Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Does not keep what it promises, 14 Nov 2000
By A Customer
I own four other books from the same series. I use them and cherish them. This book here is does not come up to the same standards. The book promises to be a writers' guide to injuries etc. But it is just a first aid instruction manual cum medical encyclopedia. If you don't happen to have a first aid manual in the house, or if you are a medical student, you may find it useful. As for the writing side of things - don't expect this book to tell you how to describe wounds or anything useful like that. Instead, it will provide you with latin names for internal organs and that sort of thing. I wish the publishers had told the author that the readers and users of this book were writers. Somehow he doesn't seem to have realised that. Being a medical doctor himself, he seemed keen to teach medical knowledge to the readers. Frankly, if I wanted that, I'd have bought a book on that.The publishers also have apparently forgotten to tell their author that the book is about injuries. So he writes about what goes on in the mind of a criminal and comes up with such startling revelations as 'All rapists are different'. Perhaps the publishers also ought to have mentioned that they have a book on what motivates criminals already in the list (which is much better). If you expect a book as useful as others in the series, especially the ones on American police procedure, on poisons, or on modus operandi, you'll be disappointed. I was.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Everything you always wanted to know about Body Trauma, 30 Jul 2004
By A Customer
"Body Trauma" tries to explain what happens to body organs and bones when people get wounded or injured. Dr. David W. Page, a surgeon with extensive experience in treating body trauma, divides this volume into three parts. Part I provides An Overview on Trauma that covers the type of care trauma victims receive in the field, at the Trauma Center or in the Operating Room. Part II looks at Specific Traumatic Injuries by Organ System, starting with head trauma, then neck and spinal cord injuries, chest trauma, abdominal trauma, and finally extremity trauma to the arms and legs. Part III focuses on Unique Traumatic Injuries, specifically bites, impalement injuries and mutilations, traumatic amputations and replantation, burns and frostbite, diving accidents and altitude illness, physical abuse, sexual assault, and organ donation. The goal here is for you to be able to work backwards, by deciding how severe a character's wounds should be and then writing the actions that will result in those wounds. Specific examples are used from various stories, usually to illustrate how the knowledge your acquire from this book can be used without going into such detail that it gets in the way of the story you are trying to tell. Like other volumes in The Whodunit Series, "Body Trauma: A Writer's Guide to Wounds and Injuries" is a valuable asset for any writer who has characters who get hurt. Certainly there are books out there with more details on specific wounds and injuries, but those are pretty much going to be medical textbooks. This book more than adequately covers the basics, allowing you to distinguish between minor and major injuries to the arm, dog bites versus human bites, and the "dirty dozen" horrible but survivable chest injuries.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
It doesn't hurt to read it!, 21 Sep 1999
By A Customer
I write. My characters get hurt. Badly. Heck, don't tell the cops, but there is a mass-murderer loose in my head.
Now, I don't know a lot about medicine - but David W. Page, MD, DOES, which helps me a lot. BODY TRAUMA is not the first of the "Howdunit" series that I had on my shelf. Nor will it be the last. I heartily recommend writers take the time to read through these books. You'll thank the authors of them for the time they took to put them together.
David W. Page's writing is concise, it's informative and he manages to explain difficult procedures with a minimum of jargon - and that jargon is explained as well. He describes causes, symptoms, treatments and goes into police procedural a bit. (And if you want more Police Procedural - I recommend you get the book that is cunningly titled "Police Procedural")
He helps the writer to picture the injury, know what might be done about it and how to handle the scene. It also tells you that "Less is more" and has examples of this strewn all through the book. Heck, it helps me to be ever more cruel to my characters... ;-) (I write horror, I'm allowed to be cruel to the bad guys...)
All in all, it joins the "force" of "Howdunit's" that is taking permanent residence on my shelf- er, desk. I use it too often for it to make it onto the shelf...
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