“Breaking Bad”: Character is Fate Meth-cooking Walt reaches new height of art: No Excuses Warning:  spoiler alert. If you have not seen the final episode of  Breaking Bad, do not read further. The episode contains a major plot twist which is discussed in this Op- Ed. It is fiendishly appropriate that the modern Greek tragedy, […]

by John C. Goodman, PhD Chapter 2: PRINCIPLES OF REFORM What are the principles of health reform? One might suppose they are fairly easy to enumerate and command widespread support. As it turns out, that is not the case. Here are five recommended principles. If they are followed, the odds of successful health policy reform […]

Sonoma Medicine The magazine of the Sonoma County Medical Association CURRENT BOOKS By Rick Flinders, MD Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson, Simon & Schuster, 656 pages. Perhaps the first clue to how much Steve Jobs thought of himself is his choice of biographer: Walter Isaacson, the same man who wrote biographies of Albert Einstein and […]

by Danielle Ofri, MD Sonoma Medicine | The magazine of the Sonoma County Medical Association CURRENT BOOKS: Hoping for More: a review by Deborah Donlon, MD It seems the American public is yearning to figure out what makes doctors tick. First came How Doctors Think (2008) by Dr. Jerome Groopman, followed by What Doctors Feel […]

by James Muehlberger, Esq, Kansas Alumni Magazine, No 3, 2014 True Crime A lawyer’s successful search for a missing court case sets straight the crooked tale of Frank and Jesse James By Steven Hill “The Ballad of Jesse James” Jesse James we understand Has killed many a man He robbed the Union trains He stole […]

Book Review: ‘Poems That Make Grown Men Cry,’ edited by Anthony and Ben Holden You don’t need a degree in creative writing to be brought to tears by verse. Terry George, the Irish screenwriter and director, chokes up whenever he reads Seamus Heaney’s “Requiem for the Croppies.” The sonnet is an acutely condensed retelling of […]

By Mary Roach CURRENT BOOKS: Chewing the Fat By Jeff Sugarman, MD Gulp, the new book by science writer/humorist Mary Roach, offers an entertaining if somewhat meandering and tangential tour of the alimentary canal. From top to bottom Roach takes us to places we never knew existed, and she digs down deeply into the often […]

Book Review: ‘Sorry About That’ by Edwin L. Battistella The typical public apology purports to be an expression of regret and self-reproach, but in fact is meant to defend and justify Public apologies might not be so nauseating if there weren’t so many of them: Corporations apologize for real and imagined misdeeds; celebrities apologize for […]

WHO OWNS YOUR BODY?: Doctors and Patients Behind Bars by Madeleine Pelner Cosman, PhD, Esq., Praeger Publishing, (www.praeger.com)Westport, Connecticut ISBN: 0‑313-0327‑2 In 1993, Dr Madeleine Pelner Cosman, a health care attorney, reviewed Medicare and Medicaid litigation and legislation from their beginnings. She was startled to discover that the law most of us accepted as primarily […]

CURRENT BOOKS |  Miraculous Medical Tales | by Brien A. Seeley, MD Extreme Medicine: How Exploration Transformed Medicine in the Twentieth Century, Kevin Fong, MD, Penguin (2014) | 304 pages, It’s amazing what a body can stand —Third-year resident observation My Father-in-law, the late Dr. Lyle Powell Jr., taught me the axiom that “to best […]