Book signing at AANS

I will be doing a book signing at the AANS annual meeting in Philadelphia on Monday, May 3 and Tuesday, May 4, 2010  from 2:00-3:00 P.M. (on both dates) at the Thieme booth.  Stop by and say "hi", maybe pick up a (free) T-shirt, and share your comments (I am always looking for suggestions for ways to improve the Handbook of Neurosurgery).

Giveaway over. Congratulations!

Great job!  We have a winner for the two books in the photo.  The books are:

Brain Surgeon: An intimate view of his world by Lawrence Shainberg  and "When the Air Hits Your Brain" by Frank T. Vertosick Jr.

I want to thank everyone for participating.  I hope it was a fun diversion.
And so this ends the book giveaways.
I hope that everyone enjoys the Handbook of Neurosurgery, and I always welcome suggestions for ways to improve it.

Best regards,
Mark Greenberg

Final giveaway

Two giveaways: an easy one and a challenging one.  Giveaways are limited to addresses within North America.  Previous winners cannot win duplicate prize.  No purchase necessary, void where prohibited, don't text and drive... you know the drill. 

The easy one

The 5th person to email me at editor@grgraphics.com with the words "BURR HOLE" in the subject line wins a free copy of the 7th edition of the Handbook of Neurosurgery.  The 4th and 6th respondents will each receive a T-Shirt (ooh - so close).

The challenging one

If you click on my photo under the "About Me" sidebar on this blog, you will see some books on the shelf behind me that are in soft focus.  At least two of the books can be identified by the astute viewer. The first person to correctly identify the 2 books (title and author) will win a free copy of the 7th edition of the Handbook of Neurosurgery.  Email your responses to editor@grgraphics.com.  The contest will close at midnight eastern time on Tuesday, March 23, 2010 - if there are no winners by that time, the prize will be awarded to what I judge to be the best response.   Hints may be posted on this blog prior to the contest close if there is not already a winner.  Good luck - I hope this is a fun challenge.  

Amazon.com listing corrected

After spending 45 minutes on the phone with the extremely friendly folks at Amazon's seller support, the search issue has been corrected!  Searching by title (Handbook of Neurosurgery) and by author (Mark Greenberg) now displays the current, 7th edition.  They still appear to be waiting for stock, but I am confident that this will soon be corrected.  Hopefully the distribution pipelines will start to fill-in and people will be able to get their orders.

So, it is time to have one last give-away, and then I will have to ask you to actually buy the book!  The give-away will be announced on this site at 10:00 AM on Saturday, March 20, 2010.  Best of luck to all.

Finding the 7th edition on Amazon

Amazon.com seems to have a problem when searching for the seventh edition.  It may be that they physically have not had any books in stock (this will soon be remedied) - so it does not show up when searching for Handbook of Neurosurgery or Greenberg.  You can find it by searching for the ISBN (just enter the digits 9781604063264 with no text and click Search) or, more conveniently, here is the link:

Handbook of Neurosurgery on Amazon.com

Of course this is of no immediate benefit since they don't have any in stock (yet!).  

We just had a mini-debut of the 7th edition at the International Stroke Conference in San Antonio last week, and there were a lot of orders (they only had 4 copies to demo).  I am looking forward to the AANS in Philly for the major U.S. rollout (the EANS Annual Meeting is March 25-27 in the Netherlands, and we hope to have copies available for the European premier). 

7th Edition now available

Copies of the book have reached the warehouse.  It will take a few days to get all of the sales channels open (Amazon.com is being a real slowpoke).

Thieme.com is showing the book as "Now Available"  Here's the link:

Handbook of Neurosurgery at Thieme

For a free copy of the 7th edition, be the 7th person to correctly answer this question (send your answer to editor@grgraphics.com):

   Q: According to the 6th edition of the Handbook of Neurosurgery, what is the percentage of aneurysms that rebleed with fourteen days of their initial rupture?

Previous winners of a free 7th edition are not eleigible for another book, but they can win a T-shirt.  
Contest open only for shipping to addresses in North America.
Void where prohibited.  Your mileage may vary.  

Advance copy received

My advance copy of the book finally arrived yesterday.

The good: the cover in real life looks way better than how it appears on a web page.  The color and cyan highlights inside the book look great and really help readability.  The book has really matured - more recommendations and guidelines are evidence based.  Lots of new/recent references.  A few critical imaging studies have been added.

The not-so-good:  It is 1/3 inch thicker than the 6th edition.  I checked it with dummy books before we went to press - so I knew about how it would be.  But it is thick!  However, it still easily slides it into my white coat pocket.  I seriously need to go on an information diet!

Advance copies arrive in NY

I just received word that the advance copies of the 7th edition arrived in NY today, and that they look great.  I guess I didn't plan this as well as I did on the previous edition where I made sure that the printer sent copies to me, simultaneously!  So from the date they started printing (Feb 7) until there is actually an assembled book coming off the line is about 1 week.  That is amazing.

To mark this event, the first three people who email me at editor@grgraphics.com with the word CRANIOTOMY in the subject will receive a free copy of the 7th edition, the next two will get a T-shirt.  Sorry - offer is limited to addresses in North America.  Winners of previous giveaways (of the same item) are not eligible (but you could get a book AND a T-shirt).

So far I've given away 10 books.  Good luck!

Some random information about the 7th edition:
   1352 pages
   133 figures
   5058 references
  

Printing status and giveaway

One of the things I want to use this blog for is to provide updates regarding the progress of the 7th edition.
The printer has the files, and was supposed to have begun the actual printing on Sunday, Feb 7 (so physicians aren't the only ones working on Sundays).

I am also providing updates on the book and T-shirt giveaway.   One copy apiece of the 7th edition of the Handbook of Neurosurgery (©2010) have been earmarked for the first 5 people to follow this blog.  Congratulations to the lucky 5!  Stay tuned for other freebie opportunities.

Updates will also be posted to my Twitter feed,


          http://twitter.com/neuroblade1

Announcing the 7th edition of the Handbook of Neursurgery

Greetings. It is with great pleasure that I am announcing the 7th edition of the Handbook of Neurosurgery by Mark S. Greenberg ©2010. Here is a shot of the front cover.

As with the 5th and 6th editions, the 7th edition will be co-published in conjunction with Thieme Medical Publishers. The retail price will be $99.95 U.S. If all goes well, the book should be available by March.

My goals with the book have always been to provide a means of rapidly accessing information related to the management of neurosurgical patients and to answer important neurosurgical questions.

New or improved features in the 7th edition include:

• color illustrations for some anatomy and surgical diagrams

• color highlights throughout the book to improve readability

• basic surgical procedures (this is not a surgical atlas!)

• more management specifics (blunt carotid injuries, stroke…)

• Booking the Case: information to help jog the memory about what is needed for scheduling an operation and what to put in the consent, for over 30 different operations

• TLICS & SLIC fracture grading scales

• summaries of management guidelines for NPH and cervical spondylotic myelopathy

I have set up a twitter feed for anyone interested in the progress of the book and giveaways as well as any activity related to the development of an electronic version of the book*. Subsribe to neuroblade1 on twitter for the latest information. (Note: there have been some issues with some names (including neuroblade1) not showing up in Twitter searches - the problem appears to be intermittent and is being worked on by the Twitter gods. In the meantime - please keep trying!).

* An electronic version has been a goal for some time, I am still trying to find an appropriate text engine. It is still a ways off, but with the print version of the 7th edition finalized, I can begin to work on this in earnest.