM)

Stephen Goldberg

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Subjects -> Medicine -> Basic Science -> Anatomy
Subjects -> Medicine -> Internal Medicine -> Neurology -> Neuroscience
Subjects -> Medicine -> Internal Medicine -> Neurology -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 32 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Neuroanatomy: the highlights 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

A brief overview of neuroanatomy in a clinical setting that makes a difficult subject accessible in an outline form.

Great reference book 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I'm in the process of preparing for neuropsych boards and this book has been a great reference for me. It helps explain concepts so that they are easier to retain for later recall. I recommend this book for anyone studying for boards or will be working with students and residents.

Excelent summary 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

The book is an excrelent summary especially useful for first or second u=year sutidents of medice

it really is ridiculously simple 3 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I had to get this book for class, and I only found it slightly useful. I had some problems in class understanding the different spinothalamic tracks, and I went to this book when nothing else was making sense. It did help me finally understand that whole part of neuroanatomy, however it probably took me an hour to get all the useful information from the book and 30 min to do the CD. (The CD was helpful but not nearly enough.) Basically, it was a very good opening book when I was confused, but I quickly had to turn to High Yield to actually learn something.

Editorial Review:

This now-classic text presents the most relevant points in clinical neuroanatomy with mnemonics, humor and case presentations. The book now includes and interactive CD with a lab section, 3D rotations, interactive anatomy, tutorial on neurologic localization, and quiz. Third edition.

Paths to Recovery: Al-Anon's Steps, Traditions and Concepts

Al-Anon Family Group Head Inc

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Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Recovery -> Twelve-Step Programs

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

You want recovery? Buy this book and work it! 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

You want recovery? Work the Steps and Traditions. This is the book that will help you do it if you have been affected by someone else's drinking, thinking and/or behavior. As one other reviewer has already stated, if I could have only one Al-Anon book, this would be it. This book is truly a blessing.

Paths To Recovery 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

If you are working the steps, this book is a great guide. It offers Insight on the steps, members Experience, Strength and Hope, and some guiding questions.

From the perspective of alcoholics, AA History, and Women Pioneers 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful.

I'm an AA. My former wife was an Al-Anon though she is now deceased. I've devoted 19 years to researching the spiritual roots of Alcoholics Anonymous, the Twelve Steps, and the early program. Making Known the Biblical History and Roots of Alcoholics Anonymous: A Sixteen-Year Research, Writing, Publishing, and Fact Dissemination Project. One of the first books I was given by an A.A. oldtimer was Lois Remembers. And I hustled out and bought two Al-Anon books. I believe all of us in the recovery movement should have the perspective of both A.A. and of Al-Anon. My former wife and her sister (both married to alcoholics) believed they never could have made it without Al-Anon. And whether we recover, reconcile, or just make amends, we need to know this family program. I also think Al-Anons and AAs need to know how much the two programs were alike at the beginning. Early A.A. in Akron dealt with families--fathers, mothers, children.Real Twelve Step Fellowship History. They all attended. Dr. Bob's wife Anne Ripley Smith dealt with the wives, and actually counseled Lois Wilson with some frequency.Anne Smith's Journal, 1933-1939: A.A.'s Principles of Success. Henrietta Seiberling was prominent in early A.A. development, and so was Clarace Williams, wife of T. Henry Williams, at whose whom the family meetings were held.Henrietta B. Seiberling: Ohio's Lady with a Cause, Third Edition. Anne Smith started a woman's group a year after A.A. was founded. And Lois herself wrote that Al-Anon people should never forget the important role that Anne played. In one sense, we are all in this together. For those of us who are believers, God is the One with whom we relate and seek to establish a relationship.By the Power of God: A Guide To Early A.A. Groups and Forming Similar Groups Today . And the Biblical principles of early A.A. were applied alike to women and family members. The Good Book and the Big Book: A.A.'s Roots in the Bible (Bridge Builders Edition), and The Good Book-Big Book Guidebook. Excellent reading. Important!

Beyond Codependency: And Getting Better All the Time

Melody Beattie

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 14 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

You're learning to let go, to live your life free of the grip of someone else's problems. And yet you find you've just started on the long journey of recovery. Let Melody Beattie, author of the classic Codependent No More, help you along your way. A guided tour past the pitfalls of recovery, Beyond Codependency is dedicated to those struggling to master the art of self-care. It is a book about what to do once the pain has stopped and you've begun to suspect that you have a life to live. It is about what happens next.

In simple, straightforward terms, Beattie takes you into the territory beyond codependency, into the realm of recovery and relapse, family-of-origin work and relationships, surrender and spirituality. With personal stories, hard-won insights, and activities, her book teaches the lessons of dealing with shame, growing in self-esteem, overcoming deprivation, and getting past fatal attractions long enough to find relationships that work.

