Yes, You DO have the right book!

Yesterday, Farley and I bought the review book of all review books: "Rapid Interpretation of EKGs" by Dr. Dublin. The book just cracks me up. The back of the book doesn't describe how the book is set up just why is it such a great book. It talks about the imitators and how other review books have replaced "EKG" with "ECG" etc. I was laughing when I read the back of the book. The first point that made me laugh, "Yes! You do have the right book." and later when it says (highlighted in yellow) "There are books you buy for a course...This is a reference you keep for life." Please note, I had a hard time taking pictures for you to see this great reference, so I apologize that they are not my best pictures.



Obviously, I had to rip off the plastic and read this book immediately. I was not disappointed. For example, the yellow box under the Table of Contents: "Since this book will be your lifetime reference, you should place an identifying tab on the first page of each chapter." Then it highlights which pages start the chapter in the table of contents.


Finally, I started reading the first chapter. This books is beautiful. Every page is glossy, colored and the pages are thick, but not quite card stock. Each page starts with a drawing, graph or table. Readers are to first read the caption then try to understand the content of the drawing, graph or table. Next, it has a few sentences about the drawing, graph or table and expanding on the topic at hand. These sentences, however, lack a key word which is in the margin and you are expected to fill it in as you read (and obviously you can check if you are not sure). For example, it might say, "Living in Dominica, Nicole has many sunny days but also many ____ days because Dominica is not only near the equator but also a rain forest." Now in the margin it would say "rainy." It was actually fun to read the book. Luckily for me, there was yet another comment after the first page of chapter one, which made me chuckle: "*Get yourself a warm cup of coffee, relax and enjoy...the rest of the book is just as easy and entertaining."

I've never seen such a cocky text book, but if all the things I've read about it are true I guess it can afford to be cocky. From what I've seen so far, it is fun and easy--I just hope it stays that way. It has been published for over 30 years, is in it's 6th edition and the 60th publication...seems like reason to be cocky.