Category: Book Review

  • Pharmacology Examination and Board Review (2018)

    Pharmacology Examination and Board Review (2018)

    Pharmacology Examination and Board Review has long been a medical student favorite—and for good reason. The book provides a clear and concise review of the basic science of pharmacology, presented with a clinical flavor. The main strength of this book is its overall level of organization and attention to relevant basic science details. Whenever possible,…

  • Physiology (2017)

    Physiology (2017)

    This blog is largely devoted to authors who have spent their entire careers teaching and writing about a single medical subject or field. For Dr. Linda S Costanzo, it’s Physiology (2017). Physiology is the lingua franca of medicine. Medical doctors solve problems by thinking and conversing with their patients and with other professionals in physiology…

  • Fenichel’s Clinical Pediatric Neurology (2019)

    Fenichel’s Clinical Pediatric Neurology (2019)

    Fenichel’s Clinical Pediatric Neurology (2019) is principally for pediatricians and neurologists, but there are very good reasons why generalists should have a good look at this book as well: it’s well organized in its clinical approach and will help you learn how to solve clinical problems in other fields too. Take, for example, hexosaminidase A…

  • A Visual Guide to ECG Interpretation (2017)

    A Visual Guide to ECG Interpretation (2017)

    The current edition of A Visual Guide to ECG Interpretation (2017), much like the previous one (which I reviewed elsewhere), is a marked-up atlas of important, must-be-able-to-interpret-correctly electrocardiograms. Almost every important ECG that you can think of can be found here: coronary ischemia and occlusion, hyperkalemia, Brugada pattern, Wolff-Parkinson-White pattern, Wellens sign,  arrhythmogenic right ventricular…

  • Atlas of Pathology (2015)

    Atlas of Pathology (2015)

    Robbins and Cotran Atlas of Pathology (2015) contains more than 1,500 high-yield medical images, including clinical and intraoperative photographs, pictures of gross pathology specimens, blood smears, H&E stains, electron micrographs, funduscopic and endoscopic images, plain radiographs, CTs, ultrasonographic images, MRIs, and more. (I reviewed the previous edition of this book elsewhere. This review has been updated to reflect my…

  • The Psychiatric Interview (2017)

    The Psychiatric Interview (2017)

    Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question. E.E. Cummings I once overheard a medical professional ask a patient who had just suffered through a failed suicide attempt, “I bet you feel pretty stupid about the whole thing, don’t you?” Most reasonable people would recognize right away that this question was quite poorly…

  • Antibiotic Basics for Clinicians (2019)

    Antibiotic Basics for Clinicians (2019)

    At some point in their educational career, medical students need to successfully navigate the transition from microbiology and pharmacology, —i.e., bugs and drugs—to infectious diseases, that is, diagnosing and managing infectious disease syndromes and distinguishing them from their noninfectious mimics. This transition is challenging for many for several reasons.  The main one is, in my…