Health & Medicine

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Hattie Owen’s life changes the summer she turns 12 and meets the young uncle she never knew existed in Ann M. Martin’s middle-grade novel, A Corner of the Universe (2002). Uncle Adam has been kept a secret because of his mental problems. Adults have trouble handling his emotional extremes, but shy Hattie finds a true friend in her exuberant uncle. Adam teaches Hattie to explore life beyond the safety of her front porch. As Hattie... Read A Corner of the Universe Summary

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After Ever After is a young adult novel written by American author Jordan Sonnenblick and published in 2010. It is the sequel to Sonnenblick’s debut novel, Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie, which came out in 2004 but focused on a different protagonist. While the first book revolves around Steven Alper, After Ever After explores his younger brother Jeff’s perspective as he navigates eighth grade alongside his best friend, Tad, and his girlfriend, Lindsey. Sonnenblick, who... Read After Ever After Summary

Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year was first published in 1722. The novel is written in the first-person and chronicles the spread of the bubonic plague in London in 1665. While the first-person narration and abundant historical detail result in a text that feels like—and masquerades as—nonfiction, Defoe was only 5 years old at the time of the events, while the narrator is an adult man living on his own in London. Despite... Read A Journal Of The Plague Year Summary

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A Mango-Shaped Space is a 2003 middle-grade novel by American author Wendy Mass. It tells the story of Mia Winchell, a 13-year-old girl living in Illinois in the early 2000s. Mia has a secret. She associates all letters and numbers with distinct colors, and when she hears sounds, she sees bursts of color across her field of vision. It turns out that Mia has synesthesia, an uncommon but harmless neurological condition where an individual’s senses... Read A Mango-Shaped Space Summary

A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on her Diary, 1785-1812 is a 1990 nonfiction biography of midwife Martha Ballard by American historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. Using Martha Ballard’s diary as a primary source, Ulrich utilizes a microhistorical approach to evaluate the life of Ballard, the history of Maine’s Kennebec River region, and the themes of social medicine, women’s role in the economy, and religion’s place in everyday life. A Midwife’s Tale won... Read A Midwife's Tale Summary

Published in 2003, Jim Murphy’s An American Plague: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793 is a historical nonfiction book for young adults that provides a detailed look into Philadelphia’s yellow fever epidemic of 1793. As Murphy documents how yellow fever emerged and spread throughout the city, he demonstrates how society operated in what was then the nation’s capital and largest city in the late 1700s. He focuses on urban... Read An American Plague Summary

An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back is physician and journalist Elisabeth Rosenthal’s overview and critique of the American healthcare system. It was initially published in April 2017, arriving during a time in which healthcare reform became a prominent cornerstone of both Democratic and Republican political campaigns. The book offers a mixture of testimonials from a myriad of people impacted by the health industry, including medical professionals... Read An American Sickness Summary

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And The Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic is a work of investigative reporting by Randy Shilts, a reporter with the San Francisco Chronicle. Shilts covered the AIDS epidemic from 1982 for the only newspaper willing to give its full attention to the epidemic. Shilts examines the roots of AIDS beginning in 1976 to two events and focuses on the mysterious illness of a Danish physician working in Africa, Dr. Grethe Rask. Before... Read And The Band Played On Summary

An Unquiet Mind, written by Kay Redfield Jamison and first published in 1995, is a memoir about a clinical psychologist’s experience living with manic-depressive illness. The book details her life, from her early experiences as a child, through the beginning of her mood swings, her diagnosis of manic-depressive illness, her struggles with the disease, and her eventual management of and control over it, following years of therapy and medication. Aside from having experienced it, Jamison... Read An Unquiet Mind Summary

John Colapinto’s 1999 book As Nature Made Him is an expansion of his award-winning 1997 Rolling Stone article on the medical scandal surrounding David Reimer. David, raised as Brenda under the auspices of famous sexologist and child psychiatrist Dr. John Money, transitions back to a male gender identity during his teenage years. After Dr. Milton Diamond reveals the failure of Money’s theory of gender neutrality at birth, David’s story raises serious questions in the medical... Read As Nature Made Him Summary

Published in 2019, Jodi Picoult’s novel A Spark of Light tells the story of a gunman’s attack on an abortion clinic from multiple points of view, examining the lives of different characters and the events that lead them to the clinic on that day. Picoult is a New York Times best-selling author and has written 28 novels, several of which have been adapted for film and television. Her books are known for tackling social issues... Read A Spark of Light Summary

