Residency--and especially the first year, called internship--is legendary for its brutality. Working eighty hours or more per week, most new doctors spend their first year asking themselves why they wanted to be doctors in the first place.Jauhar's internship was even more harrowing than most: he switched from physics to medicine in order to follow a more humane calling--only to find that medicine put patients' concerns last. He struggled to find a place among squadrons of cocky residents and doctors. He challenged the practices of the internship in The New York Times, attracting the suspicions of the medical bureaucracy. Then, suddenly stricken, he became a patient himself--and came to see that today's high-tech, high-pressure medicine can be a humane science after all.Now a thriving cardiologist, Jauhar has all the qualities you'd want in your own doctor: expertise, insight, a feel for the human factor, a sense of humor, and a keen awareness of the worries that we all have in common. His beautifully written memoir explains the inner workings of modern medicine with rare candor and insight. "In Jauhar's wise memoir of his two-year ordeal of doubt and sleep deprivation at a New York hospital, he takes readers to the heart of every young physician's hardest test: to become a doctor yet remain a human being." ― Time

    As Professor of Anatomy and Forensic Anthropology, she focuses on mortal remains in her lab, at burial sites, at scenes of violence, murder and criminal dismemberment, and when investigating mass fatalities due to war, accident or natural disaster. In All that Remains she reveals the many faces of death she has come to know, using key cases to explore how forensic science has developed, and what her work has taught her. Do we expect a book about death to be sad? Macabre? Sue’s book is neither. There is tragedy, but there is also humour in stories as gripping as the best crime novel. Our own death will remain a great unknown. But as an expert witness from the final frontier, Sue Black is the wisest, most reassuring, most compelling of guides.

    Although necessary health care should be available to all who need it, he says, the current health-care debate assumes that everyone requires massive amounts of expensive care to stay healthy. Hadler urges that before we commit to paying for whatever pharmaceutical companies and the medical establishment tell us we need, American consumers need to adopt an attitude of skepticism and arm themselves with enough information to make some of their own decisions about what care is truly necessary. Each chapter of Worried Sick is an object lesson regarding the uses and abuses of a particular type of treatment, such as mammography, colorectal screening, statin drugs, or coronary stents. For consumers and medical professionals interested in understanding the scientific basis for Hadler's arguments, each topical chapter has an accompanying source chapter in which Hadler discusses the medical literature and studies that inform his critique. According to Hadler, a major stumbling block to rational health-care policy in the United States is contention over the very concept of what constitutes good health. By learning to distinguish good medical advice from persuasive medical marketing, consumers can make better decisions about their personal health and use that wisdom to inform their perspectives on health-policy issues.

    Barbara Ravage has fashioned an enlightening, invaluable book.” —Stewart O’Nan, author of The Circus Fire: A True Story of an American TragedyThough each of us is just a spark away from being a burn victim, the public knows little and understands less about the world that patients inhabit. Pulling the curtains back on this private and sterile environment, Burn Unit is a riveting account of the frontline efforts—both modern-day and historical—to save lives devastated by fire. With unflinching urgency, Barbara Ravage follows an extraordinary team of healers at Massachusetts General Hospital, the cradle of modern burn treatment and the site of one of the best burn units in the world. From Boston’s Cocoanut Grove fire of 1942 to the treatment of the victims of the Rhode Island nightclub fire in early 2003, we watch everyday heroes do their incredible but punishing work against the backdrop of history. Both a moving human drama and an engrossing scientific exploration of this little-known field of medicine, Burn Unit is an unforgettably powerful read.

