Home > Welcome to Kristin's Corner > New Books

July 19, 2008

Stiff: The Curious Life of Human Cadavers
by Mary Roach

If you've ever wondered what happens to a body after it's been donated to science, this is the book for you. Full of descriptions of medical dissection labs, practice face lifts and bodies standing in as crash test dummies, this book is both hilarious and informative.

More: Population, Nature and What Women Want
by Robert Engelman

Although world population continues to grow, family size is dropping in countries as diverse as Switzerland and South Africa. This phenomenon has some people concerned but Engelman believes that it means women aren't seeking more children, just more for their children.

Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain
by Maryanne Wolf

Anyone who reads probably wonders about the mystery of it. How do those strange squiggles on the page turn in to words? What happens in our brains when our eyes scan a line of type?

Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America
by Rick Perlstein

This fascinating book provides a compelling account of Richard Nixon as a harvester of negative energy, turning the turmoil of the 1960s into a ladder to political notoriety. Perlstein's key narrative begins at about the time of the Watts riots, in the shadow of Lyndon Johnson's overwhelming 1964 victory at the polls against Goldwater, which left America's conservative movement broken.

Intern: A Doctor's Initiation
by Sandeep Juahar

Jauhar, a cardiologist who directs the Heart Failure Program at Long Island Jewish Medical Center, completed his internship a decade ago, but still remembers his confusing, tumultuous medical apprenticeship at the prestigious New York Hospital the way soldiers remember war. This thoughtful memoir is an interesting account of how a student becomes a doctor.