Cynical Acumen

Winner of the Medical Journalists' Association Specialist Book of the Year Award 2006 Cynical Acumen approaches medicine in the real world, dealing with issues ignored by other books. It is a unique, 'what you really need to know' textbook designed to help medical students and senior house officers look slick and pass their exams against all odds. The book entertainingly considers the world outside medicine with anecdotes on the important things in life such as sport, literature, Thai cooking and the dissolution of the monasteries. It has been aptly described by the author as 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to Medicine'. Medical students will find this underground resource invaluable, as will medical professionals including junior hospital doctors, particularly those sitting the MRCP examination.

In Cynical Suspicions and Platonist Pretentions, John McGuire conducts a critical analysis of contemporary political theory with a view to facilitating a less reductive understanding of political disaffection.

Why keep your doctor happy? Well, he's the one you tell all your secrets to, who diagnoses you, who decides what potentially lethal drugs you're going to get. Now, hospital consultant and award-winning medical text-book writer John Larkin tells you what's going through a doctor's brain, and how to use that to your mutual advantage - and he doesn't pull many punches. Learn the things that annoy doctors most and how (usually) to avoid them. Learn helpful medical knowhow - it's easier to talk with your doctor if you have an idea what he's rambling on about. Everyone who's ever had to see a doctor needs this hilarious book.

The 101 vital medical tips other textbooks don't teach you - Following the success of the award winning Cynical Acumen, John Larkin outlines key knowledge for medical students and junior doctors. Clustered around the headings of cynical, survival, clinical, career and miscellaneous tips.

Jonathan Swift and Philosophy is the first book to analyse and interpret Swift’s writing from a philosophical angle. By placing key texts of Swift in their philosophical and cultural contexts and providing background to their history of ideas, it demonstrates how well informed Swift’s criticism of the politics, philosophy, and science of his age actually was. Moreover, it also sets straight preconceptions about Swift as ignorant about the scientific developments of his time. The authors offer insights into, and interpretations of, Swift’s political philosophy, ethics, and his philosophy of science and demonstrate how versatile a writer and thinker Swift actually was. This book will be of interest to scholars of philosophy, history of ideas, and 18th century literature and culture.

A short history of cynicism, from the fearless speech of the ancient Greeks to the jaded negativity of the present. Everyone's a cynic, yet few will admit it. Today's cynics excuse themselves half-heartedly—“I hate to be a cynic, but..."—before making their pronouncements. Narrowly opportunistic, always on the take, contemporary cynicism has nothing positive to contribute. The Cynicism of the ancient Greeks, however, was very different. This Cynicism was a marginal philosophy practiced by a small band of eccentrics. Bold and shameless, it was committed to transforming the values on which civilization depends. In this volume of the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Ansgar Allen charts the long history of cynicism, from the “fearless speech” of Greek Cynics in the fourth century BCE to the contemporary cynic's lack of social and political convictions. Allen describes ancient Cynicism as an improvised philosophy and a way of life disposed to scandalize contemporaries, subjecting their cultural commitments to derision. He chronicles the subsequent “purification” of Cynicism by the Stoics; Renaissance and Enlightenment appropriations of Cynicism, drawing on the writings of Shakespeare, Rabelais, Rousseau, de Sade, and others; and the transition from Cynicism (the philosophy) to cynicism (the modern attitude), exploring contemporary cynicism from the perspectives of its leftist, liberal, and conservative critics. Finally, he considers the possibility of a radical cynicism that admits and affirms the danger it poses to contemporary society.

This book contains a foreword by Steve Field, Regional Postgraduate Dean, West Midlands Deanery, Chair of the UK MMC Advisory Board; Chair of the UK MMC working Group for Career Management. Written by medical students, this book provides completely up-to-date information on the vast number of changes occurring in medical training. It is ideal for all medical students, especially those in their clinical years, and junior doctors. Medical student careers advisors will also find the information invaluable. "I am delighted to write the foreword for this excellent book whose arrival is timely given the introduction of new foundation and specialist training programmes across the United Kingdom. It has been researched and written by consumers; by final year medical students with contributions and support from more experienced consultants and general practitioners. I believe that it provides a superb source of information and focussed help for medical students and junior doctors that will help them prepare effectively for their Foundation Programmes and for specialist training. It will also provide a valuable resource for educational supervisors, GP trainers and clinical tutors. I commend it to you." - Steve Field, in the Foreword.

In 1945, disguised in German greatcoat and helmet, Mussolini attempted to escape from the advancing Allied armies. Unfortunately for him, the convoy of which he was part was stopped by partisans and his features, made so familiar by Fascist propaganda, gave him away. Within 24 hours he was executed by his captors, joining those he sent early to their graves as an outcome of his tyranny, at least one million people. He was one of the tyrant-killers who so scarred interwar Europe, but we cannot properly understand him or his regime by any simple equation with Hitler or Stalin. Like them, his life began modestly in the provinces; unlike them, he maintained a traditonal male family life, including both wife and mistresses, and sought in his way to be an intellectual. He was cruel (though not the cruellest); his racism existed, but never without the consistency and vigor that would have made him a good recruit for the SS. He sought an empire; but, in the most part, his was of the old-fashioned, costly, nineteenth century variety, not a racial or ideological imperium. And, self-evidently Italian society was not German or Russian: the particular patterns of that society shaped his dictatorship. Bosworth's Mussolini allows us to come closer than ever before to an appreciation of the life and actions of the man and of the political world and society within which he operated. With extraordinary skill and vividness, drawing on a huge range of sources, this biography paints a picture of brutality and failure, yet one tempered with an understanding of Mussolini as a human being, not so different from many of his contemporaries. 'The definitive study of the Italian dictator.' - Library Journal