Superfood Snacks to reignite your love affair with foods
Author: Christine Margaret
Publisher: Christine Margaret, 2011
ISBN: 9780980489385
200 pp including index
RRP $19.95 (on-line)
In my experience, this is a unique book. It is part cookbook, part dietary compendium, part nutritional encyclopaedia. It was created out of a need for Christine Margaret to find a way of ridding herself of fibromyalgia syndrome.
Tell me The Truth: conversations with my patients about life and death
Author: Ranjana Srivastava
Publisher: Penguin/Viking, 2010
ISBN: 9780670074402
320pp
RRP $32.95
This is a rare book and the author is a rare physician. Ranjana Srivastava is an oncologist working in Melbourne. She questions what she does and how she does it and strives to relate to her patients and their families with honesty and compassion. The title of the book reflects what many patients ask of her.
Not the Last Goodbye: on life, death, healing and cancer
David Servan-Schreiber
Scribe Publishing 2011
ISBN: 9781921844447
$24.95
144 pp
As it turns out, this book is the last goodbye from author David Servan-Schreiber. He wrote it during his tussle with brain cancer which had returned after many years. Servan-Schreiber was author of the book Anticancer: a new way of life (Viking, 2009) and was spokesperson for the Anticancer program; this played an important role in his approach to dealing with his illness.
A Mother’s Final Gift
Joyce & Barry Vissell
Ramira Publishing 2011
ISBN: 9780961272036
US$14.95
218 pp
The ‘gift’ that is the subject of this book was originally a very personal one. The authors, especially Joyce Vissell, have turned this into a gift to all readers of the book. Those readers who find their lives transformed by it, can perpetuate the giving.
Disconnect
Devra Davis
Scribe Publishing 2011
ISBN: 9781921640988
$32.95
288 pp, including index and appendix
This is an important book for the information it provides. At the same time, it is poorly written and/or poorly edited. Let me get the negative out of the way first.
Devra Davis is a scientist with a PhD and other written works to her name. I would have expected her to be clearer and more precise in her use of the English language and clearer in her logical exposition. I found whole paragraphs repeated in different sections of the book and, in some areas, gaps in explanations of important concepts or data. The irony in this is palpable: the disconnect of the title refers largely to the gap in what is known by the telecommunications industry and by governments and what is communicated to the public.
The Book of Lies
Mary Horlock
Text Publishing 2011
ISBN: 9781921758102
$32.95
288 pp
Mary Horlock twists her yarns expertly into the strands that form the lay of rope that winds its way through a difficult, interconnected past and present on the Island of Guernsey. She tackles aspects of the Nazi occupation in the Second World War and the struggles of a teenage girl more than forty years later. Horlock uses her extensive and intimate knowledge of the island and its people, along with an understanding of teenage angst and imagination, to give us an inspired tale of family frictions, loyalties, courage, deception and betrayal, loss, love and loneliness.
Devil in the Milk
Keith Woodford
Craig Potton Publishing
2007 (updated 2010)
ISBN: 9781877333705
NZ$34.99
257 pp, including index
Most people in Australia, New Zealand, North America and Europe drink cow’s milk, some in large quantities and many from an early age. What Prof Woodford writes about in this book should therefore be of concern to hundreds of millions of people. It is a story of research, business, government and vested interests. Those whose interests seem to be least considered in the way milk is presented to us are the consumers of the milk.
The Panic Virus: Fear, Myth and the Vaccination Debate
Seth Mnookin
Black Inc 2011
ISBN: 9781863955188
$32.95
448 pp, including index
When we are dealing with large issues that have a huge impact on society and the lives of the individuals in that society, it is important that we have available to us books such as The Panic Virus, to assist us in navigating our way. Vaccination is a global phenomenon with almost global support from governments and the medical professions, from academics and the World Health Organisation. It also has its many opponents and detractors. There are powerful and emotional arguments on both sides of the debate.
Indignez-Vous!
Stéphane Hessel
(Bilingual edition) translated by Damion Searls
Scribe 2011
ISBN: 9781921844225
$9.95
64 pp
Be Indignant! This is the call to action from a veteran of the World War II French Resistance. This is not a voice coming to us from the past but the current voice of a now still-feisty 93-year-old writing less than a year ago.
(more…)
Essays on Muslims and Multiculturalism
Edited by Raimond Gaita
Text 2011
ISBN: 9781921656606
$26.95
192 pp
In some respects this is a timely book and at the same time it is a shame it was not available ten years ago, as it may have helped to inform the debate at a time that John Howard was trying to change the values we live by and the understanding we have of those values.