On the Blogs: Top 10 Stigmatized Health Disorders

Please try to help  -- don't blame or shame!

by Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer

Sickness and Shame

As if being sick weren't bad enough, some diseases come with a social stigma that can make sufferers hide their illness.

#10  Colon Cancer: Colorectal cancers are very curable in the early stages, according to the National Institutes of Health. Unfortunately, colon cancer often sneaks up without symptoms, and even if symptoms do show up, patients may be embarrassed to talk about diarrhea and abnormal bowel movements with their doctors. The best way to diagnose colon cancer is early screening, including colonoscopies.

Journalist Katie Couric tackled the stigma surrounding this bowel cancer straight on in March 2000 by televising her colonoscopy. Along the way, she proved that talking about hidden diseases can help people seek medical care. According to a 2003 study in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine, colonoscopy rates went up after Couric's TV special. Before the campaign, a physician could expect to conduct 15 colonoscopies a month. For 9 months after Couric's on-air procedure, that number jumped to 18 colonoscopies per physician per month.

#9 Erectile Dysfunction: The stigma surrounding erectile dysfunction has lessened in recent years, thanks to hours of commercials depicting happy, wholesome couples dancing to the soundtrack of an announcer talking about pharmaceutical side effects. But it can still be tough for men to admit to sexual dysfunction. According to a 2010 review of sexual dysfunction treatments published in the journal Primary Care: Clinics in Office Practice, only half of men with erectile dysfunction get treatment.

Men with erectile problems shouldn't feel alone, however. According to the same report, 10 to 20 million American men have erectile dysfunction, and by age 70, about two-thirds of men have trouble achieving or keeping an erection.

#8 'Manly' Problems: If erectile dysfunction is surrounded by a stigma of unmanliness, some female disorders come with symptoms that challenge our cultural definitions of femininity. Polycystic Ovary Syndrome, a hormone disorder that can cause infertility and diabetes, among other medical problem, is often marked by excessive facial hair. That symptom can leave women struggling to shave, wax or otherwise hide their hirsutism.

Disorders like hyperhidrosis, or excessive sweating, can be stigmatizing to both genders. But the disorder comes with extra baggage for women.

"You know, with women, you don't want to be someone who is sweaty," Sophia Wastler, a 36-year-old Virginia woman with hyperhidrosis, told LiveScience. "It's kind of more of a male characteristic than a female characteristic, so it's quite embarrassing."

#7 Psoriasis: Psoriasis is a chronic immune disorder that causes patches of cracked, scaly skin. These outbreaks can be hard to hide and understandably embarrassing. The embarrassment is multiplied by people who see psoriasis and shy away, mistakenly believing the disorder is contagious.

According to a 2008 survey by the National Psoriasis Foundation, 63 percent reported feeling self-conscious about their skin. More than half, 58 percent, said they felt embarrassed, and one-third said they limited their social interactions and dating because of psoriasis flare-ups.

#6 Irritable and Inflamed Bowels: Any disease related to excretion is bound to come tied in some sort of stigma. Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) and Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) aren't exceptions. IBD is actually a cluster of syndromes, all marked by the inflammation of the intestines. IBS is a vaguer diagnosis, but the disorder is marked by intestinal pain, cramping and constipation or diarrhea without the inflammation that marks IBD.

In general, IBS patients feel more stigmatized by their disease than IBD patients, according to a study published online March 2011 in the journal Quality of Life Research. Among more than 200 IBS patients surveyed, 27 percent said they felt moderately or extremely stigmatized, compared with 8 percent of the more than 200 IBD patients surveyed. The difference may be because without a clear physical cause, IBS sufferers feel their disease is not taken as seriously.

#5 Obesity: Fat stigma has gone global. According to a 2011 study in the journal Current Anthropology, there are almost no cultures that don't associate obesity with laziness and gluttony, despite the fact that many of these same cultures once saw heftiness as a sign of wealth.

Those who would shame the overweight often say they're concerned about the person's health. If that's the case, shame is likely to backfire? A 2011 study in the journal Social Psychology Quarterly found that shame and stigma hasten physical decline in people who are obese.

#4 Leprosy:  Leprosy, or Hansen's Disease, looms large in the public imagination. The disease is thought to be extremely contagious and believed to result in body parts falling off.
Wrong on both counts. More than 90 percent of people who come in contact with the bacteria that cause leprosy will fight the disease off without symptoms and without becoming contagious (though humans may be able to catch the disease from close contact with armadillos).

The disease is also curable with antibiotics. And while the skin lesions caused by the infection can be disfiguring without treatment, fingers and toes don't just fall off. This myth likely got its start because nerve damage to digits can cause numbness, putting people with leprosy at more risk of accidental injury or amputation.

#3 Lung Cancer: Like obesity, lung cancer is a condition that people tend to blame on the victim. The link between smoking cigarettes and lung cancer leads people to believe that sufferers bring cancer upon themselves. But in fact, thousands of people who have never smoked get lung cancer every year.

Besides, as Jamie Ostroff of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center pointed out at the 2009 World Conference on Lung Cancer in San Francisco, people who have smoked are no less worthy of lung cancer treatment than those who have never lit up. According to LungCancer.org, the disease is the leading cause of cancer deaths in men and women, killing more than 158,000 people each year in the United States.

#2 HPV: Human papillomavirus (HPV) infects the skin or mucous membranes, often asymptomatically. But some strains of the virus can cause cervical cancer in women, making them dangerous sexually transmitted infections (STIs). HPV can also cause genital warts.
HPV became a flashpoint in the GOP primary elections in September 2011, when Republican candidates criticized Texas Governor and frontrunner Rick Perry for issuing an executive order in Texas that would have made vaccination against HPV mandatory for girls attending school in the state. Many other vaccines are already mandatory in Texas, but the HPV vaccine is controversial because the virus is spread through sexual contact. Medical experts say that the vaccine is most effective when administered before a person becomes sexually active and potentially exposes themselves to the virus. But Perry's attempt to make the vaccine mandatory was shot down by social conservatives, who argue that getting vaccinated may spur teens into early sexual activity.