    A natural overachiever, Collins' success, in college and medical school led to a surgical residency at one of the most respected medical centers in the world, the famed Mayo Clinic. But compared to his fellow residents Collins feels inadequate and unprepared. All too soon, the euphoria of beginning his career as an orthopedic resident gives way to the feeling he is a counterfeit, an imposter who has infiltrated a society of brilliant surgeons.This story of Collins' four-year surgical residency traces his rise from an eager but clueless first-year resident to accomplished Chief Resident in his final year. With unparalleled humor, he recounts the disparity between people's perceptions of a doctor's glamorous life and the real thing: a succession of run down cars that are towed to the junk yard, long weekends moonlighting at rural hospitals, a family that grows larger every year, and a laughable income.Collins' good nature helps him over some of the rough spots but cannot spare him the harsh reality of a doctor's life. Every day he is confronted with decisions that will change people's lives-or end them-forever. A young boy's leg is mangled by a tractor: risk the boy's life to save his leg, or amputate immediately? A woman diagnosed with bone cancer injures her hip: go through a painful hip operation even though she has only months to live? Like a jolt to the system, he is faced with the reality of suffering and death as he struggles to reconcile his idealism and aspiration to heal with the recognition of his own limitations and imperfections.Unflinching and deeply engaging, Hot Lights, Cold Steel is a humane and passionate reminder that doctors are people too. This is a gripping memoir, at times devastating, others triumphant, but always compulsively readable.

    There are always parents to help through an incredible journey . . . I am, I know, a very lucky man.’Leading paediatrician Dr Simon Rowley has committed almost all of his working life to the care and wellbeing of children. In Mind That Child, Rowley provides a rare glimpse into what it means to be entrusted with the most precious of responsibilities – a young human life. Charting his decades of medical experience, Rowley touches on an array of issues, from the high-stakes management of tiny pre-term babies to the serious impacts of drugs, alcohol and technology on developing minds. Real-life cases and practical advice are interwoven throughout a candid, compassionate narrative.What’s revealed is a tender and profound portrait of a medical professional at the very centre of what matters – a doctor who always adopts a humane, holistic view and who writes openly about the personal impact of a career in medicine. A must-read for any parent and a wonderful insight into the high-pressure medical world.

    Emerging from these compelling stories and provocative insights is a powerful case for change-by policymakers, hospitals, doctors, nurses, and even patients and their families. Wachter & Shojania underscore the depth and breadth of dangers in medical care; more important, they suggest basic safety procedures and hard-nosed remedies that could make erratic systems fail-safe and save countless lives.

    I was mentally and physically broken. So fractured, I hadn't eaten properly or slept well, or even changed my expression for months. I sat in a cubicle, behind paper-thin curtains, listening to the rest of the hospital happen around me, and I shook with the effort of not crying. I was an inch away from defeat, from the acceptance of a failure I assumed would be inevitable, but I knew I had to carry on. I had to somehow walk through it.Because I wasn't the patient. I was the doctor."A frank account of mental health from both sides of the doctor-patient divide, from the bestselling author of The Trouble with Goats and Sheep and Three Things About Elsie, based on her own experience as a doctor working on a psychiatric ward.

    Even the circumstances of its recording, purportedly in an abandoned cinema and a cave formed from Icelandic lava, have achieved legendary status among their ever-loyal fanbase. Have a Bleedin Guess tells the story of the album, including how each song was written, performed and recorded. It also includes new interviews with key players. Author Paul Hanley, who was one of The Fall's two drummers when Hex was created, is uniquely placed to discuss the album's impact, both when it was released and in the ensuing years.

    Bonnie Henry has been called one of the most effective public health figures in the world by The New York Times. She has been called a calming voice in a sea of coronavirus madness, and our hero in national newspapers. But in the waning days of 2019, when the first rumours of a strange respiratory ailment in Wuhan, China began to trickle into her office in British Colombia, these accolades lay in a barely imaginable future.Only weeks later, the whole world would look back on the previous year with the kind of nostalgia usually reserved for the distant past. With a staggering suddenness, our livelihoods, our closest relationships, our habits and our homes had all been transformed.In a moment when half-truths threatened to drown out the truth, when recklessness all too often exposed those around us to very real danger, and when it was difficult to tell paranoia from healthy respect for an invisible threat, Dr. Henry's transparency, humility, and humanity became a beacon for millions of Canadians.And her trademark enjoinder to be kind, be calm, and be safe became words for us all to live by.Coincidentally, Dr. Henry's sister, Lynn, arrived in BC for a long-planned visit on March 12, just as the virus revealed itself as a pandemic. For the four ensuing weeks, Lynn had rare insight into the whirlwind of Bonnie's daily life, with its moments of agony and gravity as well as its occasional episodes of levity and grace. Both a global story and a family story, Be Kind, Be Calm, Be Safe combines Lynn's observations and knowledge of Bonnie's personal and professional background with Bonnie's recollections of how and why decisions were made, to tell in a vivid way the dramatic tale of the four weeks that changed all our lives.Be Kind, Be Calm, Be Safe is about communication, leadership, and public trust; about the balance between politics and policy; and, at heart, about what and who we value, as individuals and a society.The authors' advance from the publisher will be donated to charities with a focus on alleviating communities hit particularly hard by the pandemic: True North Aid with its Covid-19 response in Northern Indigenous communities, and First Book Canada, with its focus on reading and literacy for underserved, marginalized youth.

