Category: Book of the Day

So you’ve got a corpse. What now?

In one of the more interesting (and probably weirder) books we’ve added to the collection recently, Norman Cantor’s After We Die: The Life and Times of the Human Cadaver explores the trip of dead human bodies from end of life through into the ground. Find out what sort of social practices, legal processes, and other fun things get applied to bodies after their primary function has ceased.

It’s a morbidly interesting trip through our customs, medical, and legal systems to find out the rules for cadavers. Recommended for pre-med, pre-law, or anyone else. It’s actually pretty interesting!

Prep for this week’s House by upping your smallpox knowledge

Check out that wicked cover! That’s how you know that, in its day, smallpox was some hardcore business. The wickedly titled Angel of Death: The Story of Smallpox is brought to you by author Gareth Williams, and chronicles how smallpox ravaged humanity. Not to spoil the story or anything, but smallpox is eventually defeated by a rural doctor from the very metal sounding Gloucestershire area in the United Kingdom.

Anyway, beyond the obvious target audience of pre-med and people interested in medical things, on House this week, they’re leading us to believe that smallpox is back like the McRib, but I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that this is FINALLY lupus’s big week. Regardless, it might be fun to prep by finding out what the real smallpox was like.

A hen bakes a cake in the Book of the Day

Occasionally I like to remind you that we collect children’s books to support our early child education courses. Why? Because we’re total suckers for pictures here.

 

In The Red Hen, adapted by Ed and Rebecca Emberly, Red Hen bakes a Simply Splendid Cake for her friends… none of which are helping out. Unfortunately, this doesn’t end in a steel cage match, but the pictures are neat and kids will enjoy it.

Use the library to understand the sustainability push on campus

 

We get a lot of books to support the campus’s sustainability push. Pros, cons, debates, and more fill the pages of many of our new items, like today’s book: Powering the Future: The Problems & Possibilities of Green Energy. Learn the differences between alternative and renewable resources, explore the debates about certain fuels that might not pay off in the long run, and the impact these have on developing nations.

All of that and more issues are summed up in this great introductory text to the big issues inside sustainability. Remember, we’ve got plenty more like this one. Just ask a librarian!

Is your campus being bought and sold? This book thinks so

Today’s book, The Lost Soul of Higher Education by Ellen Schrecker, posits that outside interests are leading an idealogical assault on academic freedom. From corporate influence on material taught, distribution of funds, and using the current economic state to scare initiatives into action or inaction, the author compares the intrusion of outside interests on campuses across the US to the obstacles faced during the McCarthy era – and she would know, she’s a Cold War scholar.

So pick it up and see what you think. It should be of interest to anyone working, attending, or paying for higher education.

Money over medicine in today’s book

How bad is America’s healthcare system? Many already feel that the need to make profit is more important for pharmaceutical companies, but the author of today’s book believes it to be much worse.

White Coat, Black Hat by Carl Eliot contains many purportedly true horror stories from the medical world. Companies letting money jeopardize the testing process, secretly bankrolling every-day physicians, patients as consumers with no chance for advocacy, scholarly research journals depending on drug corporations’ advertising dollars, huge gifts frequently accepted by doctors from companies… It’s a big, scary list! It should be interesting for anyone entering the medical profession, people concerned with patients’ rights and advocacy, or anyone with a shady doctor.

The biggest impact on student sports?

Title IX insured that, regardless of gender, people would not be denied funding or opportunities in academia, including school sports teams. Some of its biggest successes and hurdles commonly recognized are focused on the sports aspect, and today’s book, Getting in the Game: Title IX and the Women’s Sports Revolution by Deborah L. Blake, takes a closer look at how much of an impact it’s had.  Going over the progress made since its creation in 1972 and the room it still has to grow, the author takes an even-handed approach into celebrating and criticizing what Title IX has accomplished.

Our nursing books go straight for the trachea

When someone needs to be put on a ventilator or other breathing apparatus, there’s commonly a tracheostomy involved, or opening of the trachea. Since we’re producing tomorrow’s nurses here at JCCC (and soon enough we’ll be part of the Olathe Medical Center), it’s important to stay up on similar business.  That’s why we get books like Tracheostomies: The Complete Guide, edited by Linda L. Morris and M. Sherif Afifi.  Guides like this will take what you learn in your class and expand it into even more detail, increasing your expertise. If there’s any specific aspect of nursing you’re into, be sure to hit up our catalog and look for it!

Charles Lane thinks the death penalty is unfair & wants to save it

Weird, huh? Charle Lane’s new book takes a hard look at a controversial subject, capital punishment, and concludes that it is racially biased, poorly implemented, and in need of reform.  Most of the time when you hear an argument start like that, somebody is looking to get rid of it. Stay of Execution: Saving the Death Penalty from Itself, on the other hand, hopes to convince readers that we need to preserve the death penalty through a complete overhaul.

Surely a book to incite debate and strong opinions, we recommend you check it out.

Creative Writing doesn’t do Lynd Ward justice

If you’re looking for a real creative master of the medium, look no further than our recently added Lynd Ward novella collections: Prelude to a Million Years/Song Without Words/Vertigo and Gods’ Man/Madman’s Drum/Wild Pilgrimage.

Ward, born in 1905, used images to tell stories in the print medium. By creating prints from his woodblock carvings, Lynd Ward’s haunting art brought stories to life in the most eerie of ways. Check it out.