"Melody Beattie is an American phenomenon . . . She connects with age-old quests for self-improvement and rebirth. . . [And she] understands being overboard, which helps her throw best-selling lifelines to those still adrift."
Time

"[This book] goes beyond how we hurt to how we heal."
Veronica Ray, author of Choosing Happiness

Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills

Russell L. Blaylock

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Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 56 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

One for your library 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

This was a great book, a bit hard for a non scientific person, but still great. It is well written by a very knowledgeable person that seems to care. It should be Oprah's book of the month. It you eat, have kids or are concerned about health, then this is the book for you. I do have to warn you, some parts are pretty scary. It was amazing to find out all of the things the government doesn't tell us about our food supply. I can speak to this because I was diagnosed with MS in March of 07' and now I'm aspartame and MS free. I gave up that poison a few months ago and my MS went away within 2 weeks!!!

Real-life experience backs this up 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

I have had this book for many years and recently skimmed it again. I bought it during the years when my husband was having bizarre symptoms after eating almost any kind of food. He visited many doctors and specialists, and an allergist finally suggested that it might be MSG and referred him to a dietician (who was useless). Since then, we've been on our own fighting this, and this book lifted the fog of ignorance!

I'm an engineer, a conservative and a skeptic. I was not ready to believe that there is "bad stuff" in our everyday food. But based on my husband's experiences, the empirical evidence to the contrary is overwhelming. His symptoms initially only occurred after lunch but not after dinner, even if he ate the same thing. How does this make sense? Dr. Blaylock explains the mystery by pointing out how hypoglycemia exacerbates the effects of glutamate. I was ecstatic when I understood the phenomenon. My husband has a tendency, common in his family, toward hypoglycemia. With lunch being his first meal of the day, he was already in a hypoglycemic state and highly susceptible to the effects of MSG. By dinnertime, his brain had more glucose and was better able to clear the glutamate. Based on this theory, when he accidentally eats MSG and starts to experience the effects, he consumes a candy bar or sugared soda and it lessens the symptoms. (Dessert can be good for you!)

The explanations in this book are the only ones that satisfactorily explain what I see my husband go through every day. He has an immediate and recognizable response to glutamate, which makes confirmation of those theories simple, if not painless.

There is one hypothesis in the book that is contradicted by my husband's experience. He can consume aspartame (diet soda) with none of the effects that he experiences from glutamate.

I wonder how many people are capable of making the lifestyle changes required to avoid glutamate? If you don't have a detector (like my poor husband) to tell you what food does and does not have glutamate in it, you must avoid all prepared food that doesn't have an ingredient list. Yes, sadly, glutamate is that prevalent in our food.

A Gentle Path Through the Twelve Steps: The Classic Guide for All People in the Process of Recovery

Ph.D., Patrick Carnes

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 14 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Revised Edition.

Carnes offers us exercises, inventories, and guided reflections for those of us facing the daily challenges of attaining or maintaining an addiction-free lifestyle.

This revised edition of A Gentle Path through the Twelve Steps is a treasure chest, a rich and powerful resource for anyone working a twelve-step program. Carnes is a gifted teacher and leader in the addiction recovery field.
Wendy Maltz, M.S.W., Sexual Healing Journey

This unique, non-threatening workbook emphasizes common themes at the heart of all Twelve Step fellowships...an especially clear explanation of what "working the program" means.
Claudia Black, Ph.D., It Will Happen to Me

The revised A Gentle Path through the Twelve Steps gets my highest recommendation. It is a wonderful guide to the journey to restoration and healing.
Marilyn Murray, M.A., Prisoner of Another War

To get through difficult times, we need good friends, wise mentors and compassionate recovery programs. Pat Carnes and his twelve-step guide have been all of these to me, personally, and more. A Gentle Path through the Twelve Steps Revised Edition is a principle guide to following the path of the many stages we encounter daily.
Brenda Schaeffer, Licensed Psychologist, Loving Me Loving You and Is It Love or Is It Addiction

A Gentle Path through the Twelve Steps has already helped thousands and promises to help many more.
Mark R. Laaser, Ph.D., The Secret Sin: Healing the Wounds of Sexual Addiction

Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind

V. S. Ramachandran, Sandra Blakeslee

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 95 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

What would you say about a woman who, despite stroke-induced paralysis crippling the entire left side of her body, insists that she is whole and strong--who even sees her left hand reach out to grasp objects? Freud called it "denial"; neurologists call it "anosognosia." However it may be labeled, this phenomenon and others like it allow us peeks into other mental worlds and afford us considerable insight into our own.

The writings of Oliver Sacks and others have shown us that we can learn much about ourselves by looking closely at the deficits shown by people with neurological problems. V.S. Ramachandran has seen countless patients suffering from anosognosia, phantom limb pain, blindsight, and other disorders, and he brings a remarkable mixture of clinical intuition and research savvy to bear on their problems. He is one of the few scientists who are able and willing to explore the personal, subjective ramifications of his work; he rehumanizes an often too-sterile field and captures the spirit of wonder so essential for true discovery. Phantoms in the Brain is equal parts medical mystery, scientific adventure, and philosophical speculation; Ramachandran's writing is smart, caring, and very, very funny.

Whether you're curious about the workings of the brain, interested in alternatives to expensive, high-tech science (much of Ramachandran's research is done with materials found around the home), or simply want a fresh perspective on the nature of human consciousness, you'll find satisfaction with Phantoms in the Brain. --Rob Lightner