ilkka

History of modern pharmacology

Revisado: 07-12-17

Very interesting and relevant!

A a physician I use (on my patients) all of the drugs that this book covers. The book also covers pretty much all of the drug families. Should've read this much earlier.

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Not an educational book.

Revisado: 03-16-15

Disclaimer: I listened only the first 60 minutes of this book.This review concerns only this first hour.

The first 20 minutes of this audiobooks is multiple iterations of the following: "No one ever thinks about their water. It comes from the tab and people don't understand how their lives are completely dependent on it. Their bodies are made of it. And yet no one ever appreciates how precious it is."

This over-extended intro is not very useful.

After the first 20 minutes the author gives one useful concept: "The water you drink has been around for the past 4 billion years. It's the same water that dinosaurs drank."
But Mr. Fishman does not expand on this eternal cycle. How much evaporation happens in a year? How much mixing is there between different layers of the ocean? He does not tell.

Soon the author starts laying out an agenda about how people are overusing water. He tells two stories about water shortages: one in Barcelona and another in a small town in US. The stories are interesting. However they do not help the reader understand the global water cycle.

I quit the book after the first 60 minutes. I felt the author hadn't said anything informative about water. I wanted answers to questions like
- How much water do people use around the globe?
- What do people use most water for?
- How much water is used in different economic activities: households, agriculture, industry? Why? Which industry is the most water intensive?
- What is the minimum water amount a person needs in order to survive? Why does the body need water? Why do plants need water?
- How is water processed to make it suitable for human consumption? What are the impurities and which processes reduce which pathogens?
- Where do communities usually take their water: rivers, lakes, groundwater, seawater?
- How many places make drinking water from seawater? How? How much energy does it require?
- How much of the global water reservoir is in oceans, lakes, rivers, clouds, ice?
- How much energy is generated with hydropower? How much does it vary from year to year?
- Where is the shortage of water most acute? Why? What kind of population density would be sustainable at those areas?


This is not necessarily a bad read; he did give two highly interesting stories about towns under distress. Such stories are very interesting and entertaining. But they are misleading without the proper context in my opinion.

I got annoyed with the prose very early and it probably distorts my perception. More babble-tolerant readers will learn a lot more than I.

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The holy grail has been found

Revisado: 03-11-13

What did you love best about Moonwalking with Einstein?

A very well written book. Extremely useful and fascinating topic in an easy-to-digest format. I couldn't recommend more. I actually started applying the techniques I learned from this book in my medical studies and honestly feel like I've made enormous progress.

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esto le resultó útil a 3 personas

A very good and informative book

Revisado: 02-11-13

Any additional comments?

The book takes an overall look on the global economics of energy. And does it well. I now have a base level understanding of every relevant source of industrial, vehicle and electrical energy. Exactly what I was looking for.One thing, however. I strongly advice to google yourself an understanding of the scales of energy measurements. Things like global daily oil usage in barrels (~80 million), yearly electricity consumption of your home country (around 90 TWh in finland), electricity output of a mediocre nuclear power plant (700 MW where I'm from). That kind of info doesn't transmit very well in the book, and knowing it beforehand helps to understand what the writer is really communicating.

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