With the End in Mind: Dying, Death, and Wisdom in an Age of Denial


Kathryn Mannix - 2017
    Kathryn Mannix has studied and practiced palliative care for thirty years. In With the End in Mind , she shares beautifully crafted stories from a lifetime of caring for the dying, and makes a case for the therapeutic power of approaching death not with trepidation, but with openness, clarity, and understanding. Weaving the details of her own experiences as a caregiver through stories of her patients, their families, and their distinctive lives, Dr. Mannix discusses the universal, but deeply personal, process of dying. With meditations on life, death, and the space between them, With the End in Mind describes the possibility of meeting death gently, with forethought and preparation, and shows the unexpected beauty, dignity, and profound humanity of life coming to an end.

The Brain's Way of Healing: Remarkable Discoveries and Recoveries from the Frontiers of Neuroplasticity


Norman Doidge - 2015
    His revolutionary new book shows, for the first time, how the amazing process of neuroplastic healing really works. It describes natural, non-invasive avenues into the brain provided by the forms of energy around us—light, sound, vibration, movement—which pass through our senses and our bodies to awaken the brain’s own healing capacities without producing unpleasant side effects. Doidge explores cases where patients alleviated years of chronic pain or recovered from debilitating strokes or accidents; children on the autistic spectrum or with learning disorders normalizing; symptoms of multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, and cerebral palsy radically improved, and other near-miracle recoveries. And we learn how to vastly reduce the risk of dementia with simple approaches anyone can use. For centuries it was believed that the brain’s complexity prevented recovery from damage or disease. The Brain’s Way of Healing shows that this very sophistication is the source of a unique kind of healing. As he did so lucidly in The Brain That Changes Itself, Doidge uses stories to present cutting-edge science with practical real-world applications, and principles that everyone can apply to improve their brain’s performance and health.

An Elegant Defense: The Extraordinary New Science of the Immune System: A Tale in Four Lives


Matt Richtel - 2019
    An epic, first-of-its-kind book, entwining leading-edge scientific discovery with the intimate stories of four individual lives, by the Pulitzer Prize–winning New York Times journalist.A terminal cancer patient rises from the grave. A medical marvel defies HIV. Two women with autoimmunity discover their own bodies have turned against them. Matt Richtel's An Elegant Defense uniquely entwines these intimate stories with science’s centuries-long quest to unlock the mysteries of sickness and health, and illuminates the immune system as never before.The immune system is our body’s essential defense network, a guardian vigilantly fighting illness, healing wounds, maintaining order and balance, and keeping us alive. Its legion of microscopic foot soldiers—from T cells to “natural killers”—patrols our body, linked by a nearly instantaneous communications grid. It has been honed by evolution over millennia to face an almost infinite array of threats.For all its astonishing complexity, however, the immune system can be easily compromised by fatigue, stress, toxins, advanced age, and poor nutrition—hallmarks of modern life—and even by excessive hygiene. Paradoxically, it is a fragile wonder weapon that can turn on our own bodies with startling results, leading today to epidemic levels of autoimmune disorders.Richtel effortlessly guides readers on a scientific detective tale winding from the Black Plague to twentieth-century breakthroughs in vaccination and antibiotics, to the cutting-edge laboratories that are revolutionizing immunology—perhaps the most extraordinary and consequential medical story of our time. The foundation that Richtel builds makes accessible revelations about cancer immunotherapy, the microbiome, and autoimmune treatments that are changing millions of lives. An Elegant Defense also captures in vivid detail how these powerful therapies, along with our behavior and environment, interact with the immune system, often for the good but always on a razor’s edge that can throw this remarkable system out of balance.Drawing on his groundbreaking reporting for the New York Times and based on extensive new interviews with dozens of world-renowned scientists, Matt Richtel has produced a landmark book, equally an investigation into the deepest riddles of survival and a profoundly human tale that is movingly brought to life through the eyes of his four main characters, each of whom illuminates an essential facet of our “elegant defense.”

But I Deserve This Chocolate!: The Fifty Most Common Diet-Derailing Excuses and How to Outwit Them


Susan Albers - 2011
    Who among us hasn’t thought, “I had a stressful day, so I deserve this chocolate,” or, “Buttery popcorn would go so well with this movie!” In But I Deserve This Chocolate!, psychologist Susan Albers takes aim at the fifty most common self-sabotaging thoughts and excuses that keep you from eating right and looking great. This guide dismantles each excuse and offers a mindfulness exercise to help reroute your thoughts so you can meet your health goals. Forget the chocolate and unwrap some truly nourishing habits you can feel good about—your body will thank you!