#1 HIV/AIDS: Perhaps one of the most famously stigmatized diseases ever, HIV/AIDS first appeared as a mysterious syndrome in mostly gay men in the early 1980s. Anti-gay activists blamed gay men's "immoral" behavior for the spread of the disease, setting up a persistent victim-blaming attitude.

According to a 1999 study published in the journal American Behavioral Scientist, 52 percent of Americans still associated HIV with homosexuality, despite the fact that by that time, only about a third of new HIV cases were contracted by gay men. In 1997, the same study found, 55 percent of Americans believed that most people with AIDS were responsible for their illness, and 28 percent went as far to say that most of them deserved it.

As late as 2006, a Kaiser Family Foundation report found significant confusion among Americans about HIV. According to the report, 37 percent of Americans erroneously believed that HIV could be spread by kissing, while 32 percent thought it could spread via shared drinking glasses.

Smooth Moves:The Feldenkrais Method

From yee Wiki:

The Feldenkrais Method -- often referred to simply as "Feldenkrais" is a somatic educational system designed by Moshé Feldenkrais (1904–84). Feldenkrais aims to reduce pain or limitations in movement, to improve physical function, and to promote general wellbeing by increasing students' awareness of themselves and by expanding students' movement repertoire.

Approach

Moshé Feldenkrais taught that increasing a person's kinesthetic and proprioceptive self-awareness in the context of functional movement could lead directly to increased function, and could also lead to greater ease and pleasure of movement. Through his method, he sought to "make the impossible possible, the possible easy, and the easy elegant". The Feldenkrais Method is therefore a movement pedagogy as opposed to a manipulative therapy. The Method is experiential, providing tools for self-discovery through movement enquiry.

Feldenkrais is used to improve habitual and repetitive movement patterns rather than to treat specific injuries or illnesses. However, because habitual and repetitive movement patterns can contribute towards and in some cases cause injury, pain, and physical dysfunction, the method is often regarded as falling within the field of integrative medicine or complementary medicine. In Sweden the method is practised within the mainstream healthcare system usually by physiotherapists.

Moshé Feldenkrais also asserted that improvements to a person's movement could have a direct influence on cognitive and emotional function: "What I am after is more flexible minds, not just more flexible bodies." In particular, he wrote extensively about the connections between movement and anxiety.

More info at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feldenkrais_Method


YouTube video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_i5QuIqcQo

Boris Artzybasheff "Anxiety"

More Anxiety, Please: Karen J. Greenberg: Will the Apocalypse Arrive Online?

How Fear of Cyber Attack Could Take Down Your Liberties and the Constitution

by Karen J. Greenberg. Executive Director, Center on Law and Security at the NYU School of Law

First the financial system collapses and it's impossible to access one’s money. Then the power and water systems stop functioning.  Within days, society has begun to break down.  In the cities, mothers and fathers roam the streets, foraging for food. The country finds itself fractured and fragmented -- hardly recognizable.

It may sound like a scene from a zombie apocalypse movie or the first episode of NBC’s popular new show “Revolution,” but it could be your life -- a nationwide cyber-version of Ground Zero.

Think of it as 9/11/2015.  It’s Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta's vision of the future -- and if he’s right (or maybe even if he isn’t), you better wonder what the future holds for erstwhile American civil liberties, privacy, and constitutional protections.

Last week, Panetta addressed the Business Executives for National Security, an organization devoted to creating a robust public-private partnership in matters of national security. Standing inside the Intrepid, New York’s retired aircraft-carrier-cum-military-museum, he offered a hair-raising warning about an imminent and devastating cyber strike at the sinews of American life and wellbeing.

Yes, he did use that old alarm bell of a “cyber Pearl Harbor,” but for anyone interested in American civil liberties and rights, his truly chilling image was far more immediate.  “A cyber attack perpetrated by nation states or violent extremist groups,” he predicted, “could be as destructive as the terrorist attack of 9/11.”

Panetta is not the first Obama official to warn that the nation could be facing a cyber catastrophe, but he is the highest-ranking to resort to 9/11 imagery in doing so. Going out on a limb that previous cyber doomsayers had avoided, he mentioned September 11th four times in his speech, referring to our current vulnerabilities in cyber space as “a pre-9/11 moment.”

Apocalypse Soon

Since the beginning of the Obama presidency, warnings of cyber menaces from foreign enemies and others have flooded the news. Politicians have chimed in, as have the experts -- from respected security professionals like President George Bush’s chief counterterrorism advisor Richard Clarke to security policymakers on the Hill like Senators Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins. Even our no-drama president has weighed in remarkably dramatically on the severity of the threat. “Taking down vital banking systems could trigger a financial crisis,” he wrote in the Wall Street Journal. “The lack of clean water or functioning hospitals could spark a public health emergency. And as we've seen in past blackouts, the loss of electricity can bring businesses, cities, and entire regions to a standstill.”

Panetta’s invocation of 9/11 was, however, clearly meant to raise the stakes, to sound a wake up call to the business community, Congress, and the nation’s citizens.  The predictions are indeed frightening. According to the best experts, the consequences of a massive, successful cyber attack on crucial U.S. systems could be devastating to life as we know it.

