Accompanied by an eye chart and a video tape, James Bellevue's Improve Your Eyesight is specifically intended for the non-specialist general reader seeking to use his or her eyes more efficiently and effectively for the simple purpose of seeing better. Bellevue points out that almost all seeing is self-taught, and as with any other motor skill, can be trained and developed to an optimal peak of performance. Improvement can actually be great enough to make contact lenses and vision defect corrective eyeglasses unnecessary. Through suggested skill building techniques, often dramatic improvements can be made for such conditions as nearsightedness, farsightedness, astigmatism, decreasing vision associated with advancing age, and more. Improve Your Eyesight basically updates the classic "Bates Method" with applications drawn from the latest and most up to date optical research. Four complete vision therapy programs are provided, plus guidelines to customizing a program for the individual reader's needs. The text is enhanced with on-screen exercises provided by the accompanying video tape. Improve Your Eyesight is a very welcome and uniquely original contribution to alternative health and medicine reference and resource materials.

Who would have thought this existed? This book was a quick, easy read. I bought it on a Friday and was already using it by Monday. The exercises take very little time and I'm already seeing results just a few weeks later. I would definitely give this book two thumbs up.

I am very happy I bought this book and video. My vision had been getting steadily worse. Every few years, I had to get stronger and stronger glasses. I was really beginning to worry about my ability to get around in my old age. This book has changed all that.

The book gives a clear and simple explanation of vision therapy, also known as the Bates Method. The video has sixteen different exercises, each of which is explained in detail in the book. I have seen other books on the subject, but nothing else has the graphics and exercises that this video contains. I think the price is fair, since I got a book and video.

There are several different training programs. There are also instructions for designing your own personalized training program. I did the six week program.

The results were incredible. I started seeing improvements in just three weeks. Now that I've finished the six week program, I'm seeing at about 20/30. I started out at about 20/200. I'm now designing my own training program, so I can get all the way to 20/20.

I think the book is well organized, and it was easy to understand. The book and video are bound together, so I never worried about misplacing them. I highly recommend this book to anyone who has ever worried about their eyesight.

The book has a unique two column format. On the left is the main text. On the right are details about the studies supporting the recommendations of the authors. They don't tell you what to do - they give you the available evidence so you and your patient can make the best possible decision for yourselves.
I keep this book in my office at all times - about 90% of the time it has the answers to the questions I need. It is my most use text.

During Christmas week, a man and a woman who claim to be Jesus and Mary roam the streets of Manhattan in the dead of winter. The police, figuring the pair to be mentally ill vagrants take them to Bellevue. Once there, the pair introduce themselves as 2/3 of the Holy Family and miracles happen. A catatonic patient becomes relevant and lucid; a screaming pyschotic calms down and yet other patients begin showing signs of recovery.

Are they really Jesus and Mary? How to explain the cures on the ward? This is a delightful story that will certainly restore faith in human nature. This book is a real treat.

Singular Intimacies is a book of great power and grace, a book written from the heart. Danielle Ofri takes readers inside the world of Bellevue Hospital, but, more important, she invites us into her mind and soul. Written with great compassion, wit, warmth, and grit, this book presents us with the humanity at the center of medicine. Thank heavens for doctors and writers like Danielle Ofri. I can't begin to tell you how deeply this book moved me. I can only invite you to experience it for yourself.

This book is truly a must read. Danielle Ofri is a talented writer and gifted physician. How lucky her patients, to have such a compassionate presence for a doctor. Through her writings I felt the warmth and caring she brings to every interaction. I would hope that this book would be a primer for all doctors-in-training, so that they might be inspired to keep their humanity and be willing to be vulnerable when they become doctors. This book and this woman are an inspiration. I am richer for having read the book and grateful that Danielle Ofri shared in this way.

Singular Intimacies, Danielle Ofri's first non-technical book, is a brilliant addition to the memoirs of physicians and other health care workers. In it, Ofri chronicles her transition from medical student to internist at New York City's Bellevue Hospital. She is humble, funny, smart, sophisticated, vulnerable, and blessed with rare insight. In addition, she has the gift for lucid, direct prose. This book will appeal to physicians, other health care workers, the general public; and especially to those young persons considering a career in medicine. For this latter group and for medical students it is a "must read."
Occasionally, when reading a book I feel like Keats did when he first opened Chapman's "Homer." "Then felt I like some watcher of the skies when a new planet swims into his ken." Singular Intimacies imparted this welcome and always surprising feeling to me. It should enjoy a great success and help to inspire and humanize many future (and some practicing) physicians.

This book does exactly what its title says it does: teaches middle age men how to successfully find, meet, date and have sex with young woman (target ages 20-25). In a world where most people can not plan their lives more than three weeks in advance, this book gives a practical, step-by-step strategy for going from a middle-aged, overweight, newly divorced man with little self confidence to a lean, mean dating machine. But be forewarned: the book, which reads more like an army special ops training manual than the typical "how to pick up girls" guides that have proliferated in recent years, does not promise quick and easy results. Before being able to succeed in asking out that pert 22-year old, you will need to shed those extra pounds, completely update your wardrobe and change your leisure activities so that you are regularly coming in contact with young people. More importantly, you will have to start out with women your age and gradually work your way down the age ladder.

