Medicine Century

From a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian comes a riveting history of New York's iconic public hospital that charts the turbulent rise of American medicine. Bellevue Hospital, on New York City's East Side, occupies a colorful and horrifying place in the public imagination: a den of mangled crime...

Once a trailblazer in the field of medicine, Dr. Tucia Hatherley hasn't touched a scalpel or stethoscope since she made a fatal mistake in the operating theater. Instead, she works in a corset factory, striving to earn enough to support her disabled son. When even that livelihood is threatened, Tucia is left with one option-to join a wily, charismatic showman named Huey and become part of his traveling medicine show.

Happy Accidents is a fascinating, entertaining, and highly accessible look at the surprising role serendipity has played in some of the most important medical discoveries in the 20th century. What do penicillin, chemotherapy drugs, X-rays, Valium, the Pap smear, and Viagra have in common? They were each discovered accidentally, stumbled upon in the search for something else. In discussing medical breakthroughs, Dr. Morton Meyers makes a cogent, highly engaging argument for a more creative, rather than purely linear, approach to science. And it may just save our lives!

Little more than 100 years ago, maps of the world still boasted white space: places where no human had ever trod. Within a few short decades the most hostile of the world's environments had all been conquered. Likewise, in the 20th century, medicine transformed human life. Doctors took what was routinely fatal and made it survivable. As modernity brought us ever more into different kinds of extremes, doctors pushed the bounds of medical advances and human endurance. Extreme exploration challenged the body in ways that only the vanguard of science could answer.

Ever since the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic, scientists have dreamed of preventing catastrophic outbreaks of infectious disease. 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 Butchering Art, the historian Lindsey Fitzharris reveals the shocking world of 19th-century surgery on the eve of profound transformation. She conjures up early operating theaters - no place for the squeamish - and surgeons, working before anesthesia, who were lauded for their speed and brute strength. They were baffled by the persistent infections that kept mortality rates stubbornly high. A young, melancholy Quaker surgeon named Joseph Lister would solve the deadly riddle and change the course of history.

Where have all the doctors gone? And why, when I finally see someone, does he or she spend all our time behind the computer instead of examining me? How come my insurance is more and more expensive, and pays for less and less? And why do my medications cost so much? Based on legal cases, patient stories, interviews, hundreds of nonfiction articles and books, and Dr. Sweet's own experience as a physician, Convictions is a fictionalized account of what is really going on in healthcare behind the scenes. Listen to it.

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST Frank and April Wheeler are a bright, beautiful, talented couple in the 1950s whose perfect suburban life is about to crumble in this "moving and absorbing story” (The Atlantic Monthly) from one of the most acclaimed writers of the twentieth century. "The Great...

The Plague Rider plunges you into a forgotten chapter of the American Southwest—when deserts were roadless, smallpox was a death sentence, and one unsung doctor dared to gallop straight into the epidemic’s maw. In December 1803, Basque-born surgeon Dr. Cristóbal María de Larrañaga receives a fragile vial of cow-pox lymph and an impossible order: carry living vaccine 1,400 miles from Chihuahua to the edge of the Rocky Mountains before it dies in the cold. With a mule train of orphan “courier” children, a scarred Navajo scout, and a midwife who trusts science more than saints, ...

Captain Sean Mulkerin comes home from the sea to find his family home in jeopardy. After the death of his father, Sean’s determined mother, Eileen, took it upon herself to run the sprawling Rancho Malibu—until a fire destroyed her hard-earned profits. Now, on the edge of financial ruin...

The Longevity Solution explains how to incorporate time-honored wellness traditions while doing away with fads, unnecessary supplements, and unsubstantiated wellness practices. It investigates the dietary habits and other practices of the healthiest, longest-lived humans on the planet, who live in regions known as Blue Zones, as a model for what and how we should eat. It teaches the benefits of intermittent fasting and calorie restriction, which have been shown to slow the aging process, while consuming proper ratios of protein and healthy fats.

Americans are in the midst of a world-historic drug binge. Opiates, amphetamines, benzodiazepines, marijuana, antidepressants, antipsychotics—across the board, consumption has shot up in the twenty-first century. At the same time, the United States is home to the largest prison system in the world, justified in part by a now zombified "war" on drugs. How did we get here?

The extraordinary prize-winning debut from Andrew Miller. Winner of the IMPAC Award and James Tait Black Memorial Prize. At the dawn of the Enlightenment, James Dyer is born unable to feel pain. A source of wonder and scientific curiosity as a child, he rises through the ranks of Georgian...

More than 30 million people in the United States have used psychedelics― and the number is rapidly rising. But even as interest skyrockets, most people have little idea how to use psychedelics safely, let alone integrate these profound experiences into their everyday lives. In Your Extraordinary Mind, psychedelic researcher and advocate Zach Leary offers a necessary overview of psychedelics today― particularly LSD, psilocybin, MDMA, and ayahuasca― including what they are, how to use them safely, and crucially, how to integrate mind- and spirit-altering experiences into the rest of our lives.

Today it is known as Roosevelt Island. In 1828, when New York City purchased this narrow, two-mile-long island in the East River, it was called Blackwell's Island. There, over the next hundred years, the city would build a lunatic asylum, prison, hospital, workhouse, and almshouse. Stacy Horn has crafted a compelling and chilling narrative told through the stories of the poor souls sent to Blackwell's, as well as the period's city officials, reformers, and journalists (including the famous Nellie Bly). Damnation Island re-creates what daily life was like on the island....

The 21st century has brought with it unprecedented challenges. Health and environmental effects of toxins introduced in the last half century have led to reductions in life expectancy, reproductive health, and quality of life and increases in anti-nutrients, loss of quality soil, impaired immune defense and repair, and digestive disorders.

Discover the groundbreaking nutrition system that redefines health in the toxic 21st century. Conventional nutrition principles are failing us. Despite decades of calorie counting, food pyramids, and diet fads, obesity and chronic disease are at all-time highs. Why? Because conventional guidelines were designed for a world that no longer exists. In Integrative Immunity Nutrition, Dr. Benoît Tano, MD, PhD, unveils the TOBIN™ Framework (Toxin Overload, Hormonal Imbalances, Infections, Nutrient Deficiencies) — a revolutionary approach that explains why modern nutrition has collapsed under...

Since the mid-1990s, a silent epidemic has swept the globe—iron deficiency and micronutrient depletion—undermining immunity, metabolism, cognition, and human vitality. Drawing on HCUP epidemiologic data, CDC nutritional surveys, and the groundbreaking TOBIN Framework (Toxin Overload, Oxidative Stress, Biological Imbalances, Infections, and Nutrient Deficiencies), Dr. Benoît Tano reveals why chronic diseases have exploded in the 21st century and how to reverse them. This authoritative, evidence-based, and revolutionary book shows how environmental toxins, processed foods, endocrine ...

Written by an elite team of 60 doctors and men’s health experts, The 21st Century Man reveals insider secrets that men in midlife and beyond need to recover, rebuild, and maintain their physical, mental, emotional, and sexual health. It's the book all men will want after turning 40 to feel great, look good, and have better physical intimacy for the rest of their lives. This selection provides common-sense measures men can take to minimize infectious illness, prevent injury to their back and hands, avoid hearing problems, practice good foot care, and optimize their sleep.

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST 2022 Publishers Weekly Top 10 BEST BOOKS OF 2022 “Gayl Jones’s work represents a watershed in American literature." —Imani Perry Legendary writer Gayl Jones returns with a stunning new novel about Black American artists in exile Gayl Jones, the novelist Toni...