Mad Frank and Sons


David Fraser - 2016
    It includes the story of Frank's beloved sister, Eva, who was a top-class West End shoplifter, and his sons David and Patrick, who reveal in shocking detail the full extent of the family's network and the influences that shaped them.With sawn-off shotguns as toys, the Kray twins as family friends and a mother who urged them as teenagers to 'get out of bed and rob a bleedin' bank', it is little wonder that the Fraser boys were heavily involved in organized crime by the time they were in their twenties. Packed with new information, and featuring some of the most famous names in the London underworld, this is a fascinating slice of gangland history seen through the eyes of Frank Fraser and his two renegade sons.

Mirror Touch: Notes from a Doctor Who Can Feel Your Pain


Joel Salinas - 2017
    Joel Salinas is a Harvard-trained researcher and neurologist with extraordinary gifts that provide him unique access to his patients and enable him to experience life in an extraordinary way. He has mirror-touch synesthesia, a neurological trait that allows him to feel others’ emotions and physical sensations. Susceptible to the pain and discomfort of his patients—most of whom suffer from strokes, spinal cord injuries, multiple sclerosis, and a host of other painful disorders and extreme injuries—Salinas uses his heightened emphatic ability—what he calls "compulsory mindfulness"—to help understand and better treat their conditions.Using his own experiences as a neurologist and synesthete as a narrative through line, Salinas also shares the remarkable stories of equally remarkable subjects who similarly live in a heightened state of awareness, whether because of a congenital condition, after a seemingly debilitating stroke, or amidst an ecstatic seizure.Written with intelligence and compassion, and anchored by the latest developments in neurology, psychology and psychiatry, Mirror Touch is an enthralling investigation into the power of the brain—one that proves that the mind, in wondrous and mysterious fashion, continues to promise exciting and inexhaustible ways to think, to see, and to be.

Operating Room Confidential: What Really Goes On When You Go Under


Paul Whang - 2010
    Personal stories combine with staff experiences to reveal hidden truths about the operating room and illustrate the quirky, strange, and bizarre occurrences that shape a regular hospital day. Answering questions such as What do doctors talk about during surgery? If a surgical instrument falls to the floor, is the five-second rule observed? and Is real life just like ER, Grey’s Anatomy, and House?, this is a must-read for the curiosity seeker and anyone who has or will be on the operating-room table.

Level 4: Virus Hunters of the CDC


Joseph B. McCormick - 1996
    In this gripping, true account of the war against worldwide epidemics, one of medicine's frontline generals, Dr. Joseph McCormick, developer of the CDC's legendary hot zone, chronicles his decades as a virus hunter, working to combat the virus as predator. 16-pages of photos.

The Boy In 7 Billion: A True Story of Love, Courage and Hope


Callie Blackwell - 2017
     A powerful true story revealing a remarkable relationship between a dying son - and a mother that refuses to let him go. At the age of 10, Deryn was diagnosed with Leukaemia. Then 18 months later he developed another rare form of cancer called Langerhan’s cell sarcoma. Only five other people in the world have it. He is the youngest of them all and the only person in the world known to be fighting it alongside another cancer, making him one in seven billion. Told there was no hope of survival, after four years of intensive treatment, exhausted by his fight and with just days left to live, Deryn planned his own funeral. But, Deryn’s desperate mother, Callie would not let him give in. Battling medical errors, impossible odds and years of hardship as the cancer consumed his body and their world, they looked for more answers. After making some startling discoveries and taking massive chances - something began to change… Would their lives as a family ever be the same again?

