Book Reviews

Healthcare

The Fever: How Malaria has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years

By Scott J. Pearson | by Scott J. Pearson

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…

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Presentation

Beyond Bullet Points: Using PowerPoint to Tell a Persuasive Story that Gets Results.

By Scott J. Pearson | by Scott J. Pearson

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…

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Politics

If You Can Keep It: The Forgotten Promise of American Liberty

By Scott J. Pearson | by Scott J. Pearson

by Eric Metaxas(c) 2016. The title of this book is stolen from Benjamin Franklin when asked if we were founding a monarchy or a republic. With his classic quick wit, he responded, “A republic… if you can keep it.” This book, by a radio talk show host, comprises a series of lecture-type chapters that admonishes patriotism instead of carelessness towards America. It contains many anecdotes which are interesting, such as that of Nathan Hale’s, “I…

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Healthcare Science

The Language of Life: DNA and the Revolution in Personalized Medicine

By Scott J. Pearson | by Scott J. Pearson

by Francis S. Collins(c) 2010  My employer (Vanderbilt University Medical Center) is the world’s leader in implementing the ideas around personalized medicine, so I picked up this audiobook to educate me on what’s going on around me while I drove to and from work. In it, I found interesting stories from patients combined with weighty data from the human genome. Collins maintains a warm bedside manner as well as a writer as he does as…

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Biostatistics Software-Technology

R for Data Science: Visualize, Model, Transform, Tidy, and Import Data

By Scott J. Pearson | by Scott J. Pearson

R for Data Scienceby Hadley Wickham and Garret Grolemund.(c) 2017. If the above quote is the mission of this book, consider the task accomplished. Where most books in computer science fall down in trying to be cute while communicating an educational message, this book addresses the task of education about R squarely, and it does so in a manner that engages the mind with interesting problems. Usually, I skip the exercises sections of most computer…

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Science

Translational Research and Clinical Practice: Basic Tools for Medical Decision Making and Self-Learning

By Scott J. Pearson | by Scott J. Pearson

by Stephen C. Aronoff.(c) 2011. This book was a review – and to some degree, an extension – of medical school for me. I always enjoyed reviewing the medical literature. In fact, it was my favorite part of my medical training and the part I miss the most. I love translating research into clinical advice. Unfortunately, fortune had it that the clinic was not to be my domain, so I sit in the research realm…

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