It’s no longer just a matter of intellectual property theft, but of upending the life we lead. Imagine this: instead of terrorists launching planes at two symbolic buildings in the world’s financial center, cyber criminals, terrorists, or foreign states could launch viruses into major financial networks via the Internet, or target the nation’s power grids, robbing citizens of electricity (and thus heat in the middle of winter), or disrupt the systems that run public transportation, or contaminate our water supply.

Any or all of these potential attacks, according to leading cyber experts, are possible. Though they would be complex and difficult operations, demanding technical savvy, they are nonetheless within the realm of present possibility.  Without protections, American citizens could be killed outright (say on a plane or a train) or left, as the president warned, without food, fuel, water and the mechanisms for transacting daily business.

For those of us who have lived inside the national security conversation for more than a decade now, such early warnings of dire consequences might sound tediously familiar, just another example of the (George W.) Bush who cried wolf. After all, in the wake of the actual 9/11 attacks, governmental overreach became commonplace, based on fear-filled scenarios of future doom.  Continual hysteria over a domestic terror threat and (largely nonexistent) al-Qaeda “sleeper cells” bent on chaos led to the curtailing of the civil liberties of large segments of the American Muslim population and, more generally, far greater surveillance of Americans.  That experience should indeed make us suspicious of doomsday predictions and distrustful of claims that extraordinary measures are necessary to protect “national security.”

For the moment, though, let’s pretend that we haven’t been through a decade in which national security needs were used and sometimes overblown to trump constitutional protections. Instead, let’s take the recent cyber claims at face value and assume that Richard Clarke, who prior to 9/11 warned continuously of an impending attack by al-Qaeda, is correct again.
And while we’re not dismissing these apocalyptic warnings, let’s give a little before-the-fact thought not just to the protection of the nation’s resources, information systems, and infrastructure, but to what’s likely to happen to rights, liberties, and the rule of law once we’re swept away by cyber fears. If you imagined that good old fashioned rights and liberties were made obsolete by the Bush administration’s Global War on Terror, any thought experiment you perform on what a response to cyber war might entail is far worse.

Remember former White House Council Alberto Gonzales telling us that, when it came to the interrogation of suspected terrorists, the protections of the U.S. Constitution were “quaint and obsolete”? Remember the argument, articulated by many, that torture, Guantanamo, and warrantless wiretapping were all necessary to prevent another 9/11, whatever they did to our liberties and laws?

Now, fast forward to the new cyber era, which, we are already being told, is at least akin to the threat of 9/11 (and possibly far worse).  And keep in mind that, if the fears rise high enough, many of the sorts of moves against rights and constitutional restraints that came into play only after 9/11 might not need an actual cyber disaster.  Just the fear of one might do the trick.
Not surprisingly, the language of cyber defense, as articulated by Panetta and others, borrows from the recent lexicon of counterterrorism. In Panetta’s words, “Just as [the Pentagon] developed the world’s finest counterterrorism force over the past decade, we need to build and maintain the finest cyber operators.”

The Cyber Threat to American Rights and Liberties

Cyber is “a new terrain for warfare,” Panetta tells us, a “battlefield of the future.” So perhaps it’s time to ask two questions: In a world of cyber fear, what has the war on terror taught us about protecting ourselves from the excesses of government? What do policymakers, citizens, and civil libertarians need to think about when it comes to rights that would potentially be threatened in the wake of, or even in anticipation of, a cyber attack?

Here, then, are several potential threats to constitutional liberties, democratic decision-making processes, and the rule of law to watch out for in this new cyber war era: 

The Threat to Privacy: In the war on terror, the government -- thanks to the Patriot Act and the warrantless surveillance program, among other efforts -- expanded its ability to collect information on individuals suspected of terrorism. It became a net that could snag all sorts of Americans in all sorts of ways. In cyber space, of course, the potential for collecting, sharing, and archiving data on individuals, often without a warrant, increases exponentially, especially when potential attacks may target information itself.

A recent FBI investigation illustrates the point. The Coreflood Botnet utilized viruses to steal personal and financial information from millions of Internet users, including hospitals, banks, universities, and police stations. The focus of the Coreflood threat -- which also means its interface with the government -- was private information. The FBI got warrants to seize the command-and-control servers that acted as an intermediary for the stolen information.  At that point, the government was potentially in possession of vast amounts of private information on individual American citizens. The FBI then offered assurances that it would not access or make use of any of the personal information held on those servers.

But in an age that has become increasingly tolerant of -- or perhaps resigned to -- the government’s pursuit of information in violation of privacy rights, the prospects for future cyber-security policy are worrisome.  After all, much of the information that might be at risk in so many potential cyber attacks -- let’s say on banks -- would fall into the private sphere.  Yet the government, citing national security, could persuade companies to turn over that that data, store it, and use it in various ways, all the while claiming that its acts are “preventive” in nature and so not open to debate or challenge.  And as in so many post-9/11 cases, the courts might back such claims up.

Once the information has been shared within the government, who’s to say how long it will be held and how it will be used in the future? Or what agency guidelines exist, if any, to ensure that it won’t be warehoused for future uses of quite a different sort? As former Department of Homeland Security head Michael Chertoff put it, “You need to have a certain amount of accountability so government doesn’t run roughshod [over people’s right to privacy] and that’s been a hard thing to architect.”

Enemy Creep: If you think it’s been difficult to reliably distinguish enemies from the rest of us in the war on terror (as in the 600 Guantanamo detainees that the Bush administration finally declared “no longer enemy combatants” and sent home), try figuring it out in cyber space. Sorting out just who launched an attack and in whose name can be excruciatingly difficult. Even if, for example, you locate the server that introduced the virus, how do you determine on whose behalf such an attack was launched? Was it a state or non-state actor? Was it a proxy or an original attack? 

