What camera should I buy? Or a self-study curriculum of introductory books for photography beginners

This is an overview of a proposed self-study curriculum and reading list to teach the fundamentals of photography. I am a student of visual art and photography, and people often ask me "What camera should I buy." My answer is almost uniformly, "Don't buy a new camera, your phone is already more than you need, just …

Do No Harm & The Dressing Station

I've just finished reading two surgical memoirs which I read back to back, switching between the two, both by surgeons trained in the British system, Jonathan Kaplan and Henry Marsh. Jonathan Kaplan is a medical and media vagabond and his book is The Dressing Station: A Surgeon's Chronicle of War and Medicine.  Henry Marsh is senior …

Book Review: Monday Mornings

I started Sanjay Gupta's novel Monday Mornings very excited to read some realistic and exciting stories of compelling and interesting characters working on exciting cases.  However, in a lot of ways I was disappointed.  It was an okay medical novel, but felt a bit like I was reading the novelization of an okay medical show. …