Larry Kramer — The Normal Heart and The Destiny of Me (Review)
Larry Kramer created seminal works of gay rights and AIDS epidemic history in his deeply personal plays, The Normal Heart and The Destiny of Me. Both plays revolve around Ned Weeks, a gay man living and working in New York City in the 1980s. They are heartbreaking and...Meghan O’Rourke — The Invisible Kingdom (Book Review)
First, Meghan O’Rourke bares her soul about chronic illness in her 2022 book, The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness. And second, she analyzes how US medical care fails patients with difficult to diagnose chronic illnesses. This is two parts...Jennifer Wright — Get Well Soon (Book Review)
Jennifer Wright balances aspects of medicine, science, and social history in her 2017 book, Get Well Soon: History’s Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them. Perhaps I connected most strongly to the human and social elements because of experiencing the COVID-19...MeiLan Han, MD — Breathing Lessons (Book Review)
Dr. MeiLan Han transfers years of knowledge as a lung doctor, or pulmonologist, to the printed word in her upcoming book Breathing Lessons: A Doctor’s Guide to Lung Health. With this book, she offers explanations of many lung-related conditions including asthma,...James Nestor — Breath (Book Review)
James Nestor combines scientific exploration and his own experiences in Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art. The two aspects keep the book from being entirely memoir or entirely an academic treatise. At its heart, Nestor asks why breath matters. We breathe...Anne Fadiman — The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down (Book Review)
Author Anne Fadiman combines multiple narratives in her fabulous ethnography The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures. Most importantly, it’s both an immigration and a medical story of one Hmong...Quackery: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything by Lydia Kang, MD and Nate Pedersen (Book Review)
Quackery: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything by Lydia Kang and Nate Pedersen is two parts gasping at astounding purported medical cures. It’s also one part rubbernecker can’t look away no matter how yucky the example might be. I thoroughly enjoyed...Our Malady by Timothy Snyder—Healthcare, Freedom & Politics (Book Review)
Our Malady: Lessons in Liberty from a Hospital Diary by Timothy Snyder is just under 200 pages. While it’s not long, it covers topics we all face daily whether we know it or not—our health and freedom. A Yale professor, historian, and writer, Snyder was not well at...Book Review: Pale Rider by Laura Spinney
Laura Spinney covers a tremendous amount of ground with her excellent book, Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How it Changed the World. It’s a timely read for 2020, of course. And Spinney talks about everything from how the flu started and traveled, to how it...Book Review: And the Band Played On by Randy Shilts
Randy Shilts creates a tour de force history of the early years of the AIDS epidemic in And the Band Played On: Politics, People and the AIDS Epidemic. It’s 600 pages of intense details, drawn from thousands of interviews with 900+ people. Despite being published in...Book Review: Dopesick by Beth Macy
Beth Macy tells hard truths in her 2018 book, Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America. To me, it’s about the way capitalism allows one group of people to harm another, all in pursuit of the almighty dollar and in the guise of treating a...Book Review: Doing Harm by Maya Dusenberry
Maya Dusenberry compiles and analyzes a boat load of important information in Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick. Now you know her theme—the way women suffer because of misogyny and prejudicial...Book Review: The Angel and the Assassin by Donna Jackson Nakazawa
Donna Jackson Nakazawa is a favorite nonfiction author of mine. Her book, The Autoimmune Epidemic was one of the first books I read after being diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis 10 years ago. And I’ve devoured every one she’s written since. The Angel and the...Book Review: Elderhood by Louise Aronson
Louise Aronson subtitles Elderhood with the following: Redefining Aging, Transforming Medicine, Reimagining Life. I submit that she focuses primarily on the second of these topics, rather than the other two. And that makes sense because she has many years of...Book Review: Ticker: The Quest to Create an Artificial Heart by Mimi Swartz
Mimi Swartz tells the story of a group of cardiac surgeons all vying for the title of creator. Not with a capital C, but creator of the first functional artificial heart. And by group, I don’t mean to imply they worked together. Some did, and some didn’t. Competition...Bookshop.Org Affiliate
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