The crisis of how to determine the enemy in virtual space opens up a host of disturbing possibilities, not just for mistakes, but for convenient blaming. After all, George W. Bush’s top officials went to war in Iraq labeling Saddam Hussein an ally of al-Qaeda, even when they knew it wasn’t true. Who is to say that a president won’t use the very difficulty of naming an online enemy as an excuse to blame a more convenient target?

War or Crime?: And what if that enemy is domestic rather than international? Will its followers be deemed “enemy combatants” or “lawbreakers”?  If this doesn’t already sound chillingly familiar to you, it should.  It was an early theme of the war on terror where, beginning with its very name, “war” won out over crime. 

Cyber attacks will raise similar questions, but the stakes will be even higher. Is a hacker attempting to steal money working on his own or for a terrorist group, or is he essentially a front for an enemy state eager to take down the U.S.? As Kelly Jackson Higgins, senior editor at the information security blog Dark Reading, reminds us, “Hackers posing as other hackers can basically encourage conflict among other nations or organizations, experts say, and sit back and watch.”

Expanding Presidential Fiat: National security professionals like Defense Secretary Panetta are already encouraging another cyber development that will mimic the war on terror.  Crucial decisions, they argue, should be the president’s alone, leaving Congress and the American people out in the cold. President Bush, of course, reserved the right to determine who was an enemy combatant.  President Obama has reserved the right to choose individuals for drone assassination on his own.

Now, an ever less checked-and-balanced executive is going to be given war powers in cyber space.  In fact, we know that this is already the case, that the last two administrations have launched the first state cyber war in history -- against Iran and its nuclear program.  Going forward, the White House is likely to be left with the power of deciding who is a cyber attacker, and when and how such enemies should be attacked.  In Panetta’s words, “If we detect an imminent threat of attack that will cause significant, physical destruction in the United States or kill American citizens, we need to have the option to take action against those who would attack us to defend this nation when directed by the president.”

Given the complex and secretive world of cyber attacks and cyber war, who is going to cry foul when the president alone makes such a decision? Who will even know?

Secrecy Creep: While government officials are out in full force warning of the incipient cyber threat to our way of life, it’s becoming ever clearer that the relationship between classified information, covert activities, and what the public can know is being further challenged by the new cyber world. In the war on terror years, a cult of government secrecy has spread, while Obama administration attacks on government leakers have reached new heights.  On the other hand, Julian Assange and Wikileaks made the ability to access previously classified information a household premise.

So the attempt to create an aura of secrecy around governmental acts is on the rise and yet government secrets seem ever more at risk. For example, the U.S. intended to keep the Stuxnet virus, launched anonymously against Iranian nuclear facilities, a secret. Not only did the attacks themselves become public knowledge, but eventually the American-Israeli ownership of the attack leaked out as well. The old adage “the truth will out” certainly seems alive today and yet the governmental urge for secrecy still remains ascendant.

The question is: Will there be a heightened call -- however futile -- for increased secrecy and the ever more draconian punishment of leakers, as has been the case in the war on terror?  Will the strong arm of government threaten, in an ever more draconian manner, the media, leakers, and those demanding transparency in the name of exposing lawless policies -- as has happened with CIA leaker John Kiriakou, New York Times reporter James Risen, and others?

Facing the Cyber Age

When it comes to issues like access to information and civil liberties protections, it could very well be that the era of Big Brother is almost upon us, whether we like it or not, and that fighting against it is obsolete behavior. On the other hand, perhaps we’re heading into a future in which the government will have to accept that it cannot keep secrets as it once did. Whatever the case, most of us face enormous unknowns when it comes to how the cyber world, cyber dangers, and also heightened cyber fears will affect both the nation’s security and our liberties.

On the eve of the presidential election, it is noteworthy that neither presidential candidate has had the urge to discuss cyber security lately.  And yet the U.S. has launched a cyber war and has seemingly recently experienced the first case of cyber blowback.  The websites of several of the major banks were attacked last month, presumably by Iran, interrupting online access to accounts.

With so little reliable information in the public sphere and so many potential pitfalls, both Obama and Romney seem to have decided that it’s just not worth their while to raise the issue. In this, they have followed Congress’s example. The failure to pass regulatory legislation this year on the subject revealed a bipartisan unwillingness of our representatives to expose themselves to political risk when it comes to cyber legislation.

Whether officials and policymakers are willing to make the tough decisions or not, cyber vulnerabilities are more of a reality than was the threat of sleeper cells after 9/11. It may be a stretch to go from cynicism and distrust in the face of color-coded threat levels to the prospect of cyber war, but it’s one that needs to be taken.

Given what we know about fear and the destructive reactions it can produce, it would be wise to jumpstart the protections of law, personal liberties, and governmental accountability. Whoever our next president may be, the cyber age is upon us, carrying with it a new threat to liberty in the name of security. It’s time now -- before either an actual attack or a legitimate fear of such an attack -- to protect what’s so precious in American life, our liberties.

Karen Greenberg is the director of the Center on National Security at Fordham Law School, a TomDispatch regular, and the author of The Least Worst Place: Guantanamo’s First One Hundred Days, as well as the editor of The Torture Debate in America. Research assistance for this article was provided by Jason Burke and Martin West.

My Obsessive Reading

I have an "indexing gene." I love checklists and reference data. I used to catalogue the creative credits for my favorite comic books, in pencil, on 3" x 5" index cards, during the Anchorage Fur Rendezvous dogsled races televised in the mid-seventies. I thought it was fun. Like most collectors, I would also make ultra-detailed "want lists" of missing, desired issues, and reading lists of favorite authors.