DSM-5 Insanely Simplified: Unlocking the Spectrums within DSM-5 and ICD-10


Steven Buser - 2015
    DSM-5 Insanely Simplified provides a summary of key concepts of the new diagnostic schema including a section on the upcoming ICD-10. DSM-5 Insanely Simplified utilizes a variety of devices to help clinicians memorize complex criteria and ideas about the different diagnoses. Cartoons, mnemonic devices, and summary tables allow clinicians and students to quickly grasp and retain broad concepts and subtle nuances related to psychiatric diagnosis. DSM-5 Insanely Simplified fosters quick mastery of the most important concepts introduced in DSM-5 while offering an entirely new way of looking at mental health along a continuum. This new approach avoids simply "labeling" clients by placing them along spectrums that range from normal to problematic symptoms. Mental health professionals as well as laymen interested in a deeper understanding of emotional well-being will appreciate the synthesis of deep psychology and modern approaches to diagnosis. Steven Buser trained in medicine at Duke University and served 12 years as a physician in the US Air Force. He is a graduate of the two-year Clinical Training Program at the CG Jung Institute of Chicago and is a co-founder of the Asheville Jung Center. In addition to a busy psychiatric private practice he serves as Publisher for Chiron Publications. He is active in the community and strives to integrate faith and spirituality into psychotherapy. He resides in the mountains in Asheville, NC with his wife and two children. Len Cruz is the Editor-in-Chief of Chiron Publications, a book publishing company specializing in psychology, mythology, religion, and culture and a co-founder of the Asheville Jung Center. He is a psychiatrist who resides in Western North Carolina. Luke Sloan was a 5th grade student in Asheville, NC when he completed the illustrations for this book. When he's not drawing, Luke enjoys playing soccer, reading books, snow-skiing, and just plain having fun!

A Nurse's Story: My Life in A&E During the Covid Crisis


Louise Curtis - 2020
    

A Map of the Child: A Pediatrician's Tour of the Body


Darshak Sanghavi - 2003
    . . Sanghavi is a vivid and effortless teller of human tales and quite evidently a special doctor, too." —Atul Gawande, author of ComplicationsIn this compelling book, Dr. Darshak Sanghavi takes the reader on a dramatic tour of a child's eight vital organs, beginning with the lungs and proceeding through the heart, blood, bones, brain, skin, gonads, and gut.Along the way, we meet children and families in extraordinary circumstances—a premature baby named Adam Flax who was born with undeveloped lungs, a teenage boy with a positive pregnancy test, and a young girl who keeps losing weight despite her voracious appetite. In a deeply personal narrative, Sanghavi provides a richly detailed—and humanized—portrait of how the pediatric body functions in both sickness and health.

Inside the Crosshairs: Snipers in Vietnam


Michael Lee Lanning - 1998
    . . ."At the start of the war in Vietnam, the United States had no snipers; by the end of the war, Marine and army precision marksmen had killed more than 10,000 NVA and VC soldiers--the equivalent of an entire division--at the cost of under 20,000 bullets, proving that long-range shooters still had a place in the battlefield. Now noted military historian Michael Lee Lanning shows how U.S. snipers in Vietnam--combining modern technology in weapons, ammunition, and telescopes--used the experience and traditions of centuries of expert shooters to perfect their craft. To provide insight into the use of American snipers in Vietnam, Lanning interviewed men with combat trigger time, as well as their instructors, the founders of the Marine and U.S. Army sniper programs, and the generals to whom they reported. Backed by hard information and firsthand accounts, the author demonstrates how the skills these one-shot killers honed in the jungles of Vietnam provided an indelible legacy that helped save American lives in Grenada, the Gulf War, and Somalia and continues to this day with American troops in Bosnia.

The Premed Playbook: Guide to the Medical School Interview: Be Prepared, Perform Well, Get Accepted


Ryan Gray - 2016
    You need to practice, practice, practice.Good grades and a high MCAT score aren’t good enough anymore. Being prepared and doing well on your medical school interview can make the difference between calling yourself a medical student or being rejected.The Premed Playbook: Guide to the Medical School Interview is a compilation of all of the experience that Dr. Gray has received from discussing the medical school admissions process with experts on The Premed Years podcast.Learn why crafting YOUR story is so important and then learn how. Learn why being different is better than being better. Learn what mistakes you should avoid and how to truly succeed at being the most prepared premed student.Broken up across eleven different categories, including MMI, this book includes over 600 potential medical school interview questions that you can start crafting answers to. Read through over 50 transcripts from mock interview answers as well as the feedback that Dr. Gray gave students who crushed their real medical school interviews. This book will prepare you like no other for your medical school interview.Don’t rely on your “personality.” Don’t rely on your grades and MCAT score. Prepare with this book and you’ll shine on your medical school interview day.

