by Joanathan EngelCopyright (c) 2006. Although this book is a little over a decade old, most of its history is still relevant to the equation when one speaks of HIV/AIDS. The history of the male-homosexual community combined with the history of IV-drug-user community combined with Asian/African transmissions is still locked in many of the same patterns that were present in 2006. Engel does a strong job of telling their stories and in so doing, telling…
bg Randall M. PackardCopyright (c) 2016. I chose this book to read because I wanted a tutorial to the field of global health, and I find that histories are interesting tutorials to subjects. The author, unknown to me, is a Johns Hopkins professor of medical history and is known for writing a work on the history of malaria. The book meets my already-high expectations. Written well, it chronicles early attempts to control disease in “foreign”…
by Paul Teetor Copyright 2011. I picked up this book with the intention of learning intermediate R. I was past the novice stage of learning the language, but I was still short of learning Advanced R. This book gave me the confidence to read R code more quickly and to understand more nuance in this (fun) language. This book is written by a quant (Wall Street data analyst) who has Masters degrees in both statistics…
by Jeffrey D. SachsAudiobook(c) 2016. I voted for Hillary Clinton twice in 2016. She beat Bernie Sanders in the first race, only to lose to Donald Trump in the second in a close race. Bernie Sanders relied on Sachs’ economics advice. Therefore, I find it important to educate myself on the issues in this democracy and to read this book to illuminate my ignorant mind. Sachs lays out a powerful and persuasive case for engaging…
by Hadley Wickham(c) 2016. This is another book that applies to one of my nascent passions: Statistical programming with R. This book brings forth the central visualization package in ggplot by its author Hadley Wickham. Like most of Hadley’s works, the book is meticulously researched and extremely clear. It is a winner in accomplishing its goals of introducing visualization in R. It even contains a short section on modeling in R. For those who don’t…
by Sonia Shah(c) 2010.Especially during the later Bush years, I heard a lot about mosquito nets to prevent malaria. It was a simple intervention that provided real action. Now, I’m told many (actually, most) of those mosquito nets aren’t used to protect those that are sleeping. They are used as fish nets or on only adults, not on more vulnerable children. This little-known fact and more comprises the main storyline in Fever. Written by an…
Beyond Bullet Points: Using PowerPoint to Tell a Persuasive Story that Gets Results.by Cliff Atkinson(c) 2018. This book, sponsored by Microsoft, uses contemporary theories about communication to advocate that people stop using PowerPoint as a crutch and instead use it as a tool to tell a story. It accomplishes that task very effectively. Most people use PowerPoint to delineate a series of statements to be used in a presentation. I’ve sat through many lectures in…