For a time in the nineties, I joined legendary comic fan Jerry Bails' indexing apa (amateur press association), apa-i. I 've contributed to the online Grand Comic Book Database., Askart, and other databases -- the ultimate versions of my old catalog card system.

These days, when I finish a nonfiction book, I write down the title and author(s) in a notebook. Sometimes I forget, but usually I record the books soon after reading. In true OCD fashion, I have to actually finish a book in order to record it. Partially finished books don't count. Believe it or not, just seeing the title/author information again helps me recall much of what I've read.

I originally read popular science and math books for the nonfiction genre, but after the 2008 financial crisis meltdown, I realized I knew nothing of business, and went on a business, economics, and investing book jag. Then in 2010, I shifted gears again to the current trend of mainly psychology and neuroscience reads. The "Behavioral Economics" business books made a nice bridge to these psychology books. I think my "psychology phase" is winding down now. What's next? Probably learning theory.

For "extra credit," I have typed out my list of my obsessesive fact-based reading conquests. You might enjoy reading a few of them yourself, so I have roughly categorized them. Frankly, after typing out this list, I'm a bit blown away at how much material I've consumed so far, and this doesn't even count all the comics, art books, magazines, and crime novels. I'm sure I've also missed a few books that I forgot to record. Here's the list, alphabetized by author.

Biography/Memoir/Military/Pop Culture

The Wire: Truth Be Told - Rafael Alvarez and David Simon

Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest - Stephen E. Ambrose

Citizen Soldiers: The U. S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany - Stephen E. Ambrose 

D Day: June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II - Stephen E. Ambrose

The Wild Blue: The Men and Boys Who Flew the B-24s Over Germany 1944-45 - Stephen E. Ambrose

Howard Hughes: His Life and Madness - Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele

Under Cover: An Illustrated History of American Mass-Market Paperback - Thomas L. Bonn ; Foreword by John Tebbel

Possible Side Effects - Augusten Burroughs

Running with Scissors: A Memoir - Augusten Burroughs

The Path to Power (The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume 1) - Robert A. Caro

Means of Ascent (The Years of Lyndon Johnson) - Robert A. Caro

The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York - Robert A. Caro

From Birdland to Broadway: Scenes from a Jazz Life - Bill Crow

Marine! The Life of Chesty Puller - Burke Davis

Miles: The Autobiography - Miles Davis and Quincy Troupe

Django Reinhardt - Charles Delaunay

I Feel Bad About My Neck - Nora Ephron
Rod Serling: The Dreams and Nightmares of Life in the Twilight Zone/a Biography - Joel Engel

Grant Green: Rediscovering the Forgotten Genius of Jazz Guitar - Sharony Andrews Green  

Searching for Robert Johnson: The Life and Legend of the "King of the Delta Blues Singers" - Peter Guralnick

Summer of '49 - David Halberstam

The Fifties - David Halberstam  

Howard Hughes: The Secret Life - Charles Higham

The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World - A. J. Jacobs

Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece - Ashley Kahn

Too Marvelous for Words: The Life and Genius of Art Tatum - James Lester

Options: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs - A Parody by Fake Steve Jobs (Daniel Lyons)

The Terrible Hours: The Greatest Submarine Rescue in History - Peter Maas 

Underboss: Sammy the Bull Gravano's Story of Life in the Mafia - Peter Maas

Stan Getz: A Life in Jazz - Donald L. Maggin

Goodbye, Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific War - William Manchester

Jim Thompson: Sleep with the Devil - Michael J. McCauley

Positively Fifth Street: Murderers, Cheetahs, and Binion's World Series of Poker - James McManus

Cornell Woolrich: First You Dream, Then You Die - Francis M. Nevins

Hardboiled America: Lurid Years of Paperbacks - Geoffrey O'Brien

Deep Blues: A Musical and Cultural History of the Mississippi Delta - Robert Palmer

Dance of the Infidels: A Portrait of Bud Powell - Francis Paudras 

Straight Life: The Story of Art Pepper - Art Pepper and Laurie Pepper

Bill Evans: How My Heart Sings - Peter Pettinger

Goodfellas - Nicholas Pileggi  

Savage Art: A Biography of Jim Thompson - Robert Polito

Fortunate Son: The Healing of a Vietnam Vet - Lewis B. Puller Jr.

Jelly's Blues: The Life, Music, and Redemption of Jelly Roll Morton - Howard Reich and William M. Gaines

The Making of the Atomic Bomb - Richard Rhodes 

A Bridge Too Far: The Classic History of the Greatest Battle of World War II - Cornelius Ryan 

The Longest Day: The Classic Epic of D-Day - Cornelius Ryan

Serling: The Rise and Twilight of Television's Last Angry Man - Gordon F. Sander

In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash - Jean Shepherd

Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories: And Other Disasters - Jean Shepherd    

Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage - Sherry Sontag and Christopher Drew

Between Covers: The Rise and Transformation of Book Publishing in America - John William Tebbel   

Off the Wall (David Berkowitz) - Charles Willeford

Something About a Soldier - Charles Willeford

Business/Economics/Finance/ Investment

The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More - Chris Anderson

Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions - Dan Ariely

The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home - Dan Ariely

Corporate Cults: The Insidious Lure of the All-Consuming Organization - Dave Arnott

Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-By-Numbers is the New Way To Be Smart - Ian Ayres

The Numerati - Stephen Baker

The Secret History of the South Sea Bubble: The World's First Great Financial Scandal - Malcolm Balen

The Cartoon Introduction to Economics: Volume One: Microeconomics - Yoram Bauman and Grady Klein 

Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes and How to Correct Them: Lessons from the Life-Changing Science of Behavioral Economics - Gary Belsky and Thomas Gilovich

Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk - Peter L. Bernstein

Capital Ideas: The Improbable Origins of Modern Wall Street - Peter L. Bernstein 

The Four Pillars of Investing: Lessons for Building a Winning Portfolio - William Bernstein

The Intelligent Asset Allocator: How to Build Your Portfolio to Maximize Returns and Minimize Risk - William J. Bernstein

The Investor's Manifesto: Preparing for Prosperity, Armageddon, and Everything in Between - William J. Bernstein

A Demon of Our Own Design: Markets, Hedge Funds, and the Perils of Financial Innovation - Richard M. Bookstaber

The Poker Face of Wall Street - Aaron Brown

Frozen Desire: Meaning of Money - James Buchan

Mean Genes: From Sex to Money to Food Taming Our Primal Instincts - Terry Burnham and Jay Phelan

Mean Markets and Lizard Brains: How to Profit from the New Science of Irrationality - Terry Burnham

The Whiz Kids: The Founding Fathers of American Business and the Legacy They Left Us - John A. Byrne

How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities - John Cassidy

25 Myths You've Got to Avoid If You Want to Manage Your Money Right: The New Rules for Financial Success - Jonathan Clements

You've Lost It, Now What? How to Beat the Bear Market and Still Retire on Time - Jonathan Clements

The Perfect Store: Inside eBay - Adam Cohen

Extreme Money: Masters of the Universe and the Cult of Risk - Satyajit Das

Inventing Money: The Story of Long-Term Capital Management and the Legends Behind It - Nicholas Dunbar   

The Lazy Person's Guide to Investing: A Book for Procrastinators, the Financially Challenged, and Everyone Who Worries About Dealing with Their Money - Paul B. Farrell

The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World - Niall Ferguson

The Myth of the Rational Market: A History of Risk, Reward, and Delusion on Wall Street - Justin Fox

One Market Under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism, and the End of Economic Democracy - Thomas Frank

Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went - John Kenneth Galbraith

The Age of Uncertainty - John Kenneth Galbraith

The Great Mutual Fund Trap: An Investment Recovery Plan - Gregory Baer and Gary Gensler

The Great Risk Shift: The New Economic Insecurity and the Decline of the American Dream - Jacob S. Hacker

The Reckoning - David Halberstam  

Rivethead: Tales from the Assembly Line - Ben Hamper

The Undercover Economist - Tim Harford

The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers - Robert L. Heilbroner

The One Best Way: Frederick Winslow Taylor and the Enigma of Efficiency - Robert Kanigel

Code Name Ginger: The Story Behind Segway and Dean Kamen's Quest to Invent a New World - Steve Kemper

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything - Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance - Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

Liar's Poker - Michael Lewis

Moneyball - Michael Lewis

The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine - Michael Lewis

The Blind Side - Michael Lewis

Origins of the Crash: The Great Bubble and Its Undoing - Roger Lowenstein

When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management - Roger Lowenstein

Bull: A History of the Boom and Bust, 1982-2004 - Maggie Mahar

No One Would Listen: A True Financial Thriller - Harry Markopolos

More Than You Know: Finding Financial Wisdom in Unconventional Places - Michael J. Mauboussin 

The Trillion Dollar Meltdown: Easy Money, High Rollers, and the Great Credit Crash - Charles R. Morris

Die Broke: A Radical Four-Part Financial Plan - Stephen Pollan and Mark Levine

The Quants: How a New Breed of Math Whizzes Conquered Wall Street and Nearly Destroyed It - Scott Patterson

Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism - Kevin P. Phillips

Fortune's Formula: The Untold Story of the Scientific Betting System That Beat the Casinos and Wall Street - William Poundstone

Priceless: The Myth of Fair Value (and How to Take Advantage of It) - William Poundstone

Winning the Cash Flow War: Your Ultimate Survival Guide to Making Money and Keeping It - Fred Rewey

The Madoff Chronicles: Inside the Secret World of Bernie and Ruth - Brian Ross

Company Man: The Rise and Fall of Corporate Life - Anthony Sampson

The Mind of the Market - Michael Shermer

Irrational Exuberance - Robert J. Shiller

Crashproof Your Life : A Comprehensive, Three-Part Plan for Protecting Yourself from Financial Disasters - Thomas A. Schweich

Trading Up: Why Consumers Want New Luxury Goods -- and How Companies Create Them - Michael J. Silverstein, Neil Fiske and John Butman

The Smartest 401(k) Book You'll Ever Read: Maximize Your Retirement Savings...the Smart Way! - Daniel R. Solin

The Smartest 401(k) Book You'll Ever Read: Maximize Your Retirement Savings...the Smart Way! - Daniel R. Solin

The Smartest Retirement Book You'll Ever Read - Daniel R. Solin

The Wisdom of Crowds - James Surowiecki

Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness - Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein

The Winner's Curse: Paradoxes and Anomalies of Economic Life - Richard H. Thaler

The History of Money - Jack Weatherford

What Goes Up: The Uncensored History of Modern Wall Street as Told by the Bankers, Brokers, CEOs, and Scoundrels Who Made It Happen - Eric J. Weiner

Wall Street Versus America: A Muckraking Look at the Thieves, Fakers, and Charlatans Who Are Ripping You Off - Gary Weiss

Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science - Charles Wheelan and Burton G. Malkiel

The Judas Economy: The Triumph of Capital and the Betrayal of Work - William Wolman and Anne Colamosca

The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power - Daniel Yergin  

Diet/Health/Medicine/Neuroscience /Psychology/Self-Help

Change Your Brain, Change Your Life: The Breakthrough Program for Conquering Anxiety, Depression, Obsessiveness, Anger, and Impulsiveness - Daniel G. Amen

Healing Anxiety and Depression - Daniel G. Amen and Lisa C. Routh

10 Simple Solutions to Panic: How to Overcome Panic Attacks, Calm Physical Symptoms, and Reclaim Your Life (The New Harbinger Ten Simple Solutions Series) - Martin M. Antony and Randi E. McCabe

Prozac and the New Antidepressants: What You Need Know About Prozac Zoloft Paxil Luvox Wellbutrin Effexor Serzone Vestra Celexa St. John's Wart and Others - William S. Appleton M. D.

