Pamela D. Toler

This is popular science/history for the masses. I enjoyed the tramp across pre-history to modern times, but the book is let down by errors and omissions.
We are told the during the ice age "the temperature dropped to roughly minus 60 degrees Celsius". Really? Where? Everywhere?? Was every ocean on earth frozen solid??
Then there are the clunky sentence constructions, the maps with careful colour coding - but no explanations, the map the labels Japan as Taiwan. I could go on.
What a shame. Something that could be a great introduction for the lay reader is let down by editing and production problems that should have never got to print.… (mehr)

Browsing the Library I saw this book and was immediately attracted to it as it had the PBS mark on the cover. Mercy Street was a series a few years back and I really enjoyed it.

The book covers the real women who served as nurses and matrons during the civil war at Mansion house in Alexandria, Virginia. It delves into the hardships these women faced and the battles they fought with the Doctors and the Government. Dorothea Dix, Mary Phinny and countless other women paved the way for nursing to become respected profession.

I love learning something new, and what I learned here was that these women developed the "special diet" for patients unable to digest an ordinary meal.

This is a very readable book, and I would recommend it to anyone interested in learning the roots of nursing in America.… (mehr)