Ruth Winter

BOOKS BY AND FOR MEMBERS

by Ruth Winter

The Autoimmune Connection: Essential Information for Women on Diagnosis, Treatment, and Getting on With Your Life by Rita Baron-Faust (NASW) and Jill P. Buyon, MD, published by Contemporary Books.

As if the immune system weren’t complicated itself, the diseases caused by its misfiring can affect every organ and tissue in the body, spanning just about every medical discipline. Understanding the more than 80 diverse illnesses termed autoimmune can be difficult, even for scientists and clinicians. But for the millions of people diagnosed with these illnesses (some of whom have more than one disease), it can be daunting. Until now, there has been no book for the public thoroughly grounded in medical science. The Autoimmune Connection, by New York freelance Rita Baron-Faust, covers more than two dozen autoimmune diseases that primarily affect women and explains how they impact every stage of a woman’s life. The book, Baron-Faust’s sixth volume on women’s health, was written with clinician/researcher Jill P. Buyon, MD, head of the Lupus Clinic at the Hospital for Joint Diseases/Orthopaedic Institute in New York, with input and review from more than 50 other experts in the field. Baron-Faust can be reached at baronfaust@aol.com. Publicist is Cori Spragg Moriarty, 312-233-7596, cori_moriarty@mcgraw-hill.com.

Crab Wars: A Tale of Horseshoe Crabs, Bioterrorism, and Human Health by William Sargent (NASW), published by University Press of New England.

Surviving almost unmolested for 300 million years, the horseshoe crab is now the object of an intense legal and ethical struggle involving marine biologists, environmentalists, U.S. government officials, biotechnologists, and international corporations. The source of this friction is the discovery 25 years ago that horseshoe crab blood provides the basis for the most reliable test for the deadly and ubiquitous gram-negative bacteria. Because every drug certified by the FDA must be tested using the horseshoe crab derivative known as Limulus lysate, a multimillion dollar industry has emerged involving the license to “bleed” horseshoe crabs and the rights to their breeding grounds. Massachusetts freelance William Sargent, a consultant for the NOVA Science Series, has spent much of his life observing, studying, and collecting horseshoe crabs. As a result, he presents a thoroughly accessible insider’s guide to the discovery of the lysate test, the exploitation of the crabs, and the legal and governmental wrangling over the creatures’ ultimate fate. In the end, the story is a sobering reflection on the unintended consequences of scientific progress and the danger of self-regulated industries controlling a limited natural resource. Sargent can be reached at sargb@winstarmail.com.

What Your Astronomy Textbook Won’t Tell You by Norman Sperling (NASW), published by Everything in the Universe.

Norman Sperling, a northern California freelance, has taught introductory astronomy to thousands of college students. This book was written as a supplement to conventional astronomy textbooks. The book flags out-dated paradigms, clarifies astronomy’s confusing terminology (especially its oxymorons), presents perspectives that most texts leave out, provides supplemental information to help students, suggests fresh term-paper topics for students to research, and is laced with boners committed by Sperling’s least-attentive students. Sperling can be reached at nsperling@california.com.

Hacking Matter: Levitating Chairs, Quantum Mirages, and the Infinite Weirdness of Programmable Atoms by Wil McCarthy (NASW), published by Basic Books.

Programmable matter is probably not the next technological revolution, nor even perhaps the one after that. But it’s coming, and when it does, it will change our lives as much as any invention ever has. Programmable matter research is supported by companies ranging from Levi Strauss to IBM to the Defense Department, and the research is taking place in laboratories at MIT, Harvard, Sun Microsystems, and elsewhere. Being created are arrays of microscopic devices called “quantum dots” capable of acting like programmable atoms. They can be configured electronically to replicate the properties of any known atom and then can be changed, as fast as an electrical signal can travel, to have the properties of a different atom. McCarthy describes how researchers are learning to control the electronic, optical, thermal, magnetic, and mechanical properties of this extraordinary technology; and where all this will lead. Wil McCarthy, a Colorado freelancer and science columnist for the SciFi channel, wrote this book as an expansion of an article that appeared in Wired. He can be reached at wmccarth@spry.net. Publicist for the book is Angela Baggetta at 212-340-8162, angela.baggetta@perseusbooks.com.

Warning Signs by Alan Caruba (NASW), published by Merrill Press.

Caruba, a New Jersey freelance writer, is founder of the media spoof The Boring Institute, (best known for its annual list “The Most Boring Celebrities of the Year”) and of The National Anxiety Center, a clearing house for information about scare campaigns designed to influence public opinion and policy. The theme of his book, a collection of his columns, is “The good news is that the bad news is wrong.” Chapters are: “Coyotes, Turkeys, and Bears, Oh My!;” “The Price of Water vs. Oil;” and “Apocalypse Not!” Caruba can be reached at 973-763-6392 or at www.caruba.com.

