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The Colony: The Harrowing True Story of the Exiles of Molokai
John Tayman · back to the book
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorThe Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women
Kate Moore · 480 pages
As World War I raged across the globe, hundreds of young women toiled away at the radium-dial factories, where they painted clock faces with a mysterious new substance called radium. Assured by their bosses that the luminous material was safe, the women themselves shone brightly in the dark, covered from head to toe with the glowing dust. With such a coveted job, these "shining girls" were conside
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
Siddhartha Mukherjee · 571 pages
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer is a book written by Siddhartha Mukherjee, an Indian-born American physician and oncologist. Published on 16 November 2010 by Scribner, it won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction.
Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President
Candice Millard · 494 pages
James A. Garfield was one of the most extraordinary men ever elected president. Born into abject poverty, he rose to become a wunderkind scholar, a Civil War hero, and a renowned and admired reformist congressman. Nominated for president against his will, he engaged in a fierce battle with the corrupt political establishment. But four months after his inauguration, a deranged office seeker tracked
NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity
Steve Silberman · 544 pages
What is autism? A lifelong disability, or a naturally occurring form of cognitive difference akin to certain forms of genius? In truth, it is all of these things and more—and the future of our society depends on our understanding it. WIRED reporter Steve Silberman unearths the secret history of autism, long suppressed by the same clinicians who became famous for discovering it, and finds surprisin
Charlatan: America's Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam
Pope Brock · 330 pages
In 1917, after years of selling worthless patent remedies throughout the Southeast, John R. Brinkley--America's most brazen young con man--arrived in the tiny town of Milford, Kansas. He set up a medical practice and introduced an outlandish surgical method using goat glands to restore the fading virility of local farmers.It was all nonsense, of course, but thousands of paying customers quickly tu
The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York
Deborah Blum · 327 pages
The untold story of how poison rocked Jazz Age New York City. A pair of forensic scientists began their trailblazing chemical detective work, fighting to end an era when untraceable poisons offered an easy path to the perfect crime. Chief medical examiner Charles Norris and toxicologist Alexander Gettler investigate a family mysteriously stricken bald, factory workers with crumbling bones, a diner
Get Well Soon: History's Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them
Jennifer Wright · 320 pages
"A humorous book about history's worst plagues from the Antonine Plague, to leprosy, to polio and the heroes who fought them In 1518, in a small town in France, Frau Troffea began dancing and didn't stop. She danced herself to her death six days later, and soon thirty-four more villagers joined her. Then more. In a month more than 400 people had died from the mysterious dancing plague. In late-nin
The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution
Jonathan Eig · 408 pages
Immersed in radical feminist politics, scientific ingenuity, establishment opposition, and, ultimately, a sea change in social attitudes, this is the fascinating story of one of the most important scientific discoveries of the twentieth century.
For Her Own Good: Two Centuries of the Experts' Advice to Women
Barbara Ehrenreich, Deirdre English · 369 pages
From the Publisher: A provocative new perspective on female history, the history of American medicine and psychology, and the history of child-rearing unlike any other.
Anatomies: A Cultural History of the Human Body
Hugh Aldersey-Williams · 320 pages
It is the inspiration for art, the subject of science and the source of some of the greatest stories ever told. From ancient body art to plastic surgery, from early anatomists to conceptual artists, grave-robbers to bionic athletes, our changing attitudes to the human body, how it works, what it should look like, how to live with it, what it means, tell us more about ourselves than almost any othe
An American Plague: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793
Jim Murphy · 176 pages
The President Is a Sick Man: Wherein the Supposedly Virtuous Grover Cleveland Survives a Secret Surgery at Sea and Vilifies the Courageous Newspaperman Who Dared Expose the Truth
Matthew Algeo · 255 pages
Recounts the summer of 1893 when President Grover Cleveland disappeared for five days, covering up a surgery to remove cancer from his palate and jaw.
How to Survive a Plague: The Inside Story of How Citizens and Science Tamed AIDS
David France · 640 pages
"From the creator of and inspired by the seminal documentary of the same name--an Oscar nominee--the definitive history of the successful battle to halt the AIDS epidemic, and the powerful, heroic stories of the gay activists who refused to die without a fight. Intimately reported, this is the story of the men and women who, watching their friends and lovers fall, ignored by public officials, reli
Fasting Girls: The History of Anorexia Nervosa
Joan Jacobs Brumberg · 370 pages
"When Fasting Girls first appeared in 1988, anorexia nervosa was widely considered a new disease. In fact, most people thought it would go away. Joan Jacobs Brumberg's book changed that perception by demonstrating when and where anorexia nervosa originated and why it has become so "popular" in our time. A classic work that is both a biography of the disease and a sustained inquiry into the cultura
The Technology of Orgasm: "Hysteria," the Vibrator, and Women's Sexual Satisfaction
Rachel P. Maines · 181 pages
The author explores hysteria in Western medicine throughout the ages and examines the characterization of female sexuality as a disease requiring treatment. Medical authorities, she writes, were able to defend and justify the clinical production of orgasm in women as necessary to maintain the dominant view of sexuality, which defined sex as penetration to male orgasm - a practice that consistently
Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason
Michel Foucault · 299 pages
The Illustrious Dead: Napoleon, Typhus, and the Dream of World Conquest
Stephan Talty · 336 pages
Pox: An American History
Michael Willrich · 427 pages
Chronicles how America's Progressive Era war on smallpox sparked one of the twentieth century's leading civil liberties battles, describing the views and tactics of anti-vaccine advocates who feared an increasingly large government.
Dr. Feelgood: The Story of the Doctor Who Influenced History by Treating and Drugging Prominent Figures Including President Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, and Elvis Presley
Richard A. Lertzman, William J. Birnes · 199 pages
Doctor Max Jacobson, whom the Secret Service under President John F. Kennedy code-named "Dr. Feelgood," developed a unique "energy formula" that altered the paths of some of the twentieth-century's most iconic figures, including President and Jackie Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, and Elvis. JFK received his first injection (a special mix of "vitamins and hormones," according to Jacobson)
The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time
John Kelly · 384 pages
Chronicles the Great Plague that devastated Asia and Europe in the fourteenth century, documenting the experiences of people who lived during its height while describing the decline of moral boundaries that also marked the period.
In the Wake of the Plague: The Black Death and the World It Made
Norman F. Cantor · 245 pages
A Time to Dance, a Time to Die: The Extraordinary Story of the Dancing Plague of 1518
John Waller · 267 pages
The true story of a wild dancing epidemic that brought death and fear to a 16th-century city, and the terrifying supernatural beliefs from which it arose.