Dimensions of Human Behavior: The Changing Life Course


Elizabeth D. Hutchison - 2003
    It examines general patterns of human behavior in age-graded periods, sources of diversity in life course trajectories, and unique life stories. It is multidimensional in scope and current in theory and research. This completely revised second edition maintains the use of case studies to help students appreciate the diversity of life course trajectories, and all chapters have been updated to reflect social trends and new developments in theory and research. To reflect the trend toward finer gradations in life phases, this edition addresses nine age-graded periods instead of the six presented in the first edition: Conception, Pregnancy, and Birth; Infancy and Toddlerhood; Early Childhood; Middle Childhood; Adolescence; Young Adulthood; Middle Adulthood; Late Adulthood; and Very Late Adulthood. The Changing Life Course is the companion volume to Person and Environment (ISBN 0-7619-8765-7). The two volumes are also available as a Two-Volume Kit (ISBN 0-7619-8803-3). An Instructor′s Manual containing chapter summaries, suggested classroom activities and discussions, and essay and multiple choice questions is also available (ISBN: 0-7619-8804-1).

Fifteen Days: Stories of Bravery, Friendship, Life and Death from Inside the New Canadian Army


Christie Blatchford - 2007
    Her vivid prose, her unmistakable voice, her ability to connect emotionally with her subjects and readers, her hard-won and hard-nosed skills as a reporter–these had already established her as a household name. But with her many reports from Afghanistan, and in dozens of interviews with the returned members of the 1st Battalion, Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry and others back at home, she found the subject she was born to tackle. Her reporting of the conflict and her deeply empathetic observations of the men and women who wear the maple leaf are words for the ages, fit to stand alongside the nation’s best writing on war.It is a testament to Christie Blatchford’s skills and integrity that along with the admiration of her readers, she won the respect and trust of the soldiers. They share breathtakingly honest accounts of their desire to serve, their willingness to confront fear and danger in the battlefield, their loyalty towards each other and the heartbreak occasioned by the loss of one of their own. Grounded in insights gained over the course of three trips to Afghanistan in 2006, and drawing on hundreds of hours of interviews not only with the servicemen and -women with whom she shared so much, but with their commanders and family members as well, Christie Blatchford creates a detailed, complex and deeply affecting picture of military life in the twenty-first century.From the Hardcover edition.

Down Amongst the Dead Men


Steve Lyons - 2013
    In the midst of a live-fire exercise, one of these human targets disobeys orders and follows the trail of a mysterious alien beast, one that could spell doom for all of Krieg if it is not stopped...ABOUT THE BOOKA brand new Death Korps of Krieg story by Steve Lyons, author of Dead Men Walking.

The Pandemic Century: One Hundred Years of Panic, Hysteria, and Hubris


Mark Honigsbaum - 2019
    Yet despite a century of medical progress, viral and bacterial disasters continue to take us by surprise, inciting panic and dominating news cycles. From the Spanish flu to the 1924 outbreak of pneumonic plague in Los Angeles to the 1930 “parrot fever” pandemic, through the more recent SARS, Ebola, and Zika epidemics, the last one hundred years have been marked by a succession of unanticipated pandemic alarms.In The Pandemic Century, a lively account of scares both infamous and less known, Mark Honigsbaum combines reportage with the history of science and medical sociology to artfully reconstruct epidemiological mysteries and the ecology of infectious diseases. We meet dedicated disease detectives, obstructive or incompetent public health officials, and brilliant scientists often blinded by their own knowledge of bacteria and viruses. We also see how fear of disease often exacerbates racial, religious, and ethnic tensions—even though, as the epidemiologists Malik Peiris and Yi Guan write, “‘nature’ remains the greatest bioterrorist threat of all.”Like man-eating sharks, predatory pathogens are always present in nature, waiting to strike; when one is seemingly vanquished, others appear in its place. These pandemics remind us of the limits of scientific knowledge, as well as the role that human behavior and technologies play in the emergence and spread of microbial diseases.

War Doctor: Surgery on the Front Line


David Nott - 2019
    From Sarajevo under siege in 1993 to clandestine hospitals in rebel-held eastern Aleppo, he has carried out lifesaving operations in the most challenging conditions, and with none of the resources of a major metropolitan hospital. He is now widely acknowledged as the most experienced trauma surgeon in the world.War Doctor is his extraordinary story, encompassing his surgeries in nearly every major conflict zone since the end of the Cold War, as well as his struggles to return to a “normal” life and routine after each trip. Culminating in his recent trips to war-torn Syria—and the untold story of his efforts to help secure a humanitarian corridor out of besieged Aleppo to evacuate some 50,000 people—War Doctor is a blend of medical memoir, personal journey, and nonfiction thriller that provides unforgettable, at times raw, insight into the human toll of war.

The Cost of Cutting: A Surgeon Reveals the Truth Behind a Multibillion-Dollar Industry


Paul A. Ruggieri - 2014
    Ruggieri reveals little-known truths about his profession—and the hidden flaws of our healthcare system—in this compelling and troubling account of real patients, real doctors, and how money influences medical decisions behind the scenes. Even many well-informed patients have no idea what may be contributing to the cost of their surgery. With up-to-date research and stories from his practice, Ruggieri shows how business arrangements among hospitals, insurance companies, and surgeons affect who gets treatment—and whether they get the right treatment. Pulling back the curtain from the hospital bed, he explains how to safeguard one’s own health (and finances), and how America can make surgery more affordable for all without sacrificing quality care.