Titles That May Interest You

TITLES THAT MAY INTEREST YOU As a service to our readers whose specific interests span the full spectrum of the fields of biology and medicine, we are providing the titles of and relevant information about some of the books sent to us by the publishers that will not receive full review treatment. Whenever possible we will add a short description of each book. Naming the Silences: God, Medicine, and the Problem of Suffering. By Stanley Hauerwas. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1990. Pp. 154. $9.95. The author, a professor of theological ethics, addresses the oft-repeated question , "Why does a good and all-powerful God allow us to experience pain and suffering?" He deals "primarily with childhood death and illness—something that challenges our belief in God more completely perhaps than anything else." He explores why that question seems so important to people in the modern world. Cocaine in the Brain. Edited by Nora D. Volkow and Alan C. Swann. New Brunswick and London: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1990. Pp. 188. $40.00. The eight chapters take complementary approaches to several recurrent themes, including: 1.The disruptive power of reward stimulants and the tendency of society to oscillate between underreaction and overreaction. 2.The role of dopaminergic systems, especially in the medial prefrontal cortex in acute reinforcing effects of cocaine. 3.The complexity of transmitter interactions and adaptations to cocaine's effects , and the inadequacy of a single transmitter model despite its explanation of acute effects on reward. 4.The role of conditioning, and the riddle of apparent progressive sensitization to cocaine. 5.The potentially severe medical complications of cocaine use. 6.The development of treatments based on neurobiology. "The effects of cocaine range from the synaptic to the cultural. Cocaine takes over the neural mechanisms that create feelings of reward. These effects lead to behavior that seriously disrupts individual lives and society." Perspectives in Biology andMedicine, 36, 4 ¦ Summer 1993 | 681 Hunger in History: Food Shortage, Poverty, and Deprivation. Edited by Lucille F. Newman. Cambridge: Basil Blackwell, 1990. Pp. 429. $39.95. The 15 papers in this book reflect the lectures at a year-long interdisciplinary seminar at Brown University. It is divided into four time periods, namely (1) hunger in prehistoric societies (global climate and the origins of agriculture, prehistoric patterns of hunger); (2) hunger in complex societies (agricultural intensification, urbanization, and hierarchy; responses to food crisis in the ancient Mediterranean world; war, food shortages, and relief measures in early China; the rise and fall of population and agriculture in Central Mayan Lowlands —300 b.c. to present); (3) hunger in the emerging world system (colonialism , international trade, and the nation-state; nutritional status and mortality in eighteenth-century Europe; food supply in the Swiss Canton of Bern, 1850); and (4) hunger in the recent past (organization, information, and entitlement in the People's Republic of China; world nutritional problems; food entitlement and economic chains). The concluding chapter deals with the lessons of history and potential solutions to end hunger. Vital Lines: Contemporary Fiction about Medicine. Edited by Jon Mukand. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990. Pp. 436. $22.95. This analogy of 56 short stories focuses on many aspects of medicine and the medical milieu. Some are told from the viewpoint of the patients, some from that of their families and friends, and others from that of the medical professionals . They deal with, inter alia, mental illness, disability, AIDS. The diversity of subjects and writers is quite surprising. Other Women's Children. By Perri Klass. New York: Random House, 1990. Pp. 284. $19.95. This novel "addresses many of the painful dilemmas facing women today—in particular, the tension between a woman's commitment to her family and the demands of her professional responsibilities." A pediatrician at a Boston teaching hospital "treats the privileged and the poor, coping with routine cases and desperate ones, hospital red tape, emergency room traumas, nervous patients and inexperienced interns," while as a devoted wife and mother she struggles to balance the demands of patients and her family. She must constantly choose between caring for her own family and for other women's children. 682 Book Reviews Patients, Power...