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James Clear’s Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones is a guide to adopting good behaviors through incremental changes to your everyday routines. Avery first published the book in 2018, and this guide refers to the ebook edition. The book has unique pagination, with the page numbers beginning again at the start of each new chapter. Clear likely numbered his book this way because of his emphasis... Read Atomic Habits Summary

Published in 1994, Autobiography of a Face is award-winning poet Lucy Grealy’s prose debut, a widely-celebrated memoir concerning the author’s struggles with cancer and disfigurement.At the age of 9, Lucy collides with a classmate during a game of dodgeball. The subsequent toothache leads her to seek medical assistance and doctors discover that she has Ewing’s sarcoma, a form of cancer with a 5% survival rate. She undergoes an operation to remove half of her jaw... Read Autobiography Of A Face Summary

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Being Mortal, Atul Gawande's New York Times best seller, was published in 2014. Gawande, an American surgeon and public health researcher, has written a series of articles, essays, and books that probe the US health care industry. His first book, Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science, was a finalist for the National Book Award, and he followed it in 2007 with Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance. Throughout his work, Gawande offers his... Read Being Mortal: Illness, Medicine and what Matters in the End Summary

Harvard-educated Dr. Atul Gawande is a staff writer for The New Yorker, a surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and founder of two nonprofits aimed at innovating surgical practices around the world. He wrote Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance to explore the attributes that make a good doctor. Published in 2007 as a follow-up to his 2002 National Book Award Finalist Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science, Better explores “how situations of... Read Better Summary

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Brain on Fire (2012) is a memoir by New York Post writer Susannah Cahalan that details her struggle with a rare autoimmune disease, anti-NMDA-receptor autoimmune encephalitis. Cahalan recollects the journey through illness that took her from a normal, 24-year-old journalist to a misdiagnosed psychotic patient, and back again. In 2018, Netflix released a film based on Cahalan’s story, produced by Cahalan and Charlize Theron.Plot SummaryCahalan wakes in a hospital with no understanding of how she... Read Brain On Fire Summary

Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, by James Nestor, is a comprehensive treatise on breathing. It combines a journalistic approach with studies in anthropology, biochemistry, human physiology, psychology, and pulmonology to unpack the different techniques of inhaling and exhaling throughout human history and in different societies. With its first publication in 2020, Breath was a bestseller in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, and Sunday London Times and will... Read Breath Summary

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Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs is a 2015 work of investigative nonfiction by British-Swiss author Johann Hari. Hari explores the so-called international war on drugs by looking deeply into its historical roots, its legal and social implications, and the possibility for reform. He examines addiction and the consequences of past and present drug laws across nine continents and 30,000 miles. A major focus is the criminalization and... Read Chasing the Scream Summary

Chew On This: Everything You Don’t Want To Know About Fast Food, co-written by Eric Schlosser and Charles Wilson, aims to show young readers “the ripple effect near and far” of the fast food industry (199). Schlosser and Wilson go on to show that fast food can affect consumers on the immediate level of their own bodies and on the less obvious level of destroying indigenous food cultures.In the Introduction, Schlosser and Wilson describe the... Read Chew On This Summary

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Atul Gawande’s Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science is a collection of essays that weaves narratives from Gawande’s personal experience as a surgical resident together with research, philosophy, and case studies in medicine. Published in 2002, Complications became a 2002 National Book Award Finalist for Nonfiction. Gawande, a Rhodes Scholar and MacArthur Fellow, is a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, a professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at... Read Complications Summary

Crazy: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness, published in 2006, is a blend of memoir and journalism by author and Washington Post journalist Pete Earley. The book was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 2007 and recounts the struggles of Earley’s son, Mike, to receive treatment for his mental illness, which results in Mike’s arrest. Earley juxtaposes Mike’s story with the stories of Miami residents with mental illnesses as they navigate life in... Read Crazy Summary

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese was published in 2009. Verghese, an Indian American doctor born in Ethiopia, interrupted his medical career to attend the University of Iowa’s Writing Workshop and wrote two memoirs before publishing this novel. The book is notable for its incorporation of medical knowledge and its intimate portrayal of the lives of medical doctors. The novel spans several decades, weaving a deeply personal story with the complex 20th-century history of Ethiopia... Read Cutting for Stone Summary

