Most Popular Books by Lewis Thomas

Elegant, suggestive, and clarifying, Lewis Thomas''s profoundly humane vision explores the world around us and examines the complex interdependence of all things. Extending beyond the usual limitations of biological science and into a vast and wondrous world of hidden relationships, this provocative book explores in personal, poetic essays to topics such as computers, germs, language, music, death, insects, and medicine. Lewis Thomas writes, "Once you have become permanently startled, as I am, by the realization that we are a social species, you tend to keep an eye out for the pieces of evidence that this is, by and large, good for us."

The author''s insights about a variety of natural phenomena contribute to our understanding of some of the great medical puzzles of the era. -- Back cover.

This magnificent collection of essays by scientist and National Book Award-winning writer Lewis Thomas remains startlingly relevant for today’s world. Luminous, witty, and provocative, the essays address such topics as “The Attic of the Brain,” “Falsity and Failure,” “Altruism,” and the effects the federal government’s virtual abandonment of support for basic scientific research will have on medicine and science. Profoundly and powerfully, Thomas questions the folly of nuclear weaponry, showing that the brainpower and money spent on this endeavor are needed much more urgently for the basic science we have abandoned—and that even medicine’s most advanced procedures would be useless or insufficient in the face of the smallest nuclear detonation. And in the title essay, he addresses himself with terrifying poignancy to the question of what it is like to be young in the nuclear age. “If Wordsworth had gone to medical school, he might have produced something very like the essays of Lewis Thomas.”—TIME “No one better exemplifies what modern medicine can be than Lewis Thomas.”—The New York Times Book Review

From the 1920s when he watched his father, a general practitioner who made housecalls and wrote his prescriptions in Latin, to his days in medical school and beyond, Lewis Thomas saw medicine evolve from an art into a sophisticated science. The Youngest Science is Dr. Thomas''s account of his life in the medical profession and an inquiry into what medicine is all about--the youngest science, but one rich in possibility and promise. He chronicles his training in Boston and New York, his war career in the South Pacific, his most impassioned research projects, his work as an administrator in hospitals and medical schools, and even his experiences as a patient. Along the way, Thomas explores the complex relationships between research and practice, between words and meanings, between human error and human accomplishment, More than a magnificent autobiography, The Youngest Science is also a celebration and a warning--about the nature of medicine and about the future life of our planet.

A Pulitzer Prize Finalist In this captivating exploration of the natural world, acclaimed author Lewis Thomas takes readers on a compelling journey into the intricacies of life and mortality. The medusa is a tiny jellyfish that lives on the ventral surface of a sea slug found in the Bay of Naples. Readers will find themselves caught up in the fate of the medusa and the snail as a metaphor for eternal issues of life and death as Lewis Thomas further extends the exploration of man and his world begun in The Lives of a Cell. Among the treasures in this magnificent book are essays on the human genius for making mistakes, on disease and natural death, on cloning, on warts, and on Montaigne, as well as an assessment of medical science and health care. In these essays and others, Thomas once again conveys his observations of the scientific world in prose marked by wonder and wit.

A collection of essays on a variety of topics in medicine and biology.

The world responded with horror to ISIS''s campaign of destruction of cultural heritage across the Middle East, including with calls for an international response to prevent such damage. At the same time, newspapers and screens were filled with images of human destruction, devastated cities, and thousands of refugees fleeing the conflict. This juxtaposition caused a backlash against those voicing their concerns about the destruction of ancient ruins, popularly framed as dispute about ''stone versus lives''. In the face of so much human suffering, it can seem inappropriate to worry about anything but the urgent, basic needs of people. Heritage and War addresses this issue within the context of a wider debate, amidst a range of moral questions. Eleven original essays investigate a variety of philosophical and moral questions arising from the phenomenon of heritage destruction in war, such how we ought to respond to heritage that is damaged in war, the nature of the harm caused by such damage, and the morally appropriate treatment of sites of war and conflict that have themselves become heritage sites. Such issues are philosophically rich, and yet they have been largely neglected by academic philosophers. This book makes a substantial contribution to developing this new philosophical territory and identifying the role that philosophers have to play in developing our understanding of and responses to these important issues.

Written by world-renowned scientists, this volume portrays the possible direct and indirect devastation of human health from a nuclear attack. The most comprehensive work yet produced on this subject, The Medical Implications of Nuclear War includes an overview of the potential environmental and physical effects of nuclear bombardment, describes the problems of choosing who among the injured would get the scarce medical care available, addresses the nuclear arms race from a psychosocial perspective, and reviews the medical needs--in contrast to the medical resources likely to be available--after a nuclear attack. "It should serve as the definitive statement on the consequences of nuclear war."--Arms Control Today

"VB6 COM" tackles the important, but often under-discussed issue of COM and VB, offers a global look at COM issues, starting from first principles, puts new technologies within the COM context, discusses the real COM future and discusses some possible implications of COM+--all within a well-paced, practical tutorial format.