On the recommendation of my local history book friend, I have just finished two of his. One is a meditation on clear thinking and cognitive bias, the other is a story about preparedness. The former: John Kelly's "The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time". I was expecting something ( Read more... )

I have had Ellis Amdur and Sgt. John Hutching's "The Thin Blue Lifeline: Verbal De-escalation of Mentally Ill and Emotionally Disturbed People" on my desk to read for a couple months, but this most recent plane trip got me to tackle it. It's one of a series of highly overlapping books aimed at different roles in the helping professions, covering ( Read more... )

( Red Glove )

I was reminded that I hadn't reviewed the fantastic "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" yet when I sent it off to orthaevelve at our medic-and-martial-arts meetup this weekend. I liked this book so much that I'd meant to give it its own post, and it fell through the cracks. Accordingly, rather late, here it is. It's hard to believe that "The Immortal ( Read more... )