In December 1985, prominent novelist William Styron, in the depths of severe depression, found himself at a crossroads. Prepared to commit suicide, Styron opted instead to seek treatment. After seven weeks in a psychiatric ward, Styron reentered the world with a renewed sense of self and a will to live. When Primo Levi, a prominent Italian scientist, writer, and Holocaust survivor, killed himself in 1987, Styron responded to the widespread criticism of Levi’s suicide with... Read Darkness Visible Summary

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Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic (Bloomsburg Press, 2015) is a nonfiction book by American journalist and writer Sam Quinones. It won the NBCC Award for General Nonfiction and was on Amazon’s list of best books of the year in 2015 as well as Slate’s list of the 50 best books of the past 25 years. In the book Quinones charts the parallel rise of prescription opiates and black tar heroin, and describes... Read Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic Summary

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Eating Animals is a nonfiction book written by Jonathan Safran Foer and published originally in 2009. Foer is an accomplished novelist, and Eating Animals is his first foray into long-form nonfiction writing. The book fits into a genre of criticism of the food industry, specifically factory farming and animal welfare. Eating Animals is a New York Times bestseller, though it met with mixed reviews regarding both the content and style of Foer’s writing. In 2018... Read Eating Animals Summary

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IntroductionFast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal is a 2001 nonfiction book by Eric Schlosser that investigates the business practices of the American fast food industry and the associated agricultural industries that supply it. Following the precedent of Upton Sinclair’s famous 1906 work The Jungle, Schlosser provides readers with a glimpse into the questionable ethics of these large food corporations. Schlosser likewise provides brief historical accounts of fast food’s origins and traces... Read Fast Food Nation Summary

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Published in 2013, Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital is a work of nonfiction by American journalist Sheri Fink. The book, which takes place in August 2005, describes the struggle of staff and patients to survive when trapped in New Orleans’ Memorial Medical Center during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Lacking critical resources, the doctors make a drastic decision that will cause many patients to die via euthanasia. Five Days... Read Five Days at Memorial Summary

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... Read From Strength to Strength Summary

Full Body Burden: Growing up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats is a 2012 nonfiction account by Kristen Iversen. Half memoir, half investigative journalism, the book covers Iversen’s life in a town near Denver, Colorado, as well as Rocky Flats—the nearby nuclear production facility. Quiet, observant, and adventurous, Iversen is the oldest of four children. The family keeps many pets, and Iversen adores horseback riding on their pasture at a new neighborhood near Rocky Flats... Read Full Body Burden Summary

... Read Full Catastrophe Living Summary

... Read Get a Life, Chloe Brown Summary

Ghost Boy: The Miraculous Escape of a Misdiagnosed Boy Trapped Inside His Own Body (2011) is a memoir written by Martin Pistorius with Megan Lloyd Davies. The autobiography details Martin’s childhood misdiagnosis, a mistake that cost him years of his life where he could not communicate with anyone around him. Martin is a native of Johannesburg, South Africa, who at the age of 12 suddenly and mysteriously started losing all control of his muscles and... Read Ghost Boy Summary

The play Ghosts (1881) by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen chronicles the complicated relationship between Helen Alving and her son, Oswald. Ghosts documents a day in the life at the Alving estate as Helen prepares to open an orphanage in honor of her late husband. A three-act play, Ghosts explores the complex social issues of sexually transmitted infections, incest, and euthanasia—topics that made the play highly controversial when it was first produced.Ghosts followed the success of... Read Ghosts Summary

Benjamin Solomon Carson, Sr. (b. September 18, 1951) is the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, as well as a 2016 presidential candidate, retired neurosurgeon, motivational speaker, and author of inspirational books. He earned a B.A. from Yale University and an M.D. from University of Michigan School of Medicine.In his memoir, Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story (1990), Carson and coauthor Cecil Murphey explore how Carson’s gifts from God, his mother and older brother’s influence... Read Gifted Hands Summary

Susanna Kaysen’s 1993, Girl, Interrupted, is a memoir that explores Kaysen’s time as a teenage psychiatric patient in McLean Hospital in the late 1960s. Kaysen explores the murky definitions of mental health and illness, as she recounters her experience of being diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder and makes compelling arguments about the subjective nature of personality, behavior, and disorder. Girl, Interrupted is a bestselling book and was adapted into the 1999 film starring Winona Ryder... Read Girl, Interrupted Summary

