The New York Times Book of Medicine

April 22, 2013
Science writer and reporter Kolata (Rethinking Thin) has compiled article reprints in a demonstration of the multiple personalities of mathematics. From party conversation fodder to the esoteric, topics and authors appear and reappear all in the articulate, clever voice that can be expected from the New York Times. Articles both brief and extended are divided into broad categories of general mathematics; statistics and coincidences; famous problems throughout mathematical history; chaos and randomness; cryptography; computers in mathematics; and mathematicians themselves. Readers might recognize contributors such as James Gleick, Malcolm Browne, David Cay Johnston, Paul Hoffman, and John Tierney, among many others. Readers will find answers to such varied questions as: How can chaos theory be applied to the stock market? Does the evidence support weather as a cause of arthritis pain? How solid is the conjecture of environmental toxins as a cause of disease clusters? Many fascinating problems are explained in language that the layperson will understand, without relying on equations; those with more than a passing interest in mathematics will find many topics of interest worthy of further reading. This compilation of real-world applications will interest those with an inclination toward mathematics or problem-solving.

May 15, 2015
This book is a compilation of more than 120 New York Times articles about various medical issues, covering important developments from the past century and a half. The articles are arranged into 22 chapters, each covering a specific medical topic, including AIDS, Alzheimer's Disease, Ethics, Heart Disease, and Public Health. There is a Medicine Timeline as well as an index. This interesting title would be well suited for the circulating collection of most academic or public libraries, where the audience could be practitioners or students interested in popular coverage of the field as well as general readers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)