Great Health Hints Handy Tips (Reader's Digest General Books)

Enhanced by hundreds of illustrations and divided into eleven sections, a compilation of more than four thousand health tips provides valuable information on diet, nutrition, exercise, personal fitness, illness, recovery, physicians, and other topics. 20,000 first printing.

This compendium of brief facts on health, safety, and fitness is divided into chapters covering broad subject areas: diet and nutrition, looking your best, your family's well-being, and more. One-to four-page articles within each chapter discuss specific subjects such as stress management, skin care, childproofing the home, and choosing an HMO. The information is presented in list format, recommending specific steps for achieving a goal (e.g., putting nonskid mats both inside and outside bathtubs and showers to reduce falls). Emphasis is on simple, practical information. Charts and color illustrations supplement the text.

The information is current, but the book lacks focus, covering many subjects on a superficial level. One can find first aid tips, advice on composting, step-parenting techniques, and house-cleaning hints. Patrons using the reference collection require more depth than this book provides. Lay medical encyclopedias such as The Mayo Clinic Family Health Book (Morrow, 1990) offer better coverage of health topics, while Charles B. Inlander's Consumer's Medical Desk Reference (Hyperion, 1995) provides superior information about insurance and medicolegal issues. Great Health Hints & Handy Tips is best suited to home libraries or circulating collections. It is not a necessary purchase for reference collections.