In his new book, “A Modern Contagion” (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019), Amir Afkhami, MD ’03, PhD, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, uses Iranian, European, and American archival records to establish a comprehensive overview of pandemic cholera in Iran from the early 19th century to the First World War. Tracking those historical outbreaks, Afkhami argues that the effects of pandemic cholera played a significant role in altering the country’s social, economic, and political development, ultimately molding modern Iran.
Walter Jean, MD, professor of neurological surgery, recently published “Skull Base Surgery: Strategies” (Thieme Medical Publishers, 2019), a 455-page text that has quickly became one of the top new neurosurgery books. Jean, a board-certified neurosurgeon with 15 years of experience in both open and endoscopic skull base surgery, focuses on state-of-the-art skull-base procedures, important thought processes, and vital strategies required to perform them.
The text is broken into nine sections and 32 chapters, organized by anatomy cover tumors in the anterior, anterolateral, lateral, central, postero-superior, and postero-inferior skull base regions, and clivus, petrous bone, and ventricles. Real-life cases enhance understanding of all the elements that go into each operation. Perspectives sections at the end of each chapter embrace the concept of diverse surgeon viewpoints on similar ideas, techniques, and approaches.
Susan McCormick, MD ’88, a gastroenterologist with Virginia Mason Health System in Seattle, Washington, recently published her debut novel “The Fog Ladies” (The Wild Rose Press, 2019).
The mystery novel, McCormick’s first, is set in San Francisco’s storied Pacific Heights neighborhood. McCormick also published a children’s book titled “Granny Can’t Remember Me” about Alzheimer’s disease and dementia told from the perspective of a 6-year-old.
Christina M. Puchalski, MD ’94, RESD ’97, founder and director of the George Washington University’s (GW) Institute for Spirituality and Health and professor of medicine at GW School of Medicine and Health Sciences, partnered with Betty Ferrell, PhD, MA, FAAN, FPCN, CHPN, director and professor in the Division of Nursing Research and Education, Department of Population Sciences, at City of Hope Hospital, on a new book about spirituality and palliative care. The book, titled “Making Health Care Whole” (Templeton Press, 2019), serves as both a scholarly review of the field as well as a practical resource with specific recommendations to improve spiritual care in clinical practice. Puchalski and Ferrell provide definitions and chart a common language for addressing spiritual care across the disciplines of medicine, nursing, social work, chaplaincy, and psychology, and they present models of spiritual care and offer tools for screening, assessment, care planning, and interventions.