There are three aspects about the book that I particularly like. First, the author demands that you act with absolute honesty and ethics at all times. This is not a book that teaches cutesy pick-up lines, hypnotic speech patterns, or deception of any kind. Second, the book stresses developing an attitude that will serve any man well in all walks of life-an attitude of confidence and no b.s., an attitude that as a middle aged man, your success and life experience enable you to offer a young woman things that her contemporaries can not. And third, the author takes a brutally direct, straightforward, no-nonsense approach that tells it like it is, whether you want to hear it or not. By no means does he promise that you will be able to pick up every young woman that you spot. Rather, by following the book's plan, you will learn how to focus on those young woman who will be receptive to your advances, and to always have several prospects going so that success or failure with any one girl is not that important.

After you finish this book, be sure to pick up volume 2, which elaborates on many of the points in volume 1. It is based on thousands of e-mails that the author has received through his network of men who are actually using the book to meet and date young women. Also highly recommended is the author's book "Body Language Secrets."

Since my divorce, I realize the need to acquire better dating skills and a greater understanding of women to make success in furure relationships possible. After reading many books on the subject, I found only one author, R. Don Steele, to truly understand what it takes to become the man women desire. Steele's clear, straigtforward, and entertaining style makes this, and his other brilliant works, my top choices of guides on putting my best foot forward. The changes I have already experienced (only received the books a few weeks ago) are fantastic! And my life continues to improve each day with Mr. Steele clear, concise, and sensible guidance. This book was the first work by Mr. Steele in my collection--I bought them all within weeks. I now see that "dating advice" books by other authors do not offer the kind of genuine, practical, and proven suggestions contained on Mr. Steele's works--his understanding comes from personal experience and genuine concern for others.

Additionally, his live call-in web-radio show at Live365 (free advice!) is a fabulous way to become familiar with Mr. Steele's powerful ideas and compassionate personality: you can hear Don's sincere joy when we call-in with our success stories! There is little chance that guys who choose to follow R. Don Steele's recommendations will fail to acheive their goals in meeting and dating women--I'm living proof! I was a regular guy emotionally clobbered by a divorce--now I'm a brand new man well on his way to having the love life he wants and deserves--this stuff works!

Experience is ALWAYS the best teacher; every smart person knows that. Don Steele has generously shared his hard-earned experience, at a bargain price, when it comes to dating young women. Steele doesn't insult your intelligence with phony "pickup line" advice. He takes a realistic approach to understanding young women, and gives you the exact blueprint for success. I can testify that I have personally tested his methods, AND IT WORKS! I am currently in my late forties, and dating several attractive women, 10 to 15 years younger. Prior to Steele, I was stuck in a dating pattern of women my age or older. I recommend this book; his VOL.1 edition; and his Body Language Secrets book highly. The insight from these three can only come from wisdom acquired through time.

When I got this book, I immediately read it twice. Once, within 48 hours, because the suspense was killing me. A second time to relish the writing and characterization. I don't make it through most mysteries even once -- after I've unraveled the plot, the writing often isn't good enough to hold my interest . How rare to find a mystery like this which can tether one to the plot with a strong thread of suspense, yet pleasure one with the deliberate nature and freshness of the writing.

What I enjoyed most about the book was the moral complexity of the characters. Too many books have the clearly evil and the clearly good. In my experience we all have a few blemishes to our souls, a few dings in our characters, and an inconsistency or two in our ethics. This book steps out of a world where characters are as flat and two-dimensional as a soap opera heroine, and into a world where people are as intriguing, mystifying, and unpredictable as they really are in life. Here are people who walk hand-in-hand not just with the companions of their days but with the ghosts and demons of their own pasts and with the shadow side of their own natures.

We are introduced to Bill, a Robin Hood of sorts, an activist for the rich history and community and thriving life of the urban landscape -- at the same time in which he is psychotic killer, an evil genius, inflicting his peculiar notions of justice on people and property as well. In Bill's case, he has an almost terrifying consistency in his ethics. (I can't tell you to how many people I've read the violence-against-women vengeance sequence in the book, and how many of them copped to having similar fantasies.)

Sharon, our heroine, is torn between her own ethics, and those she shares with Bill. She is more effective at solving puzzles than most of the detectives she encounters -- even as she clings to her own mental equilibrium with an at times very tentative hold. Sharon -- along with a third character, Eric -- are engaging as decent people trying to deal compassionately and appropriately with an insane world.

It was delightful to find a mystery in which the ethical questions and the characters were as gripping as the plot.

