Health Inequalities

Freakonomics for criminal justice, The Science of Second Chances presents a groundbreaking approach to criminal justice reform, revealing how small-scale interventions can reduce people’s chances of reoffending and break the incarceration cycle. When criminal justice expert Jennifer Doleac...

Today's inequality is on a scale that none of us has seen in our lifetimes, yet this disparity between rich and poor has ramifications that extend far beyond mere financial means. In The Broken Ladder, psychologist Keith Payne examines how inequality divides us not just economically, but also has profound consequences for how we think, how our cardiovascular systems respond to stress, how our immune systems function, and how we view moral ideas such as justice and fairness.

Two leading behavioral scientists argue we should reject “nudge” policies and stop blaming personal failure for society’s failures "Excellent. A master class on how to blend individual psychology with institutions, so that people are encouraged to get involved and develop solutions to our...

Paul Farmer has battled AIDS in rural Haiti and deadly strains of drug-resistant tuberculosis in the slums of Peru. A physician-anthropologist with more than fifteen years in the field, Farmer writes from the front lines of the war against these modern plagues and shows why, even more than those of history, they target the poor.

This psychologist is frustrated. In the final stretch of his doctoral internship, Dr. Jonathan Mathias Lassiter had just one more milestone to complete—the diversity project—where candidates insert themselves into a situation in which they’d experience what it’s like to be a minority...

Teeth takes listeners on a disturbing journey into America's silent epidemic of oral disease, exposing the hidden connections between tooth decay and stunted job prospects, low educational achievement, social mobility, and the troubling state of our public health.

An urgent rethinking of the Western approach to mental health, which treats the symptoms rather than the exploitative systems causing our distress—by a Rhodes Scholar and Harvard Medical School physician-anthropologist—offering lessons from the rest of the world. What if the mainstay of...

The world is a better place than it used to be. People are healthier, wealthier, and live longer. Yet the escapes from destitution by so many has left gaping inequalities between people and nations. In The Great Escape, Angus Deaton - one of the foremost experts on economic development and on poverty - tells the remarkable story of how, beginning 250 years ago, some parts of the world experienced sustained progress, opening up gaps and setting the stage for today's disproportionately unequal world.

Explore real women’s tales of healthcare trauma and medical misogyny with this “masterfully written” (Sophia A. Nelson, bestselling author of The Woman Code and Black Woman Redefined), meticulously researched, in-depth examination of the women’s health crisis in America—and what we can...

An essential tool for healers, therapists, activists, and survivors of trauma who are interested in a justice-centered approach to somatic transformation The Politics of Trauma offers somatics with a social analysis. This book is for therapists and social activists who understand that trauma...

Cynicism is making us sick, but Stanford Psychologist Dr. Jamil Zaki has the cure. "A ray of light for dark days” —Adam Grant, #1 New York Times bestselling author In 1972, half of Americans agreed that most people can be trusted; by 2018, only a third did. Different generations, genders...

The poor die sooner. Blacks die sooner. And poor urban Blacks die sooner than almost all other Americans. David Ansell has spent nearly four decades as a doctor at hospitals serving some of the poorest communities in Chicago, and has witnessed firsthand the lives behind these devastating statistics. In

The Death Gap, he gives a grim survey of these realities, drawn from observations and stories of his patients.

At least one hysterectomy is performed every minute of the year, making it the most common gynecological surgery worldwide. By the age of sixty-five, one out of five people born with a uterus will have it removed. So, why do we seldom talk about this surgery? Get It Out weaves centuries of medical history with rich qualitative data from 100 women, trans men, and nonbinary people who had, want, or are considering hysterectomy.

*LA Times Best Science Book of 2025* As seen on NBC NEWS, ABC NEWS, CBS MORNINGS, ESSENCE, FORBES, NPR, and more Why is it so expensive to be a woman in America? From a rising star in economics comes the first comprehensive look at the costs women face and why the bill runs especially high for...

Cities are often celebrated as monuments to human progress — engines of culture, innovation, and economic growth. But they were also laboratories of disease. Milk, Blood, and the City traces the biological consequences of rapid urbanization from the 19th century to the modern era. It examines how density, food distribution, sanitation failures, industrial waste, and political denial created predictable patterns of infection and chronic illness. This book is not simply a history of disease. It is an analysis of structure. Inside, readers will explore: • How overcrowding transformed ...

Black women are facing a systemic gynecological health crisis. This book gives them the tools needed to unlearn the medical normalization of their suffering and offers a path forward to healing—by a foremost physician, surgeon, researcher, and gynecological cancer expert. When Dr. Kemi Doll...

Pittsburgh was once synonymous with steel. But today, most of its mills are gone. Like so many places across the United States, a city that was a center of blue-collar manufacturing is now dominated by the service economy - particularly health care, which employs more Americans than any other industry. Gabriel Winant takes us inside the Rust Belt to show how America's cities have weathered new economic realities. In Pittsburgh's neighborhoods, he finds that a new working class has emerged in the wake of deindustrialization.

The definitive social history of tuberculosis, from its origins as a haunting mystery to its modern reemergence that now threatens populations around the world. It killed novelist George Orwell, Eleanor Roosevelt, and millions of others – rich and poor. Desmond Tutu, Amitabh Bachchan, and...

Health disparities have remained stubbornly entrenched in the American health care system - and in Just Medicine Dayna Bowen Matthew finds that they principally arise from unconscious racial and ethnic biases held by physicians, institutional providers, and their patients.

A Washington Post Notable Book of the Year A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice An award-winning constitutional law scholar at the University of Chicago (who clerked for Judge Merrick B. Garland, Justice Stephen Breyer, and Justice Sandra Day O’Connor) gives us an engaging and...