Greg Dworkin

This is the first edition collected tweets of Mark B. Reid, MD, @medicalaxioms. This project began in 2010 as place to share pithy quotes from famous old dead doctors. After running out of good content, I was forced to start making my own. Through the last 7 years, we've engaged in a jolly dialogue on the social media on topics ranging from common diagnostic mistakes to why it's good for a doctor to have a dog. While all the content is mine, it's richness comes as a result of the exchange between me and many other smart medical types on social media. This collection offers an inside look at medical education for students and residents and the observations of a doctor in practice for 20+ years. The statements within are not medical advice and should not be used to practice medicine, make medical decisions, or judge physicians or other healthcare workers. No axiom is true in all circumstances. Medicine is by it's very nature non-binary—there is seldom one right answer for a given situation. The treatment that is good for one patient may easily kill another. Thus the practice of medicine should be left to trained experts who combine book learning, current medical literature, years of supervised training and personal experience to engage in a complicated but maximally effective practice based on medical judgment. It is far easier to judge a single medical decision than to practice good medicine, day in and day out, for years. As you read you will find contradictory statements—sometimes two aphorism directly oppose one another. This is the practice of medicine. We must sometimes hold two contradictory statements in the mind at the same time, hanging on to two competing hypotheses until one or the other becomes more correct. I hope you enjoy these aphorisms but if you find one you don't like or you think you could write better, by all means do so! The instructions are contained within to send me edits and your own aphorisms. It's my intention that reading this book would be an active, not passive, process. It should get you thinking about the rules you use in your practice and their exceptions. I hope it makes you think about how you were taught and what you learned and how you teach others. It is intended to be interactive and I hope you don't agree with everything you read. There is much more style than evidence in a day of seeing patients.

#1 New York Times bestseller “Barry will teach you almost everything you need to know about one of the deadliest outbreaks in human history.”—Bill Gates "Monumental... an authoritative and disturbing morality tale."—Chicago Tribune The strongest weapon against pandemic is the truth. Read why in the definitive account of the 1918 Flu Epidemic. Magisterial in its breadth of perspective and depth of research, The Great Influenza provides us with a precise and sobering model as we confront the epidemics looming on our own horizon. As Barry concludes, "The final lesson of 1918, a simple one yet one most difficult to execute, is that...those in authority must retain the public's trust. The way to do that is to distort nothing, to put the best face on nothing, to try to manipulate no one. Lincoln said that first, and best. A leader must make whatever horror exists concrete. Only then will people be able to break it apart." At the height of World War I, history’s most lethal influenza virus erupted in an army camp in Kansas, moved east with American troops, then exploded, killing as many as 100 million people worldwide. It killed more people in twenty-four months than AIDS killed in twenty-four years, more in a year than the Black Death killed in a century. But this was not the Middle Ages, and 1918 marked the first collision of science and epidemic disease.

Why do Republican politicians promise to rein in government, only to face repeated rebellions from Republican voters and media critics for betraying their principles? Why do Democratic politicians propose an array of different policies to match the diversity of their supporters, only to become mired in stark demographic divisions over issue priorities? In short, why do the two parties act so differently-whether in the electorate, on the campaign trail, or in public office? Asymmetric Politics offers a comprehensive explanation: The Republican Party is the vehicle of an ideological movement while the Democratic Party is a coalition of social groups. Republican leaders prize conservatism and attract support by pledging loyalty to broad values. Democratic leaders instead seek concrete government action, appealing to voters' group identities and interests by endorsing specific policies. This fresh and comprehensive investigation reveals how Democrats and Republicans think differently about politics, rely on distinct sources of information, argue past one another, and pursue divergent goals in government. It provides a rigorous new understanding of contemporary polarization and governing dysfunction while demonstrating how longstanding features of American politics and public policy reflect our asymmetric party system.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER "A profound book.... It will break your heart but also leave you with hope." —J.D. Vance, author of Hillbilly Elegy "[A] deeply empathetic book." —The Economist With stark photo essays and unforgettable true stories, Chris Arnade cuts through "expert" pontification on inequality, addiction, and poverty to allow those who have been left behind to define themselves on their own terms. After abandoning his Wall Street career, Chris Arnade decided to document poverty and addiction in the Bronx. He began interviewing, photographing, and becoming close friends with homeless addicts, and spent hours in drug dens and McDonald's. Then he started driving across America to see how the rest of the country compared. He found the same types of stories everywhere, across lines of race, ethnicity, religion, and geography. The people he got to know, from Alabama and California to Maine and Nevada, gave Arnade a new respect for the dignity and resilience of what he calls America's Back Row--those who lack the credentials and advantages of the so-called meritocratic upper class. The strivers in the Front Row, with their advanced degrees and upward mobility, see the Back Row's values as worthless. They scorn anyone who stays in a dying town or city as foolish, and mock anyone who clings to religion or tradition as naïve. As Takeesha, a woman in the Bronx, told Arnade, she wants to be seen she sees herself: "a prostitute, a mother of six, and a child of God." This book is his attempt to help the rest of us truly see, hear, and respect millions of people who've been left behind.