Tag Archives: medicine
** Your Medical Mind by Jerome Groopman and Pamela Hartzband
The main thrust of Your Medical Mind is that patients make medical decisions based on their unique set of criteria that include their overall philosophy about treatment (maximalist or minimalist), their personal experience about the issue (creating emotions that seem … Continue reading
Filed under Non fiction
** Blood Work by Holly Tucker
Blood Work tells the story of early attempts at blood transfusion in 17th century Paris, and it struggles a bit to fill a full-length book with the slim story of a transfusion went awry — or is the failure attributable … Continue reading
Filed under Non fiction
** Seeing Patients by Augustus White III
Seeing Patients tries to do two things: to tell the story of the author, an African-American orthopedic surgeon born and raised in Memphis in the 19030′s, and to advance his observations that racism and other isms are all too present … Continue reading
Filed under True story
*** The Panic Virus by Seth Mnookin
The Panic Virus is the very sad story of how a sloppy physician seeking fame correlated childhood vaccines with autism, causing millions of parents to delay or cancel their children’s vaccinations, hence causing untold deaths for completely preventable diseases — … Continue reading
Filed under Non fiction
** The Pain Chronicles by Melanie Thernstrom
The Pain Chronicles interlaces the author’s personal quest for relief for her chronic neck pain with a wealth of anecdotes, stories, and quotes on how pain features in religion, literature, and medicine. Along the way we visit pain clinics and … Continue reading
Filed under Non fiction
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks tells the amazing story of Henrietta Lacks, a young woman who died in 1951 at the young age of 31 (and leaving five children behind!), and whose cancer cells, named HeLa in the standard … Continue reading
Filed under Non fiction
The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande
The Checklist Manifesto lauds the concept not so much of the lowly checklist but rather of the repeatable process. (I guess “The Process Manifesto” would not sound quite so snappy.) Like Gawande’s earlier books, it argues for a more structured … Continue reading
Filed under Non fiction
Cheating Death by Sanjay Gupta
Cheating Death is written by a physician and focuses on advances in treating patients that would likely be dead. Interesting topic, and I must say I learned at least one thing: if you have to do CPR, use chest compressions … Continue reading
Filed under Non fiction
Strength in What Remains by Tracy Kidder
Installment #3 in the Sad Book Series: Strength in What Remains tells the story of a Burundi man (Burundian?) who flees his country after brutal ethnic violence erupts and arrives in New York City with $200, no English, but plenty … Continue reading
Filed under True story
Larry’s Kidney by Daniel Asa Rose
Larry’s Kidney is the barely-believable and, if true, rather shocking story of how the author helped his cousin procure a black-market kidney in China. Larry is obese, diabetic, a dialysis patient, and he has never met a vegetable he would … Continue reading
Filed under True story