The Laws of Medicine: Field Notes from an Uncertain Science


Siddhartha Mukherjee - 2015
    The book, The Youngest Science, forced Dr. Mukherjee to ask himself an urgent, fundamental question: Is medicine a “science”? Sciences must have laws—statements of truth based on repeated experiments that describe some universal attribute of nature. But does medicine have laws like other sciences?Dr. Mukherjee has spent his career pondering this question—a question that would ultimately produce some of most serious thinking he would do around the tenets of his discipline—culminating in The Laws of Medicine. In this important treatise, he investigates the most perplexing and illuminating cases of his career that ultimately led him to identify the three key principles that govern medicine.Brimming with fascinating historical details and modern medical wonders, this important book is a fascinating glimpse into the struggles and Eureka! moments that people outside of the medical profession rarely see. Written with Dr. Mukherjee’s signature eloquence and passionate prose, The Laws of Medicine is a critical read, not just for those in the medical profession, but for everyone who is moved to better understand how their health and well-being is being treated. Ultimately, this book lays the groundwork for a new way of understanding medicine, now and into the future.

Optimistic Nihilism: A Psychologist's Personal Story & (Biased) Professional Appraisal of Shedding Religion


David Landers - 2016
    But much more than autobiography, his story is woven with provocative psychological and philosophical commentary, including input from the likes of Lucretius, Freud, and the metal band Napalm Death. A rare style of intellectual but conversational and poignant but humorous makes for a highly accessible and enjoyable read. As the spiritual account winds down, the book transitions into a more rational exploration of the problems associated with religion—and even with spirituality in general. Everyone from outspoken atheists to moderate believers will be engaged, as David is able to critically evaluate spirituality without the hostility so common among modern atheist writers. At the book’s climax, David develops the popular atheist conversation a little deeper by courageously exploring the implications of nihilism: If our deepest fears about the nature of reality were to be true, could we go on? By the end of Optimistic Nihilism, we begin to suspect that we could—and even wonder if a relatively nihilistic perspective paradoxically makes life more precious than any other scheme. A critical must-read for all students of spirituality, psychology, and humanity.

Albert Einstein: The Life of a Genius


Jack Steinberg - 2015
    Students around the world are taught about his theories and equations with E=mc2 undoubtedly being the most famous.However, there was more to this man than simply being a genius or the original prototype of the mad professor. Instead, this was a man that was dedicated to not only his profession, but also the concept of pacifism, something that most people are unaware of.Albert Einstein went from a late developing child to running away from school to almost failing university and instead turned himself into one of the greatest minds that the world has ever seen. This is his story, a story of how a child taught himself calculus and geometry and was then not afraid to challenge concepts of how the world worked that had been unchanged for centuries. This was a man who stood up for what he believed in even when the world appeared to be against him.The story of Albert Einstein is about more than just mathematical equations. The story is about a man who beat the odds and became world famous in the unlikely world of physics and the universe.

A Life in Medicine: A Literary Anthology


Randy-Michael TestaWalt Whitman - 2002
    Organized around the central themes of altruism, knowledge, skill, and duty, the book includes contributions from well-known authors, doctors, nurses, practitioners, and patients. Provocative and moving pieces address what it means to care for a life in a century of unprecedented scientific advances, examining issues of hope and healing from both ends of the stethoscope.

The Nurses: A Year of Secrets, Drama, and Miracles with the Heroes of the Hospital


Alexandra Robbins - 2015
    Lara, a superstar nurse who tries to battle her way back from a near-ruinous prescription-drug addiction. The outspoken but compassionate Juliette, a fierce advocate for her patients. And Sam, a first-year nurse, struggling to find her way in a gossipy mean-girl climate she likens to “high school, except for the dying people.”The result is a riveting page-turner, insightful and thought-provoking, that will leave readers feeling smarter about their healthcare and undeniably appreciative of the incredible nurses who provide it.