Goodbye, Vitamin is Asian American author Rachel Khong’s debut novel. Khong, whose grandmother had Alzheimer’s disease, explores how Alzheimer’s disease affects a family in this work of literary fiction. Written as a series of diary entries, Khong’s protagonist, Ruth Young, meditates on memory, forgiveness, and the challenges inherent in familial relationships as she navigates an adulthood that is not turning out as planned.Published in 2017, Goodbye, Vitamin received positive reviews and was named one of... Read Goodbye, Vitamin Summary

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... Read Having It Out with Melancholy Summary

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How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence (2018) was written by Michael Pollan after curiosity and a personal desire to experience psychedelics for himself prompted exploration into psychedelic research. Pollan uses multiple forms of narrative to weave a story that’s part history, part memoir, part biomedical nonfiction, and part travelogue. The book follows the history of LSD and psilocybin as well as... Read How to Change Your Mind Summary

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... Read How to Stop Worrying and Start Living Summary

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I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life is an in-depth introduction to the microbiome and how it interacts with humans and other species. Author Ed Yong is a science writer for The Atlantic. His writing has also appeared in many other publications, such as The New Yorker, Wired, The New York Times, and Nature. The book’s original hardcover edition was published in 2016; this guide is based on the... Read I Contain Multitudes Summary

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Susan Sontag’s 1978 book Illness as Metaphor is an 87-page work of critical theory exploring the language we use to describe disease and its victims. The work was originally published in the New York Review of Books as three long-form essays. Sontag wrote Illness as Metaphor while undergoing treatment for breast cancer, though not mentioned in the text. This genre—critical theoretical examinations of social and cultural events or phenomena—was where Sontag established her reputation. Illness... Read Illness As Metaphor Summary

... Read Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love Summary

... Read In Love Summary

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Gabor Maté’s In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addictions is an unconventional nonfiction book on how to treat addiction, how addicts can better assimilate into society, and how society can dispel many of the myths that surround addiction. Maté works as an addiction specialist at the Portland Hotel in Vancouver, Canada.  Much of the book, published in 2010, focuses on Maté’s evidence that childhood stressors increase the likelihood that one will become... Read In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts Summary

Into the Magic Shop: A Neurosurgeon’s Quest to Discover the Mysteries of the Brain and the Secrets of the Heart is a work of nonfiction by neurosurgeon and philanthropist Dr. James R. Doty. It is at once a memoir, a self-help book, and a work of popular science; Doty draws on his professional knowledge to explain the scientific underpinnings of meditative practices like visualization, while also exploring the transformative effect these practices can have on... Read Into the Magic Shop Summary

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Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked (2017), a nonfiction book by Adam Alter, explores the relationship between humans and addictive technologies. Alter is a professor of marketing at New York University Stern School of Business and has written other nonfiction titles about human behavior, such as Drunk Tank Pink.  The book begins with the assertion that people can easily become addicted to smartphones, video games, and other technologies... Read Irresistible Summary

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... Read Killing the Black Body Summary

Landscape with Invisible Hand is a satirical dystopian science fiction novel by M. T. Anderson, written for a young adult audience. A diverse author, Anderson writes both fiction and nonfiction for people of all ages. In 2023, Landscape with Invisible Hand was adapted for film, reflecting the novel’s popularity and relevance. The book depicts a future world in which an alien species, the vuvv, have sold their technology to humans, causing the collapse of the... Read Landscape with Invisible Hand Summary

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League of Denial: The NFL, Concussions, and the Battle for Truth is a 2013 work of investigative nonfiction by brothers Mark Fainaru-Wada and Steve Fainaru. The book chronicles the National Football League’s concussion crisis, which came to light with a few career-ending head injuries in the 1990s and became an even more serious issue as numerous deceased former players were found to have developed chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). League of Denial won the PEN/ESPN Award... Read League of Denial Summary

Lisa Genova’s second novel, Left Neglected (2011), is the fictional story of Sarah Nickerson, a high-powered executive whose life changes forever when she is in a serious car accident. Genova is the New York Times bestselling author of several novels, each dealing with a different neurological condition. She graduated from Bates College with a degree in biopsychology and from Harvard University with a doctorate in neuroscience, a background that influences her writing. Other works by... Read Left Neglected Summary

