How Your Body Works

The Interactive Encylopedia
of the Human Body

Mindscape

Available in Mac or Windows format

Windows ISBN 0791118479
Mac ISBN 0791118487

Review by James Neal Webb

It's a dirty little secret among those of us who own a lot of books, but the truth is that most of the time they just sit there, gathering dust. Oh, they may get pulled out occasionally, but not that often. No, books that actually get used are few and far between-but you can probably think of a few if you try. Cookbooks, right, that's obvious; how-to and repair books come to mind; dictionaries, encyclopedias, atlases-when you think about it, there are quite a few. And what do these books have in common? They are all reference books. CD-ROMs, though a fairly new technology, fall into similar patterns, with games being the largest category, and after you've solved Myst or tired of blowing up TIE fighters, they end up gathering dust. Then you have your reference CDs.

How Your Body Works is interactive, to be sure, and it has some extra bells and whistles to pique the curiosity of younger minds, but at its heart, it's just a reference book. This is a good thing. Why? Because you'll never get tired of this CD-ROM, no more than you'd get tired of an encyclopedia. Once you've familiarized yourself with its workings, you'll go back to it again and again as the situation warrants. Wondering about Grandpa's arthritis? Enter the laboratory and check out the subject in any number of ways. You can click on an anatomy chart or a 3-D mannequin to explore the muscles and how they work through some amazing animation; you might put a tape in the VCR and watch a film on how the disease is being treated; speaking of treatment, the medicine cabinet will help you look up the usage and side effects on many common drugs. And, if you get tired of the game-like aspects of this computerized reference book, you can always click on the lab's computer to obtain menu-driven access to all the CD-ROM's secrets.

Whether you're a knowledge junkie who likes to explore or the parent of a budding MD, you'll find a lot to like about How Your Body Works; it's a slick, well-produced tour of a very complex organism. While certainly not all-inclusive, it's a detailed reference for anyone interested in what makes us tick. Parents will like the human sexuality lock-out feature, and the print-out option for all text and narrative scripts is a plus for report-minded students, although I'm not sure what the convention is for CD-ROMs in a bibliography. Well, maybe I can find out in one of my reference books É

James Neal Webb operates his own graphics business in Nashville, Tennessee and can be reached at jim_webb@bookpage.com..

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