Art and Visual Perception - Rudolf Arnheim

NeanderThin: Eat Like a Caveman to Achieve a Lean, Strong, Healthy Body - Ray Audette

The Imp of the Mind: Exploring the Silent Epidemic of Obsessive Bad Thoughts - Lee Baer  

Side Effects: A Prosecutor, a Whistleblower, and a Bestselling Antidepressant on Trial - Alison Bass

Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain: How a New Science Reveals Our Extraordinary Potential to Transform Ourselves - Sharon Begley

When in Doubt, Make Belief: An OCD-Inspired Approach to Living with Uncertainty - Jeff Bell

Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment - Tal Ben-Shahar

Coping with Anxiety: 10 Simple Ways to Relieve Anxiety, Fear and Worry - Edmund J. Bourne and Lorna Garanao

The Anxiety and Phobia Workbook - Edmund J. Bourne

Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior - Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman

Getting Past OK: The Self-Help Book for People Who Dont Need Help - Richard Brodie

Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme - Richard Brodie

Feeling Good - The New Mood Therapy - David D. Burns

When Panic Attacks: The New, Drug-Free Anxiety Therapy That Can Change Your Life - David D. Burns

Syndrome X: The Complete Nutritional Program to Prevent and Reverse Insulin Resistance - Jack Challem, Burton Berkson and Melissa Diane Smith

On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You're Not - Robert Burton

Overcoming Obsessive Thoughts: How to Gain Control of Your OCD - David A. Clark and Christine Purdon  

Nerve: Poise Under Pressure, Serenity Under Stress, and the Brave New Science of Fear and Cool - Taylor Clark

The Paleo Diet: Lose Weight and Get Healthy by Eating the Foods You Were Designed to Eat - Loren Cordain

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain - Antonio R. Damasio

IBS For Dummies - Carolyn Dean and L. Christine Wheeler

The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science - Norman Doidge

Coping with OCD: Practical Strategies for Living Well with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder - Troy DuFrene and Bruce Hyman

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder For Dummies - Charles H. Elliott Ph.D. and Laura L. Smith Ph.D.

Overcoming Anxiety For Dummies - Charles H. Elliott Ph.D. and Laura L. Smith Ph.D.

Emotions Revealed: Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and Emotional Life - Paul Ekman

Telling Lies: Clues to Deceit in the Marketplace, Politics, and Marriage - Paul Ekman

Thanks: How Practicing Gratitude Can Make You Happier - Robert Emmons

Another Day in the Frontal Lobe: A Brain Surgeon Exposes Life on the Inside - Katrina Firlik

Stop Obsessing!: How to Overcome Your Obsessions and Compulsions - Edna B. Foa and Reid Wilson 

The Mindfulness and Acceptance Workbook for Anxiety: A Guide to Breaking Free from Anxiety, Phobias, and Worry Using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy - John P. Forsyth and Georg H. Eifert

Positivity: Top-Notch Research Reveals the 3 to 1 Ratio That Will Change Your Life - Barbara Fredrickson

Stumbling on Happiness - Daniel Todd Gilbert

The Sense of Order: A Study in the Psychology of Decorative Art (The Wrightsman Lectures, V. 9) - E. H. Gombrich

Freedom from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder: A Personalized Recovery Program for Living with Uncertainty - Jonathan Grayson

Manufacturing Depression: The Secret History of a Modern Disease - Gary Greenberg

Insomniac – Gayle Greene

The Intelligent Eye - Richard L. Gregory

Mirrors in Mind - Richard L. Gregory

Odd Perceptions – Richard L. Gregory

Why We Make Mistakes: How We Look Without Seeing, Forget Things in Seconds, and Are All Pretty Sure We Are Way Above Average - Joseph T. Hallinan

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die - Chip Heath and Dan Heath

On Second Thought: Outsmarting Your Mind's Hard-Wired Habits - Wray Herbert

Sleep Disorders For Dummies - Max Hirshkowitz, Patricia B. Smith and William C. Dement

Mind Wide Open: Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life - Steven Johnson

Sleep Apnea - The Phantom of the Night: Overcome Sleep Apnea Syndrome and Snoring - T. Scott Johnson, William A. Broughton, Jerry Halberstadt and B. Gail Demko

Man and His Symbols - Carl Gustav Jung

Apprentice to Genius: The Making of a Scientific Dynasty (neuroscience and neuropharmacology)  - Robert Kanigel

Who Switched Off My Brain? Revised: Controlling Toxic Thoughts and Emotions - Caroline Leaf Ph.D.