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In the 2007 nonfiction book Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present, medical researcher Harriet A. Washington describes the long history of American medical experiments on Black Americans. Although some of these abuses are well-known, such as the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, the book presents a comprehensive history that describes the long-standing pattern of exploitative practices. By uncovering how American medicine has been built upon the... Read Medical Apartheid Summary

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Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World is a 2003 nonfiction book by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Tracy Kidder. It is an expansion of “The Good Doctor,” a 2000 article for The New Yorker and the winner of the 2004 Lettre Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage. The book profiles Dr. Paul Edward Farmer, co-founder of Partners in Health, as he treats patients in Haiti and... Read Mountains Beyond Mountains Summary

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My Sister’s Keeper is a 2004 novel by bestselling author Jodi Picoult centered on the controversy of savior siblings. In the novel, Anna Fitzgerald fights for medical emancipation in order to have a choice in whether or not she will donate a kidney to her sister, Kate, who has leukemia. In 2009, the novel was adapted into a feature film released by New Line Cinema. The movie was directed by Nick Cassavetes and starred Cameron... Read My Sister's Keeper Summary

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No Apparent Distress: A Doctor’s Coming of Age on the Front Lines of American Medicine is author Rachel Pearson’s 2017 account of her intensive medical education and the initial years of her career as a physician. She focuses on stories that illustrate her themes of medical ethics, regret, depression, bias against the poor, and racism. Rather than bogging the reader down in medical jargon, Pearson uses anecdotes to convey her experiences to a layman audience.Pearson... Read No Apparent Distress Summary

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Florence Nightingale was an English nurse commonly known as the founder of modern nursing practices. Born in Italy, she became an experienced nurse and formed many of her opinions while serving in the Crimean War, enrolling in nursing school at age 24 in Germany. She penned Notes on Nursing: What It Is, and What it Is Not in 1859, just a few years after serving in the war, and the work was first published in... Read Notes on Nursing Summary

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On Death and Dying is a 1969 psychological study by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. It is best known in popular culture for introducing the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Kübler-Ross’s work with terminally ill patients inspired the model. She wrote the study as a response to the lack of instruction in medical schools about how to handle the topic of death. It was the very first book written by Kübler-Ross in her... Read On Death and Dying Summary

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a historical fiction novel by Ken Kesey, published in 1962. Kesey drew on his experiences working in a veterans’ hospital to develop a critique of then-current psychiatric practices. The novel’s central conflict between a domineering nurse and an unruly patient can also be read as an allegory for the emerging culture wars of the 1960s. The novel was adapted into a Broadway play one year after its publication... Read One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Summary

Opening Skinner’s Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century by Lauren Slater is a work of narrative non-fiction published in 2004 by W.W. Norton & Company. Slater, an American psychotherapist, examines 10 landmark psychological experiments—from B.F. Skinner’s infamous boxes to Harry Harlow’s primates—and, in doing so, she explores larger philosophical questions related to human freedom, the limits of science, and truth in art.Slater provides biographical details of the scientists behind each landmark experiment. She... Read Opening Skinner's Box Summary

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Pale Horse, Pale Rider is a novella written by Katherine Anne Porter. It was published in 1939, along with two other short novellas, Old Mortality and Noon Wine, under the collective title Pale Horse, Pale Rider. The story portrays two young lovers who are tragically affected by the 1918 influenza epidemic, or Spanish Flu.This guide uses an eBook version of the 2008 Library of America edition.Plot SummaryMiranda is a young female theater critic who lives... Read Pale Horse, Pale Rider Summary

Petey is middle grade novel written by Ben Mikaelsen and published in 1998. Mikaelsen is the author of 10 novels for young adults and the winner of several awards for his work. Petey is dedicated to and based on the life of Clyde Cothern, a Montana man with cerebral palsy who was misdiagnosed as intellectually disabled and confined to Montana State Hospital in the 1920s. Mikaelsen and Cothern shared a close personal friendship, and while... Read Petey Summary

In Plagues and Peoples, William H. McNeill argues that patterns of disease have integrally influenced human history from prehistory to the modern day. Until 1976, the year of this book’s publication, the historical study of disease was treated as a footnote of minor importance compared to war, agriculture, and politics. By contrast, McNeill takes a broader view and breaks human history into two categories. The forces of ecology and humanity are equally weighed in McNeill’s... Read Plagues and Peoples Summary

