Biography & Autobiography : Medical

Sybil Lockhart, a Berkeley neurobiologist, became a "mother in the middle" when she was pregnant with her second daughter and her mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. What makes Sybil's story different, and so powerful, is that she understood the neurological processes, by turns exciting and devastating, that were taking place in the brains of those she loved. Interweaving her scientific expertise with her own complicated emotions, she writes with elegant simplicity and breathtaking honesty about biology's inevitable, powerful effects on the people around her. When her mother begins to show the first subtle signs of the disease that is slowly ravaging her brain, Sybil refuses to consider the possibility of dementia, insisting that all her mother needs is a daughter nearby. She relocates her young family to her beloved San Francisco Bay Area, where her memories of her mother and her childhood are deeply anchored. As Sybil sets about creating new memories against the backdrop of her past, the emerging undeniable truth about her mother's condition threatens to overwhelm her ability to maintain her career, nurture her marriage, raise her young daughter, and care for herself during her second pregnancy. Even though she appreciates the beauty of the dramatic biological processes at work inside the brains of her family members, she also understands their inevitable power, and she bravely describes the complicated emotions -- denial, rage, ambivalence, exhaustion -- that so many caregivers experience. With a unique combination of science and intimate experience, Mother in the Middle is a story of mothers and daughters, science and creativity, and life's exquisite intertwining of love and loss. more...

Price: $25.00

The death of Admiral Nelson on his flagship, the Victory, at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 is the basis of a well-known story. This book focuses on William Beatty, the surgeon who attended Nelson in his last hours and was later to publicize the deathbed scene. It traces his life and career as a leading naval surgeon during the Napoleonic Wars and afterwards. - ;In the lead-up to the bicentenary of Trafalgar a number of important new studies have been published about the life of Nelson and his defeat of the Combined Fleet in 1805. Despite the significant role played by the health and fitness of the British crews in securing the victory, little has been written hitherto about the naval surgeon in the era of the long war against France. This book is intended to fill the gap. Sir William Beatty (1773-1842) was surgeon of the Victory at. Trafalgar. An Ulsterman from Londonderry, he had joined the navy in 1791. Before being warranted to Nelson's flagship, Beatty had served upon ten other warships, and survived a yellow fever epidemic, court martial, and shipwreck to share in the capture of a Spanish treasure ship. After Trafalgar, he. became Physician of the Channel Fleet, based at Plymouth, and eventually Physician to Greenwich Hospital, where he served until his retirement in 1838. As the book makes clear in drawing upon an extensive prosopographical database, Beatty's career until 1805 was representative of the experience of the approximately 2,000 naval surgeons who joined the navy in the course of the war. The first part of the biography provides a detailed and scholarly introduction to the professional education, training, and work of the naval surgeon. But after 1805 Beatty became a member of the service elite, and his career becomes interesting for other reasons. In the final decades of his life, Beatty was far more than a senior naval physician. As a Fellow of the Royal Society, director of the Clerical and Medical Insurance Company, and director of the more...

Price: $39.95

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Price: $13.00

Welcome to New Auburn, Wisconsin, where the local vigilante is a farmer's wife armed with a pistol and a Bible, the most senior member of the volunteer fire department is a cross-eyed butcher with one kidney and two ex-wives (both of whom work at the only gas station in town), and the back roads are haunted by the ghosts of children and farmers. Against a backdrop of fires and tangled wrecks, bar fights and smelt feeds, Population: 485 is a comic and sometimes heartbreaking true tale leavened with quieter meditations on an overlooked America. more...

Price: $10.99

A therapist and expert on grief is faced with the slow decline of her beloved mother. She imparts to the reader lessons learned, both personal and professional, in anticipating grief and the loss of a loved one. “This is a unique book by a professional who understands the field of loss and grief. . . . Poignantly heartbreaking.”—Melba Vasquez, President, American Psychology Association’s Division on Counseling Psychology more...

Price: $26.95