At the end of each of the book's 27 chapters, there's a summary box titled, "The Least You Should Know." Unfortunately, when you boil down a small amount of very thin gruel, it disappears.
The idiots get a failing grade.
Dummies: As uneven as readers' mental state. Pun alert: Know the "shape urine."
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_____Live Discussion_____
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Marcia Jones will be online Tuesday, Feb. 8, at 2 p.m. ET to take your questions about women's health and the various stages of menopause and how it can affect your body, your emotions, and your libido.
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The Midlife Bible: A Woman's Survival Guide
Michael Goodman, M.D. (Robert D. Reed Publishers, 2004, 276 pp., $14.95)
And how about those morons? What kind of woman buys "a woman's survival guide" written by a man who's so arrogant that he calls his finished product a "Bible"?
Well, save my feminist soul and apologies for being so surprised, she's no kind of moron. The Midlife Bible is actually quite good.
This book is more technical than the others and yet less like a textbook. While it's unsophisticated in presentation (beware the really moronic cartoons), the information presented is specific and detailed. And each chapter ends with a case study about a real woman going through menopause.
Author Michael Goodman (good-man!) presents himself as an amalgam of Marcus Welby, Monk and the Horse Whisperer. He's a kindly ob-gyn with more than 30 years of experience, an obsessive need to find the right treatment and a desire to buck the system by actually spending time with his patients. He's almost too good to be true.
In the stories he tells about women he's treated, Goodman, who practices in Davis, Calif., makes it clear that he understands the complex interaction of midlife symptoms. He listens carefully for clues. He even calls patients who don't make their follow-up appointments. The best part, though (at least for this moron), is that he doesn't sugar-coat anything.
"There's no reason why life, if it's good, cannot continue to be good," he writes. "And if it's crap, why it can't be modified or changed."