Translated from the Korean by Chi-young Kim, Please Look After Mom (2008) by Kyung-sook Shin is an international work of best-selling fiction. When 69-year-old So-nyo Park goes missing one Saturday outside Seoul Station, her disappearance sets in motion a desperate search not only for where So-nyo might be but for who So-nyo was to her shocked and confused family members. One by one, So-nyo’s family comes to terms with the fact that they didn’t know... Read Please Look After Mom Summary

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Salt Sugar Fat is a 2013 nonfiction book by Michael Moss. It describes the modern American food industry. The author visits the corporate headquarters, scientific research facilities, and marketing departments of major food manufacturers. He also talks with consumer advocates and other involved parties to understand the ongoing obesity epidemic.Through industrial processes, food companies remove nutritious components and substitute cheaper, harmful ingredients. The key ingredients in most processed foods are salt, sugar, and fat. Manufacturers... Read Salt Sugar Fat Summary

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... Read Shift Summary

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Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic is a 2012 narrative nonfiction work about the relationship between animal infections and human disease. It was nominated for several awards and won the Science and Society Book Award, given by the National Association of Science Writers, and the Society of Biology (UK) Book Award in General Biology. In Spillover, Quammen’s narrative alternates between the outbreak and eventual discovery of recent emerging diseases, and the scientific discoveries... Read Spillover Summary

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Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers is a nonfiction book about the cultural history of the human cadaver, written by Mary Roach. Roach explores how, for nearly two thousand years, the deceased human body has been used in research and experimentation leading to some of the most consequential innovations of the medical, scientific, and mechanical (among others) fields throughout human history. Across cultures and civilizations, death has been shrouded in mystery and taboo, yet... Read Stiff Summary

Still Alice, by Lisa Genova, tells the story of a Harvard cognitive psychology professor, Alice Howland, and her descent into early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. When the novel opens, Alice is unaware of her disease; although she recognizes that she has become a touch more forgetful lately, she chalks this up to getting older and keeping a busy academic schedule. However, her lapses soon become worse, and a series of tests confirm that she has early-onset Alzheimer’s... Read Still Alice Summary

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Strength in What Remains is a nonfiction book by Pulitzer Prize-winning nonfiction writer Tracy Kidder. It chronicles the story of a Burundian man named Deogratias (Deo). Deo, a Tutsi, survived a genocide that embroiled Burundi and Rwanda—especially in 1993-94. Deo fled the hospital where he had a medical school internship. Without any resources, he made his way to Rwanda only to be forced to escape violence there, return to Burundi, and finally travel to America... Read Strength in What Remains Summary

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Widely known for his best-selling books A Short History of Nearly Everything and A Walk in the Woods, author and educator Bill Bryson published another bestseller in 2019. The Body: a Guide for Occupants is a tour of human anatomy and its wonders. Compiled for the general reader, The Body is a compendium of facts, many amazing or weird, about human anatomy and physiology. It explores the various organ systems—skin, brain, eyes, nose, mouth and throat... Read The Body: A Guide for Occupants Summary

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The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma is a 2014 nonfiction work by Bessel van der Kolk, M.D. This guide refers to the 2015 edition published by Penguin Books. Van der Kolk, a psychiatrist specializing in various forms of trauma, has worked in trauma therapy for his entire professional career, publishing numerous scientific research studies of his own and contributing to many more. In addition to being a... Read The Body Keeps the Score Summary

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Audre Lorde was a poet, essayist, activist, and memoirist whose writings on lesbian feminism and race were integral to second-wave feminism. Lorde was born in New York City on February 18, 1934 to Grenadian immigrant parents. She attended Hunter High School, where she edited the school’s literary magazine. She published her first poem, which had been rejected by an English teacher, in Seventeen magazine. She later attended Hunter College, where she trained to become a... Read The Cancer Journals Summary

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The Children of Men is a dystopian 1992 science fiction novel by P.D. James set in 2021, years after the onset of a mass infertility epidemic. Unless scientists can discover a cure, there will be no more births and the human race will go extinct when the youngest generation dies. This scenario allows James to explore many themes, including existentialism, the meaning of a good life, and the corrupting nature of power.The novel switches between... Read The Children of Men Summary

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... Read The Collected Schizophrenias Summary