The Panic Virus: A True Story of Medicine, Science, and Fear

The Bill Gates Problem: Reckoning with the Myth of the Good Billionaire

Tim Schwab · 496 pages

The Hot Zone: The Terrifying True Story of the Origins of the Ebola Virus

Richard Preston · 384 pages

This interesting books talks about the author doing an investigation about several viruses in africa, including ebola. He explains the different strains and tells us their stories.

The Case Against Sugar

Gary Taubes · 365 pages

"From the best-selling author of Why We Get Fat, a groundbreaking, eye-opening expose that makes the convincing case that sugar is the tobacco of the new millennium: backed by powerful lobbies, entrenched in our lives, and making us very sick. Among Americans, diabetes is more prevalent today than ever; obesity is at epidemic proportions; nearly 10% of children are thought to have nonalcoholic fat

The Invisible Cure: Africa, the West, and the Fight Against AIDS

Helen C. Epstein · 352 pages

"The Invisible Cure will change the way we think about AIDS, a disease without precedent; and it will change the way we think about Africa and Africans, whose insight, wisdom, and care for the stranger will be as crucial as money and medical know-how if they are to overcome this terrible health crisis."--Jacket.

The Wisdom of Whores: Bureaucrats, Brothels, and the Business of AIDS

Elizabeth Pisani · 386 pages

"In this breakneck ride through the red-light districts of East Asia and other hotspots in the flamboyant world of AIDS prevention, writer-scientist Elizabeth Pisani dishes on both friends and enemies in the battles where she has been on the front lines for more than a decade." "Pisani's swashbuckling wit takes no prisoners, as she exposes both those who think AIDS can be prevented by preaching ab

In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto

Michael Pollan · 244 pages

What to eat, what not to eat, and how to think about health: a manifesto for our times"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." These simple words go to the heart of Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food, the well-considered answers he provides to the que

I Think You'll Find it's a Bit More Complicated Than That

Ben Goldacre · 485 pages

The very best journalism from one of Britain's most admired and outspoken science writers, author of the bestselling Bad Science and Bad Pharma. In 'Bad Science', Ben Goldacre hilariously exposed the tricks that quacks and journalists use to distort science. In 'Bad Pharma', he put the $600 billion global pharmaceutical industry under the microscope. Now the pick of the journalism by one of our wi

10% Human: How Your Body's Microbes Hold the Key to Health and Happiness

Alanna Collen · 331 pages

You are just 10% human. For every one of the cells that make up the vessel that you call your body, there are nine impostor cells hitching a ride. You are not just flesh and blood, muscle and bone, brain and skin, but also bacteria and fungi. Over your lifetime, you will carry the equivalent weight of five African elephants in microbes. You are not an individual but a colony. Until recently, we

The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance

Laurie Garrett · 750 pages

This is an amazing book that Laura Garrett wrote back in the 90's. For anyone that has read the more popular book by Richard Preston "The Hot Zone" this is a must read. It is a much tighter more informative book. She takes us through the history of viruses in a journalistic/story approach. She breaks down the emergence of Ebola and the other emerging viruses and what it could mean in a brilliantl

Burn It Down: Power, Complicity, and a Call for Change in Hollywood

Maureen Ryan · 348 pages

Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia

Peter Pomerantsev · 272 pages

"Nothing Is True and Everything is Possible is a journey into the glittering, surreal heart of 21st century Russia: into the lives of oligarchs convinced they are messiahs, professional killers with the souls of artists, Bohemian theater directors turned Kremlin puppet-masters, supermodel sects, post-modern dictators, and playboy revolutionaries. This is a world erupting with new money and new pow

28: Stories of AIDS in Africa

Stephanie Nolen · 384 pages

Twenty-eight anecdotal stories that chronicle men, women, and children involved in every aspect of the African AIDS crisis.

If Our Bodies Could Talk: A Guide to Operating and Maintaining a Human Body

James Hamblin · 385 pages

*"If you want to understand the strange workings of the human body, and the future of medicine, you must read this illuminating, engaging book." --Siddhartha Mukherjee, author of The Gene* In 2014, James Hamblin launched a series of videos for The Atlantic called "If Our Bodies Could Talk." With it, the doctor-turned-journalist established himself as a seriously entertaining authority in the f

The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care

T.R. Reid · 304 pages

Bestselling author T. R. Reid guides a whirlwind tour ofsuccessful health care systems worldwide, revealing possible pathstoward U.S. reformIn The Healing of America, New York Timesbestselling author T. R. Reid shows how all the otherindustrialized democracies have achieved something the UnitedStates can’t seem to do: provide health care for everybody at areasonable cost.In his global quest to fin

Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer

Shannon Brownlee · 351 pages

Deadly Choices: How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All

Paul A. Offit

How did we get to a place where vaccines are viewed with horror rather than as life-saving medicine? The answer is rooted in one of the most powerful and disturbing citizen activist movements in our nation’s history -- a movement that, despite recent epidemics and deaths, continues to grow. Deadly Choices is the story of anti-vaccine activity in America -- its origins, leaders, influences, and imp

Cure Unknown: Inside the Lyme Epidemic

Pamela Weintraub · 408 pages

This book is an investigation into the science, history, and politics of Lyme disease as observed by a journalist whose entire family contracted the illness traces its significant rise and the atypical presentations that have made its diagnosis and treatment difficult. It is a narrative investigation into the science, history, medical politics, and patient experience of Lyme disease told by a scie

Cure: A Journey into the Science of Mind Over Body

Jo Marchant · 336 pages

"A rigorous, skeptical, deeply reported look at the new science behind the mind's extraordinary ability to heal the body ... While we accept that stress or anxiety can damage our health, the idea of "healing thoughts" was long ago hijacked by New Age gurus and spiritual healers. Recently, however, serious scientists from a range of fields have been uncovering evidence that our thoughts, emotions,

The Secret Life of Fat: The Science Behind the Body's Least Understood Organ and What It Means for You

Sylvia Tara · 235 pages

Blends historical perspectives with cutting-edge research to examine body fat as a critical endocrine organ that can be better understood and managed when recognized as a necessary component of human health. Biochemist Sylvia Tara explores the surprising science behind our most hated body part. Fat is an obsession, a dirty word, a subject of national handwringingand, according to biochemist Sylvi

Drugs Without the Hot Air: Minimizing the Harms of Legal and Illegal Drugs

David J. Nutt · 384 pages

Fat Chance: Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and Disease

Robert H. Lustig · 328 pages

"Robert Lustig's 90-minute YouTube video "Sugar: The Bitter Truth", has been viewed more than two million times. Now, in this much anticipated book, he documents the science and the politics that has led to the pandemic of chronic disease over the last 30 years. In the late 1970s when the government mandated we get the fat out of our food, the food industry responded by pouring more sugar in. The

Trick or Treatment: The Undeniable Facts about Alternative Medicine

Simon Singh, Edzard Ernst · 352 pages

Provides an examination and judgement of more than thirty of the most treatments in alternative medicine, such as acupuncture, homeopathy, aromatherapy, reflexology, chiropractic and herbal medicine.

How I Broke Up with My Colon: Fascinating, Bizarre, and True Health Stories

Nick Seluk · 192 pages

Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body’s Most Underrated Organ

Giulia Enders · 275 pages

With quirky charm, rising science star Giulia Enders explains the gut's magic, answering questions like: Why does acid reflux happen? What's really up with gluten and lactose intolerance? How does the gut affect obesity and mood? Enders's beguiling manifesto will make you finally listen to those butterflies in your stomach: they're trying to tell you something important.