    Like her father, she came to love the Galapagos and to dream of having a life there. Her experience was filled with the perils and incomparable pleasures of living on the Galapagos.

    Lumped into the burgeoning alt-country movement, the band soon landed a major label deal and recorded an instant classic: Strangers Almanac. That's when tour manager Thomas O'Keefe met the young musician.For the next three years, Thomas was at Ryan's side: on the tour bus, in the hotels, backstage at the venues. Whiskeytown built a reputation for being, as the Detroit Free Press put it, "half band, half soap opera," and Thomas discovered that young Ryan was equal parts songwriting prodigy and drunken buffoon. Ninety percent of the time, Thomas could talk Ryan into doing the right thing. Five percent of the time, he could cover up whatever idiotic thing Ryan had done. But the final five percent? Whiskeytown was screwed.Twenty-plus years later, accounts of Ryan's legendary antics are still passed around in music circles. But only three people on the planet witnessed every Whiskeytown show from the release of Strangers Almanac to the band's eventual breakup: Ryan, fiddle player Caitlin Cary, and Thomas O'Keefe.

    Within days of their first meeting in 2003, they were planning a life together, and soon they were inseparable as Michael became ever more integrated into Marilu’s family. But after only months they were thrown the ultimate curveball: Michael was diagnosed with bladder cancer, and then lung cancer. Marilu refused to lose the love of her life so easily. With the knowledge she had gained on her own health journey, chronicled in several of her bestselling books, Marilu set about finding a path for Michael that would use the best of Eastern and Western medicine to beat his cancers and return Michael to optimal health. Michael eschewed most traditional treatments and with Marilu’s help—aided by knowledgeable and sympathetic doctors—he forged his own path. In this moving and informative book, Marilu tells the story of their fast-paced romance and how this contrasted with the day-to-day battle for Michael’s life. Michael tells the story from his point of view: the search for the cause of his cancer, the mental anguish he felt as he realized how responsible he was for his condition, the physical and mental hardships that he had to overcome, and the triumph of love that made it all worthwhile. Not a “how-to” book in the traditional sense, Changing Normal is a book of empowerment, a call for all those facing similar challenges to take responsibility for their lives, to search for the causes of their illness and address them directly. Written with an engaging voice, a sense of humor, and life-changing wisdom, Changing Normal is a personal and touching look at how Marilu and Michael faced down a cancer diagnosis and came out the other side happier, healthier, and more in love than ever.

    But I was just a naive Wisconsin boy, fresh out of medical school and new to Oakland, California. I chose Highland Hospital for my surgical internship: an entire year filled with sick patients, brutal work hours, more brutal staff surgeons, and flawed attempts to maintain a long-distance relationship. Yet, somehow, it’s a work of nonfictional comedy.I take on many roles throughout the story. I’m a kid who still plays Tetris, a guy who can’t commit to his girlfriend, an untrained doctor who finds himself cutting open people’s skulls, and a fish out of water who is called to the ER to drain the blood from a cocaine-engorged penis.But this adventure isn’t just crazy hospital anecdotes or what it takes to become a surgeon. It's a coming of age tale about learning what it means to be a caregiver. Sure, I worked 40 hours without sleep, but that is only one of the ways They tried to kill me. Their real evil was crushing the enthusiasm and compassion of their trainees. I struggled to remain a “normal” human while joining a fraternity of holier-than-thou surgeons, and nothing grounded me more than trying to cope with the illnesses within my own family.If this book proves anything, it's that "Laughter is the best medicine, but surgery is a close second."Enjoy.A dollar of every Kindle book sold will benefit the charity Operation Access.

    A box set consisting of three Bill Bryson books, 'Notes from a Small Island', 'Notes from a Big Country' and 'A Walk in the Woods'.