Ann K. Finkbeiner – författare

The Guide to Living with HIV Infection is the most complete source of medical, emotional, social, and practical advice available for those infected with HIV and their loved ones. Developed at the Johns Hopkins AIDS Clinic, the guide provides essential information for making decisions about treatment and testing in a world transformed by new research and pharmacotherapy. In this thoroughly updated sixth edition, Dr. John Bartlett and Ann K. Finkbeiner address the latest information about risks of transmission, viral mutations that confer drug resistance, and new, rapid, HIV testing. They offer guidelines for Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART), a therapy protocol that has dramatically increased life expectancy for HIV-positive people. They describe how to follow HAART and when to change drug regimens, the symptoms of and treatments for HAART side effects, and the costs of and insurance coverage for HAART. They also outline the possibilities for a diagnosis of "no detectable virus." Accompanied by updated references and resources, the sixth edition of The Guide to Living with HIV Infection offers new hope for people living with a virus that once left no hope at all.

LATE IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, what had been a fevered pace of discovery in astronomy for many years had slowed. The Hubble Space Telescope continued to produce an astonishing array of images, but the study of the universe was still fractured into domains: measuring the universe’s expansion rate, the evolution of galaxies in the early universe, the life and death of stars, the search for extrasolar planets, the quest to understand the nature of the elusive dark matter. So little was understood, still, about so many of the most fundamental questions, foremost among them: What was the overall structure of the universe? Why had stars formed into galaxies, and galaxies into massive clusters? What was needed, thought visionary astronomer Jim Gunn, recently awarded the National Medal of Science, was a massive survey of the sky, a kind of new map of the universe that would be so rich in detail and cover such a wide swath of space, be so grand and bold, that it would allow astronomers to see the big picture in a whole new way. So was born the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, a remarkable undertaking bringing together hundreds of astronomers and launching a new era of supercharged astronomical discovery, an era of “e-science” that has taken astronomy from the lonely mountaintop observatory to the touch of your fingertips. Critically acclaimed science writer Ann Finkbeiner tells the inside story of the Sloan and how it is revolutionizing astronomy. The Sloan stitched together images of deep space taken over the course of five years, providing a remarkably detailed, three-dimensional map of a vast territory of the universe, all digitized and downloadable for easy searching on a personal computer, and available not only to professional astronomers but to the public as well. Bringing together for the first time images of many millions of galaxies—including the massive structure known as the Sloan Great Wall of galaxies, never seen before—the Sloan is allowing astronomers and armchair enthusiasts alike to watch the universe grow up, providing so many discoveries at such a fast pace that, as one astronomer said, it’s like drinking out of a fire hose. They are watching galaxies forming and galaxies merging with other galaxies, seeing streams of stars swirling out from galaxies, and forming a new understanding of how the smooth soup of matter that emerged from the Big Bang evolved into the universe as we know it. Ann Finkbeiner brings the excitement and the extraordinary potential of this new era of astronomy vividly to life and allows all readers to understand how they, too, can become part of the discovery process. A Grand and Bold Thing is vital reading for all.

For a parent, losing a child is the most devastating event that can occur. Most books on the subject focus on grieving and recovery, but as most parents agree, there is no recovery from such a loss. This book examines the continued love parents feel for their child and the many poignant and ingenious ways they devise to preserve the bond. Through detailed profiles of parents, Ann Finkbeiner shows how new activities and changed relationships with their spouse, friends, and other children can all help parents preserve a bond with the lost child. Based on extensive interviews and grief research, Finkbeiner explains how parents have changed five to twenty-five years after the deaths of their children. The first half of the book discusses the short- and long-term effects of the child’s death on the parent’s relationships with the outside world, that is, with their spouses, other children, friends, and relatives. The second half of the book details the effect on the parents’ internal world: their continuing sense of guilt; their need to place the death in some larger context and their inability sometimes to consistently do so; their new set of priorities; the nature of their bond with the lost child and the subtle and creative ways they have of continuing that bond. Finkbeiner’s central point is not so much how parents grieve for their children, but how they love them. Refusing to fall back on pop jargon about “recovery” or to offer easy solutions or standardized timelines, Finkbeiner’s is a genuine and moving search to come to terms with loss. Her complex profiles of parents resonate with the honesty and authenticity of uncomfortable emotions expressed and, most importantly, shared with others experiencing a similar loss. Finally, each profile exemplifies the many heroic ways parents learn to live with their pain, and by so doing, honor the lives their children should have lived.