Following the 1991 Persian Gulf War, thousands of U.S. military veterans developed illnesses that medical science was unable to understand. Ten years later many veterans remain sick, and doctors still cannot agree on the cause.In The Irritable Heart Jeff Wheelwright profiles five ailing veterans, unraveling the health mystery through their intimate and fascinating case histories. He describes the veterans' experiences, beginning with their deployment to the Gulf and tracking them through their return, their mysterious suffering, and their struggles to find the reasons for their illnesses.Drawing on his experiences as a reporter in the Gulf in 1991, he reviews the toxic substances in the environment, such as oil smoke and nerve gas, that many believe to be the cause of the conditions. Wheelwright demonstrates why such scenarios are unlikely. Rather, he shows that the gulf war illnesses belong in the company of chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, and multiple chemical sensitivity-symptom complexes that are increasing in America and evading a biomedical explanation. Although these contemporary illnesses are unrelated to war, Wheelwright points out that the gulf war ills have their own precedents in military history as far back as a Civil War malady known as "irritable heart."Doubters have dismissed the veterans' conditions as a psychological fabrication-"It's all in their heads." Wheelwright maintains that gulf war syndrome is a real illness, involving both the body and the mind. It consists of physical symptoms greatly magnified and aggravated by psychological distress. But because modern medicine deals with the body and mind separately, the health investigation of the veterans' illnesses was bound to fail, leading to a bitter political polarization over the cause. Wheelwright puts us in the thick of the controversy-one that both obscured the medical inquiry and slighted the suffering of the veterans.The only way to understand these elusive sicknesses is to consider the mind and body as one suffering system. With profound insight, The Irritable Heart takes the subject of chronic illness far beyond the medical aftermath of a desert war.

An account of the early life of the author, who was born in 1902 in the middle of the ocean aboard a lumber schooner captained by her father. It recalls her early days roaming the seas from the Northwest to Peru, and includes anecdotes about sharks, girl overboard and fistfights on the quarterdeck.

Dr. Karen Horney is universally recognized as a major figure in the field of psychoanalysis. As an analyst and research clinician, she made original and significant modifications of Freudian theory. As a teacher and a widely read author, she helped shape the course of twentieth-century psychoanalytic thought and investigation. This volume brings together for the first time in book form selections from Dr. Horney's later writings, including her classic essay, "The Value of Vindictiveness," and three lectures on psychoanalytic technique. Her emphasis is on the fluidity of the analytic situation and the responsibility of the analyst to use every means to achieve the growth-oriented goals of therapy.Dr. Horney's ideas are elaborated and extended in the other essays included in the volume. Written by distinguished psychoanalysts and colleagues of Dr. Horney, the also stress the dynamics of the analytic situation and the holistic approach to the understanding of human behavior. Dr. Harold Kelman, the editor of The American Journal of Psychoanalysis, has compiled and edited the book as a companion volume to Advances in Psychoanalysis. Together these two books illuminate both the theory and the therapeutic techniques underlying Dr. Horney's pioneer work in psychoanalysis.

In this collection, many of Justice Brennan's most distinguished colleagues and observers offer tribute to his far-reaching legacy. Anthony Lewis, Alan Dershowitz, Lani Guinier, Anna Quindlen, David Halberstam, Derrick Bell, and many others - including six Supreme Court justices - describe the opinions and dissents, and struggle and persuasion, that make up Justice Brennan's remarkable career. The sum of these essays is a look at the key issues of our time - civil liberties, race relations, family, privacy, crime, religion, poverty, politics - all of which were impacted by Justice Brennan's presence of the Supreme Court.

This book is about the New England States, part of a series covering the story of each major geographical region and all of the 50 states of America in our time. The objective is to simply let Americans (and foreigners too) know something of the profounddiversity of peoples and life styles and geographic habitat and political behavior that make this the most fascinating nation on earth.

The mystery begins with the theft of thirty-six vials of a substance essential to the process of reanimation. Now, twenty years later, "Little John" Rawlings sets out to catch the thief who has resurfaced after being pronounced dead. Rawlings must find the mysterious stranger and learn what happened nearly two decades ago.

Throughout the book the author assails the "pop evolutionists"--writers who, in an "outpouring of nonsense" on human evolution, have portrayed man as a brute or worse. Notable targets include Robert Ardrey (African Genesis, The Territorial Imperative), Lionel Tiger and Robin Fox (The Imperial Animal), Desmond Morris (The Naked Ape), Elaine Morgan (The Descent of Woman), and B. F. Skinner (Beyond Freedom and Dignity). These writers, says Claiborne, have caricatured human nature by citing "facts that are not evidence and evidence that is not fact," and in so doing have obscured--consciously or otherwise--the real social forces that beget present-day violence.Taking his title from Pope's Essay on Man ("He hangs between, in doubt to act or rest/In doubt to deem himself a god or beast"), Claiborne contends that man is in fact "neither god not beast; he is both"--and, above all, human.