Truman Fires MacArthur: (ebook excerpt of Truman)


David McCullough - 2010
    An unpopular war. A military and diplomatic team in disarray. Those are the challenges President Obama has faced as he attempts to make a success of U.S involvement in Afghanistan. They are also the challenges President Truman surmounted in the winter of 1950 as he began managing a war in Korea that risked becoming bigger and more costly. It was the first significant armed conflict of the Cold War: United States troops under the command of General Douglas MacArthur came to the aid of the South Koreans after North Korea invaded. When Communist China entered the conflict on the side of the North Koreans, the crisis seemed on the verge of flaring into a world war. Truman was determined not to let that happen. MacArthur kept urging a widening of the war into China itself and ignoring his Commander in Chief. On April 11, 1951, after MacArthur had “shot his mouth off,” as one diplomat put it, one too many times, Truman fired him. The story of their showdown—one of the most dramatic in U.S. history between a Commander in Chief and his top soldier in the field—is captured in all its detail by David McCullough in his biography Truman, and presented here in a e-book called Truman Fires MacArthur (an excerpt of Truman, McCullough’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography), which was the headline carried in many newspapers around the country the next day. Truman Fires MacArthur will continue to ride the headlines. It will go on sale as an ebook just as the Rolling Stone profile that exposed General Stanley McChrystal’s insurrection and forced his resignation hits newsstands, and media coverage of the showdown continues to draw historical analogies between Truman and Obama.

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures


Anne Fadiman - 1997
    By 1988 she was living at home but was brain dead after a tragic cycle of misunderstanding, over-medication, and culture clash: "What the doctors viewed as clinical efficiency the Hmong viewed as frosty arrogance." The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down is a tragedy of Shakespearean dimensions, written with the deepest of human feeling. Sherwin Nuland said of the account, "There are no villains in Fadiman's tale, just as there are no heroes. People are presented as she saw them, in their humility and their frailty—and their nobility.

Ice Bound: A Doctor's Incredible Battle for Survival at the South Pole


Jerri Nielsen - 1996
    Jerri Nielsen, the only physician on a staff of forty-one people, discovered a lump in her breast. Consulting via satellite e-mail with doctors in the United States, she was forced to perform a biopsy and treat herself with chemotherapy in order to ensure that she could survive until conditions permitted her rescue. She was eventually rescued by the Air National Guard. Dr. Jerri Nielsens story of her transforming experiences is a thrilling adventure and moving drama. She has written a new chapter for this edition. Since the publication of Ice Bound in hardcover in January 2000, Dr. Nielsen has inspired people throughout the country, met hundreds of fans, received numerous awards including Irish American of the Year, which was presented to her by Hillary Clinton, as well as tremendous praise from the media.

Surgery, The Ultimate Placebo: A Surgeon Cuts through the Evidence


Ian Harris - 2016
    In this book you will see how commonly performed operations can be found to be useless or even harmful when properly evaluated. That these claims come from an experienced, practicing orthopedic surgeon who performs many of these operations himself, makes the unsettling argument particularly compelling. Of course no surgeon is recommending invasive surgery in bad faith, but Ian Harris argues that the evidence for the success for many common operations, including knee arthroscopies, back fusion or cardiac stenting, become current accepted practice without full examination of the evidence.

The Lobotomist: A Maverick Medical Genius and His Tragic Quest to Rid the World of Mental Illness


Jack El-Hai - 2005
    Into this crisis stepped Walter Freeman, M.D., who saw a solution in lobotomy, a brain operation intended to reduce the severity of psychotic symptoms. Drawing on Freeman’s documents and interviews with Freeman's family, Jack El-Hai takes a penetrating look at the life and work of this complex scientific genius.The Lobotomist explores one of the darkest chapters of American medicine: the desperate attempt to treat the hundreds of thousands of psychiatric patients in need of help during the middle decades of the twentieth century. Into this crisis stepped Walter Freeman, M.D., who saw a solution in lobotomy, a brain operation intended to reduce the severity of psychotic symptoms. Although many patients did not benefit from the thousands of lobotomies Freeman performed, others believed their lobotomies changed them for the better. Drawing on a rich collection of documents Freeman left behind and interviews with Freeman's family, Jack El-Hai takes a penetrating look into the life of this complex scientific genius and traces the physician's fascinating life and work.