Heart Failure: Pathophysiology, Molecular Biology, and Clinical Management

This is a unique book, it focuses on heart failure and is very accurately described by it's title. I found it to be surprisingly easy to read. The strength of this book is that it does a good job integrating background info on normal cardiac physiology and molecular biology with the alterations that occur during heart failure. The author often employs a philosphical approach with many quotes from philosophy and theater that are meant to give the reader "something to chew on" before embarking on the chapter at hand. Some may find this approach distracting, however I personally found it refreshing. The book does a good job covering the important basic aspects of heart failure; classifications, cardiac physiology, E-C coupling, signal transduction, etc. Best of all the book is actually in a user friendly size, about 6" x 10", about 1 pound, and 380 pages, so it may be carried around with relative ease. Bottom line is that this will serve as a good guide to understand the basic principles of heart failure and provides an avenue integrate molecular biology with cardiac pathophysiology. It doesn't have all the details, but will prepare you to seek out the info that you need in an intelligent fashion from medical databases.