A deadly terror is loose in the city. No one can see it . . . No one can fight it . . . No one can stop it. It's so small, it's invisible. So powerful, it's brought a city to its knees . . . It's a new life form. And it lives to kill.But it has an enemy - Dr. Alex Delfinar, a renowned medical expert, up against more than the killer virus. He's facing a city gone mad with looting and fear, an armed and frightened national guard, a nest of buck-passing politicos, and a crazed Palestinian who's secretly experimenting in a makeshift lab. And as a deadly clock ticks away . . . As all the pieces begin to fit like a perfect jigsaw puzzle on a tiny microscopic spiral . . . A city holds its breath and waits . . . Waits to know if it will live . . . or die.

If a cruising boat is well handled, with the right sails well-trimmed, she will move with grace, speed, and ease. If she is navigated with forethought and care, she will make passage safely and on time. If she is tacked with skill in confined waters, she will be placed where her skipper wants her and will avoid trouble. If the cruising yacht is anchored well, her crew will sleep soundly when the wind comes up at night--through the cries and chaos heard from the improperly anchored yacht across the way. The well-prepared cruiser sailed with precision meets emergencies less frequently and deals with them better than does the ill-prepared. She is a happy cruiser.

These and other questions are discussed by environmentalist Norman Myers, and Julian Simon, an economist and outspoken sceptic on environmentalism. This book is a transcript of their provocative exchange in a debate held at Columbia University in October 1992. The authors also provide position statements and replies that let readers judge for themselves whose arguments are more persuasive.

In these observations on the inhabitants of his Maine seacoast village, Mr. Gould addresses important matters. For example, there is the question of why there are two churches in a town of 800 souls, some of whom were atheists. It seems that the split between the two congregations was a matter of both free will and logic. The devotional division was caused by the question of whether Balaam's ass spoke or whether Balaam just said his ass spoke. There is more, wonderfully much more, in this joyful journey into the mind and memory of John Gould: how giving a child a calf to raise provides "top-notch instruction in agronomy, economics, subsistence, and merchandising," as well as milk in the shoes; how lobstermen can communicate without uttering a word; or his comment on women's yearning for equality: "If lovely woman stoops for the folly of equalizing herself with man, God's great mistake, she deserves what she gets."John Gould, as everyone knows, lives in Friendship, Maine. He is the author of twenty books, most recently his first novel, No Other Place. A Maine writer, he is a national treasure.

"A garden is what you make of it," writes William Longgood, a man devoted to fighting an honorable war against beetles, respecting the noble origins of common weeds, developing an affinity for slugs, and becoming a connoiseur of high-quality manure.Not in any way a traditional gardening book, Voices from the Earth is an exploration of those aspects of gardening that are ever present but not often discussed: the vagaries and treacheries of weather; the perversity of the seasons; the complexity and cleverness of insects; the continuing cycle of life and death; compost and immortality; and the sights, sounds, and aromas of gardens.Longgood also contemplates the nether world of invisible soil organisms and other creatures that make life possible, the mysteries of unidentified plant diseases, seeds that do not germinate, seedlings that refuse to grow, plants that fail to reproduce for no known rational reason, gardening triumphs and disasters, visitors and volunteers. Laced with humor and a gentle philosophy, this engaging book is a personal reflection on the nature of gardens and humans.

A haven for summer tourists and winter sport enthusiasts, Wisconsin is famed for its physical beauty and its prodigious production of cheese and dairy products. Richard Nelson Current's compact history reveals the colorful past of America's Dairyland, from early explorers and gangsters to latter-day sports heroes and cheeseheads.Both the Ringling Brothers' World's Greatest Shows and Barnum & Bailey's Greatest Show on Earth originated in Wisconsin, along with the typewriter, Johnson's Wax, and the first automatic assembly line. Wisconsin inventors contributed to the mechanization of American farms by developing harvesters, reapers, and other machinery. Sen. Robert M. (Fighting Bob) La Follette brought progressive reform to the state; a few decades later another Wisconsin native, Joseph McCarthy, revealed his agenda as a U.S. senator.To football fans, the capital of Wisconsin is Green Bay, where in 1919 Earl Louis Lambeau organized the Packers. Even during its fifteen-year losing streak, Green Bay fans sustained their fanatical devotion to the team.Fast-paced and entertaining, Current's history chronicles how Wisconsin's homegrown ideas, from the Wisconsin Idea of efficient state government to ski-tows and speedometers, made their way into the broader marketplace of American culture.

Vividly written and well researched by a noted historian of the period, this succinct history credits the Union Navy as an essential element in the northern victory. Neither ponderous nor hagiographic, the work presents characters and events that have been previously neglected and offers candid assessments of officers, men, and material. Originally published in 1990, when it was a Military History Book Club selection, the work is considered a must for Civil War buffs. It is an authoritative and gripping story of the battles waged.The author provides a rare look at the war fought by primitive northern gunboats drifting through Louisiana's muddy bayous, Yankee merchantmen captured by rebel privateers at sea, and Union ironclads subduing hotly defended Southern forts. Nor does William Fowler neglect the subtler sparrings behind the scenes: War Secretary Stanton and Navy Secretary Welles competing for Lincoln's favor and Welles's fierce duel of strategies with his Confederate counterpart, Stephen Mallory. Finally, the author describes the astonishing transformation of the Navy itself from a ragtag fleet of aging steamers and paddleboats to one of the most powerful waterborne forces in the world.