I must admit the thing that made me want to review this book most was Mr. Hall's rich mesmerising words and style. I mean - you read a lot of books, many that may have a more captivating storyline, but rarely do you come across a text whose every word is strong and powerful to the extent of keeping your eyes glued to the pages and your mind stimulated , alert and on edge. Yes, that's true. The book is a literary foray into psychological complexities of the human mind. It is interesting, yet somehow it loses its appeal towards the end. That does not go to say it is not a good book, but the title and the first part of it promise more than the latter part really delivers. Overall, it is a very good book and a great read - irrespective!

I think if Bill resembles any literary character it is Hamlet (or perhaps the less well known Stainless Steel Rat). He is dark and tormented, and he has issues with his mother. But what makes this book exceptional is Bill's committed (no pun intended) liberalism. He us a crazy man fighting the good fight. That, coupled with his undeniable brilliance, is what ultimately makes him so likeable. And you may finish the book, like I did, with an urge to engage in some creative social justice yourself. I've read this book three times, and I could read it again tomorrow. Buy it now, you won't be able to stop reading once you start. And, if you can afford it, buy the hardcover. The jacket and cover design are really snazzy.

Dr. Covan writes about his experiences as the Chief Psychologist and Intern Supervisor at Bellevue Hospital. While the general storylines are somewhat interesting, I cannot get past his condescending tone. His patients seem more like a collection of "crazy" behaviors than human beings, and his interns seem to be in the book mainly to fawn over his techniques. Dr. Covan's own personality is the strongest one in the book, and the one in which he appears most interested.

A fantastic book I would recommend to anyone. Dr. Fred Covan brings us the world of Bellevue Hospital and the types of cases they admit on the Psych ward. The way he tells us about these cases and how his interns cope and learn to deal with them is not only witty but extrememly interesting. When can we have the follow up!

This book is wonderful, warm, witty, and clinically sensitive! A must read for any psychologist, or psychology graduate student!

This was a very interesting book, I enjoyed it alot, I would recommend it to anyone thinking about going into clinical psychology or even if you are thinking about being a psychiatrist. It has some good information and some great stories. It also had some pretty vivid stories in there but it had an excellent ending. The book is about a chief psychologist from the infamous Bellvue Hospital, in New York, that has to show 8 interns what it is like behind the scenes of being a psychiatrist. He did a great job keeping up with all of them, he never left you wondering what happened with that particular case and I was happy with the ending, the author didn't just quit he went on to tell what happened to everyone. He let you know where the interns all ended up, whether they continued with the psychiatrict career or if they realized it was not for them. Great Book!

I thought I was going to get a feel for the life of an intern, but all I got was an unbelieveable soap opera. While you are given a small taste of what intern life is like, the characters and story line make you dislike and mistrust the portrayal. I did read the entire book, but that is due to the fact I have to finish any book I start than due to my actually enjoying it.

If you want a Catch-22 vision of life as an intern, Shem's _House of God_ is still the best. Shem's version of himself is not quite Yossarian, but you can follow the wrenching pain of learning your craft while patients suffer, die or merely wander the hall in dementia.

If you want to see teaching, or teaching that drifts into pimping, catch ER re-runs.

Siegel's characters have names, and his narrator adds some psychobabble, but I suspect I will forget them each and all.

But Bellevue Hospital is an almost mythic sort of place. Siegel may have moved across the river to the palatial University Hospital, but Bellevue clearly captured his heart and perhaps his imagination.

Moi, I missed the bedless patients staged out doors, and never saw sewage flowing in the ER or a holiday named for the founders of the housekeeping union local. But I volunteered in a locked psych ward and somehow made it into the city to donate blood at Bellevue on 9/11. The filled bags of blood were carried to waiting patients, like MASH but with instant, biotech tests for HIV and other pathogens. It is that sort of place, and Siegel makes it plain just how much he loved it.

You might also read it for a vision of what life was like before there were anti-retroviral "cocktails" for AIDS or "the virus" as Siegel's characters call it. Like teriary syphilus, everything that can go wrong with a person's body does so - painfully, without dignity and then without hope. There were a few "biters" who used their infected status to threaten caregivers, but The Biter may be the only one who played chess with a mysterious room mate with no heart beat or audible lung action.

BTW, Shem's GOMERs are still all too common in teaching hospitals, but many use Shem's terrible protrait to help students get oriented. Nothing in _Bellevue_ struck me as likely to make that cut.

As a medical student, I've spent an awful lot of time in similar situations as the characters of this book, and I must say that the author describes them poorly. The story is less believable than it could be. It lacks the necessary explanation and description for the way the characters interact. Another major problem is that the story jumps around violently and the characters flip sides too quickly. The problems found in the begining resolve way too easily in the end. It's almost as if the author and editor were rushed to get this novel done. This idea is supported by the glaring spelling errors I found while reading. Not that I'm perfect and never misspell words, but it helps to show that the effort put into this novel was less than it should be. I am disappointed.