You may have to register before you can download all our books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
A (posthumous) collection of prose from the nearly legendary writer, junkie, wordsmith, sometime Sub-Pop recording artist, a and inspiration to Kurt Cobain and countless others. "The work is deeply felt...Bernstein has been there and brought it back. Bernstein is a writer." [William S. Burroughs]
A “riveting and thoroughly researched” history of language technology’s effect on society across millennia—from Sumerian syntax to social media hashtags (Phil Lapsley). Writing was born thousands of years ago in Mesopotamia. Spreading to Sumer, and then Egypt, this revolutionary tool allowed rulers to extend their control far and wide, giving rise to the world’s first empires. When Phoenician traders took their alphabet to Greece, literacy’s first boom led to the birth of drama and democracy. In Rome, it helped spell the downfall of the Republic. Later, medieval scriptoria and vernacular bibles gave rise to religious dissent, and with the combination of cheaper paper and Gutenber...
Five Oceans in a Teaspoon is a memoir in short visual poems, written by poet/investigative journalist Dennis J Bernstein, typographic visualizations by designer/author Warren Lehrer. As with his journalism, Bernstein's poems reflect the struggle of everyday people trying to survive in the face of adversity. Divided into eight chapters, it spans a lifetime, lifetimes: growing up confused by dyslexia and a parent's alcoholism; graced by pogo sticks, boxing lessons and a mother's compassion; becoming a frontline witness to war and its aftermaths, to prison, street life, poverty, love and loss, to open heart surgery, caring for aging parents and visitations from them after they're gone. Lehrer's typographic compositions give form to the interior, emotional and metaphorical underpinnings of the poems. Together, the writing and visuals create a new whole that engages the reader to become an active participant in the navigation, discovery, and experience of each poem.
How-- and how pervasively-- quantum mechanics has entered the general culture is the subject of this book, an engaging, eclectic, and thought-provoking look at the curious, boundlessly fertile intersection of scientific thought and everyday life.
Health systems should function in such a way that the amount of inappropriate care is minimized, while at the same time stinting as little as possible on appropriate and necessary care. The ability to determine and identify which care is overused and which is underused is essential to this functioning. To this end, the "RAND/UCLA Appropriateness Method" was developed in the 1980s. It has been further developed and refined in North America and, increasingly, in Europe. The rationale behind the method is that randomized clinical trials--the "gold standard" for evidence-based medicine--are generally either not available or cannot provide evidence at a level of detail sufficient to apply to the ...
A history illustrating the complexity of medical decision making and risk. Still the leading cause of death worldwide, heart disease challenges researchers, clinicians, and patients alike. Each day, thousands of patients and their doctors make decisions about coronary angioplasty and bypass surgery. In Broken Hearts David S. Jones sheds light on the nature and quality of those decisions. He describes the debates over what causes heart attacks and the efforts to understand such unforeseen complications of cardiac surgery as depression, mental fog, and stroke. Why do doctors and patients overestimate the effectiveness and underestimate the dangers of medical interventions, especially when doing so may lead to the overuse of medical therapies? To answer this question, Jones explores the history of cardiology and cardiac surgery in the United States and probes the ambiguities and inconsistencies in medical decision making. Based on extensive reviews of medical literature and archives, this historical perspective on medical decision making and risk highlights personal, professional, and community outcomes.