DNA: The Secret of Life by James D. Watson and Andrew Berry, with contributions by Jan Witkowski (NASW), published by Alfred A. Knopf.

Witkowski, co-author with Jim Watson of the textbook Recombinant DNA, helped Watson with this book, published to coincide with this year’s 50th anniversary of the discovery of the DNA double helix. The book is loosely associated with a series of television programs Watson recorded to be shown on PBS here and Channel 4 in the UK. The book was written by Watson and Andrew Berry, with Witkowski, director of The Banbury Center, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, contributing three chapters: “Genetic Fingerprinting;” “Gene Hunting;” and “Defying Disease.” The book covers a wide variety of topics at the lay level, ranging from Mendel to behavioral genetics. The publisher refers to Watson’s “bravura storytelling,” and Witkowski says that Watson is as provocative as ever. The first review to appear comments that the book is “guaranteed to piss off the politically correct, the fans of revealed religion, and eco-sentimentalists of any stripe.” Witkowski can be reached at 516-367-5106 and witkowsk@cshl.edu.

The Big Splat, or How Our Moon Came to Be by Dana Mackenzie, published by John Wiley & Sons.

Mackenzie, a freelance mathematics and science writer, describes the current scientific consensus on the moon’s origin, the “giant impact” theory or, as she calls it, “the Big Splat.” She believes that the scientific mysteries, that we went to the moon to solve, have now been solved--at least in their broad outlines--with many details yet to be filled in. One of the most enjoyable things about writing this book, Mackenzie notes, was the chance to delve into the history of human attempts to understand, first of all, what the moon “is” and then where it came from. Among the other colorful characters she describes are George Darwin (son of Charles), who proposed a distinctly evolutionary theory of the moon, and Thomas Jefferson Jackson See, a rogue astronomer whose “capture theory” nevertheless was the most widely accepted theory of the moon’s origin before the Apollo missions. In the aftermath of the Columbia disaster, readers may be interested to see a compelling case presented that we never would have understood the first and most basic thing about the moon if we had not sent people there. Mackenzie can be reached at 831-465-1063 and mackenzi@curzio.com. Publicist for the book is Walter Halee, whalee@wiley.com.

The Magic Search Words by Paul J. Krupin, published by Direct Contact.

What are the magic search words? They are the best search words to enter in that little blank text box at your favorite search engine. According to author Paul J. Krupin, there are lots of really good health, scholarship, and job information Web sites, but there’s also a lot of crap out there. Krupin is a scientist and currently a U.S. government researcher at the DOE Hanford Site. Based on his experience, he’s developed online tactics to help readers leapfrog the standard search engine technologies to quickly and reliably get to the best sites. Here’s a neat little trick to help eliminate nearly all the commercial Web sites from a search with just one click. It’s the “Minus Dot Com Trick.” Add a minus sign and the word “com” to your search (example: health -com). If you go to Google.com and try this, you will find that your results will drop from 98 million to 6.54 million, which is greater than a 92 percent reduction. Other tricks help refine the search further. Krupin can be reached at 800-457-8746 and info@magicsearchwords.com.

The Man Who Found Time: James Hutton and the Discovery of The Earth’s Antiquity by Jack Repcheck, published by Perseus Publishing.

On a mild day in the late 18th century, James Hutton, a gentleman farmer from Edinburgh, set out to date the earth. Too old to conduct his exploration by land, he sailed the North Sea along Scotland’s coast until he came to Siccar Point. There, at the bottom of a cliff, was a gray-colored exposure, but the layers were not horizontal like the ones on a quarry wall. They were vertical, standing straight up like a row of books on a shelf. Finally, Hutton believed there was irrefutable proof. The earth was immeasurably old? Why did Hutton not become famous for his discovery that the earth had been around for millions of years? Repcheck argues that Hutton’s work was lost to history because his writings were impenetrable. An acquiring editor at W.W. Norton, Repcheck did what great editors are supposed to do--he took an important but unreadable manuscript and turned it into an easily understood, fascinating book. Publicist for the book is Lissa Warren at 617-252-5200, www.perseuspublishing.com.

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Send material about new books to Ruth Winter, 44 Holly Drive, Short Hills, NJ 07078, or e-mail ruthwrite@aol.com. Include the name of the publicist and appropriate contact information, as well as how you prefer members to get in touch with you.