The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life - Joseph LeDoux

Synaptic Self: How Our Brains Become Who We Are - Joseph LeDoux

How We Decide - Jonah Lehrer 

Proust Was a Neuroscientist - Jonah Lehrer

The Accidental Mind: How Brain Evolution Has Given Us Love, Memory, Dreams, and God - David J. Linden

The Compass of Pleasure: How Our Brains Make Fatty Foods, Orgasm, Exercise, Marijuana, Generosity, Vodka, Learning, and Gambling Feel So Good - David J. Linden

Of Two Minds: The Growing Disorder in American Psychiatry - T. M. Luhrmann

The How of Happiness: A New Approach to Getting the Life You Want - Sonja Lyubomirsky

101 Theory Drive: A Neuroscientist's Quest for Memory (Gary Lynch) - Terry McDermott

Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School - John Medina

The Society of Mind - Marvin Minsky

Psychology Today: Taming Bipolar Disorder (Psychology Today Here to Help) - Lori Oliwenstein

The Cult of Personality Testing: How Personality Tests Are Leading Us to Miseducate Our Children, Mismanage Our Companies, and Misunderstand Ourselves - Annie Murphy Paul

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorders: A Complete Guide to Getting Well and Staying Well - Fred Penzel

Learned Helplessness: A Theory for the Age of Personal Control - Christopher Peterson, Steven F. Maier and Martin E. P. Seligman

The Boy Who Couldn't Stop Washing: The Experience and Treatment of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder - Judith L. Rapoport

Shadow Syndromes: The Mild Forms of Major Mental Disorders That Sabotage Us - John J. Ratey M. D. and Catherine Johnson Ph.D.

Be Different: My Adventures with Asperger's and My Advice for Fellow Aspergians, Misfits, Families, and Teachers - John Elder Robison

Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's - John Elder Robison

Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment - Martin E. P. Seligman

Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being - Martin E. P. Seligman   

Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life - Martin E. P. Seligman

What You Can Change and What You Can't: The Complete Guide to Successful Self-Improvement - Martin E. P. Seligman

Brain Lock: Free Yourself from Obsessive-Compulsive Behavior - Jeffrey M. Schwartz and Beverly Beyette

The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force - Jeffrey M. Schwartz and Sharon Begley

Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are - Sebastian Seung

Wish I Could Be There: Notes from a Phobic Life - Allen Shawn 

The Other Side of Normal: How Biology Is Providing the Clues to Unlock the Secrets of Normal and Abnormal Behavior - Jordan W. Smoller

Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things - Gail Steketee 

The Impulse Factor: An Innovative Approach to Better Decision Making - Nick Tasler

Overcoming Health Anxiety - David Veale

Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America - Robert Whitaker   

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Dummies - Rob Willson and Rhena Branch

Don't Panic: Taking Control of Anxiety Attacks - Reid Wilson

Math:

A Tour of the Calculus - David Berlinski

Newton's Gift: How Sir Isaac Newton Unlocked the System of the World - David Berlinski 

The Advent of the Algorithm: The Idea that Rules the World - David Berlinski

First You Build a Cloud: And Other Reflections on Physics as a Way of Life – K. C. Cole

Mind Over Matter: Conversations with the Cosmos – K. C. Cole

The Universe and the Tea Cup: The Mathematics of Truth and Beauty – K. C. Cole

Archimedes' Revenge: The Joys and Perils of Mathematics - Paul Hoffman

The Man Who Loved Only Numbers: The Story of Paul Erdos and the Search for Mathematical Truth - Paul Hoffman

The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan - Robert Kanigel

The Fractal Geometry of Nature - Benoit Mandelbrot

A Beautiful Mind (John Nash) - Sylvia Nasar

A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper - John Allen Paulos

Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences - John Allen Paulos

Fermat's Enigma: The Epic Quest to Solve the World's Greatest Mathematical Problem - Simon Singh and John Lynch

Science:

Bursts: The Hidden Patterns Behind Everything We Do, from Your E-mail to Bloody Crusades - Albert-Laszlo Barabasi

Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means - Albert-László Barabási

Forward Through the Rearview Mirror: Reflections on and by Marshall McLuhan - Paul Benedetti and Nancy DeHart 

American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer - Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin 

Turbulent Mirror: An Illustrated Guide to Chaos Theory and the Science of Wholeness - John Briggs  

Ubiquity: Why Catastrophes Happen - Mark Buchanan

The Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins

The Meaning of it All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist - Richard P Feynman

What Do You Care What Other People Think?: Further Adventures of a Curious Character - Richard P. Feynman 

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking - Malcolm Gladwell

Outliers: The Story of Success - Malcolm Gladwell

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference - Malcolm Gladwell

What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures - Malcolm Gladwell

Chaos: Making a New Science - James Gleick

Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything - James Gleick

Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman – James Gleick

The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood - James Gleick

What Just Happened: A Chronicle from the Information Frontier - James Gleick

Alan Turing: The Enigma - Andrew Hodges and Douglas Hofstadter

Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software - Steven Johnson

Chances Are . . .: Adventures in Probability - Michael Kaplan and Ellen Kaplan

Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World - Kevin Kelly

Naked To The Bone: Medical Imaging In The Twentieth Century - Bettyann Kevles

John Von Neumann: The Scientific Genius Who Pioneered the Modern Computer, Game Theory, Nuclear Deterrence, and Much More - Norman Macrae

The Gutenberg Galaxy - Marshall McLuhan 

The Medium is the Massage - Marshall McLuhan, Quentin Fiore and Shepard Fairey

Feynman's Rainbow: A Search for Beauty in Physics and in Life - Leonard Mlodinow 

The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives - Leonard Mlodinow 

What the Numbers Say: A Field Guide to Mastering Our Numerical World - Derrick Niederman and David Boyum

Universal Foam: Exploring the Science of Nature's Most Mysterious Substance - Sidney Perkowitz

Labyrinths of Reason: Paradox, Puzzles, and the Frailty of Knowledge - William Poundstone

The Prisoner's Dilemma - William Poundstone

The Lady Tasting Tea: How Statistics Revolutionized Science in the Twentieth Century - David Salsburg

Fringes of Reason (Whole Earth) - Ted Schultz

Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences – Edward Tenner

Philosophy/ Sociology

Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream - Barbara Ehrenreich

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America - Barbara Ehrenreich

The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements - Eric Hoffer

The Age of Alienation - Bernard Murchland