At 18, Tré Miller-Rodríguez gave her newborn daughter up for adoption. At 19, her only sibling was killed in a car crash. At 34, she lost her husband to a sudden heart attack. Then, at 36, her now-teenaged daughter found her on Facebook—and began to reshape the course of Tré’s life. With sharp, immediate prose, Tré unpacks the experience of being young and widowed in New York City: the “dumb sh*% people say”; the “brave face” she wears to work and social events; the solace she doesn’t find in one-night stands; and how her perspective only begins to shift when she spontaneously brings Alberto’s ashes on a trip and sets into motion the ritual of spreading him in bodies of water around the world. Once she’s begun, Tré discovers that traveling to her bucket list destinations—places like Savannah, Brazil, and Cuba—is a viable strategy for facing her roughest days, and her loss of her husband becomes a lens through which she begins to view her past and embrace her future. By the end of her journey, Tré has quit her corporate job, explored Alberto’s homeland of Cuba, and joyfully reunited with her biological daughter in North Carolina. Equal parts inspiring, irreverent, and heart-rending, Splitting the Difference is written with the “raw-thenticity” of a woman transformed by heartbreak and inspired by love’s legacy.

A powerful debut by Indigenous performance poet and spoken word artist, Janet Marie Rogers, Splitting the Heart throbs with the vitality of a Native drum and wails with a warrior's wisdom. Both Mohawk warrior and west coast woman, Roger's poems speak of personal and cultural identity, the trials of her people, loss and death - balanced by exquisite love poems, transcendent in their earthiness. She addresses the limitations of written history, the illusion of borders and the abuses suffered by the Native peoples, even those self-inflicted. Created as spoken word performance pieces, these poems more than hold their own when committed to print and come alive in an accompanying audio CD. Janet Marie Rogers is a multi-media artist with a way with words and a great deal to say on matters of deep importance. Splitting the Heart is a landmark volume of Canadian poetry. It's time has come! A Mohawk writer from the Six Nations territory in southern Ontario, Janet Marie Rogers was born in Vancouver and now lives in Victoria, B.C. Originally a visual artist, Rogers later channeled her creative energy into writing, exploring poetry, drama, fiction and fantasy. She is known as a dynamic spoken word artist and performer. Splitting the Heart is her first book.

Praised for its concise coverage, this highly accessible monograph lays a foundation for understanding the underlying concepts of normal cardiovascular function and offers a welcome alternative to a more mechanistically oriented approach or an encyclopedic physiology text. Clear explanations, ample illustrations and engaging clinical cases and problems provide the perfect guidance for self-directed learning and prepare you to excel in clinical practice.

The book contains a series of core auscultation “lessons”. All are case based and describe auscultation as it relates to a patient and in terms of the gold standard for interpretation of heart sounds. Auscultation is the term for listening to the internal sounds of the body, usually using a stethoscope. It is performed for the purposes of examining the circulatory system and respiratory system (heart sounds and breath sounds). As a topic it is one of the oldest in cardiology but its utility should never be underestimated. In this era of hugely expensive imaging tests, auscultation is a cornerstone of efficient diagnosis and therefore needs a fresh look. The core content of this book describes the search for diagnostic clues within patients’ heart sounds and as such this book provides superb practical advice in the form of a series of clinical pearls reflecting what accurate diagnosis with auscultation can mean to patient prognosis and outcome. This often subtle but ultimately simple subject often produces complex results and these must be considered in light of modern next-level diagnostic methods and patient management.

Can we save ourselves, or do we rely on others to do it? Is what we believe always the truth?

Are you mystified by murmurs? Puzzled by pitch? Stymied by splitting? If so, this is the book for you. Cardiac auscultation can be a frustrating skill to learn, and many physical examination texts address cardiac auscultation in a cursory fashion. The wide variety of heart sounds available on CD and the internet may serve more to confuse than to clarify. The philosophy of this book is that understanding is a much more powerful tool than memorization in arriving at a differential diagnosis. This book takes the form of a programmed text. Each page presents a simple concept or two related to anatomy, physiology, pathophysiology or even physics. Applying this knowledge - knowledge you already possess - provides a solid foundation for arriving at a diagnosis in many cases.

Wanting to understand how her path is tied to her mother tongue, Anne, a young, multiracial American woman, travels through China, the country of her mother’s birth. Along the way, she tries on different roles—seeker, teacher, student, girlfriend, artist, and daughter—and continually asks herself: Why do I feel called to make this journey? Whether witnessing a Tibetan sky burial, teaching English at a university in Chengdu, visiting her grandmother in LA, or falling in love with a Chinese painter, Anne is always in pursuit of intimacy with others, even as she is all too aware of her silences and separation. For two years, she settles into a comfortable routine in her boyfriend’s apartment and regains fluency in Chinese, a language she spoke as a young child but has used less and less as an adult. Eventually, however, her desire to know herself in other ways surfaces again. She misses speaking English, she feels suffocated by urban, polluted China, and she starts to fall for another man. Ultimately, Anne realizes that to live her truth as a mixed-race, bilingual woman she must embrace all of her influences and layers. In a world that often wants us to choose a side or fit an ideal, she learns that she can both belong and not belong wherever she is, and that home is ultimately found within.