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The Cancer Chronicles: Unlocking Medicine's Deepest Mystery
George Johnson · back to the book
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorZoobiquity: What Animals Can Teach Us About Being Human
Barbara Natterson-Horowitz, Kathryn Bowers · 320 pages
In the tradition of Temple Grandin, Oliver Sacks, and Neil Shubin, cardiologist and psychiatrist Natterson-Horowitz and science writer Bowers look at the remarkable correspondences between the way human beings and animals live, die, get sick, and heal in their natural settings.
Deadly Feasts: Tracking the Secrets of a Terrifying New Plague
Richard Rhodes · 259 pages
It lurks in the meat we eat. Undetectable, it incubates for years. It kills by eating holes in people's brains, so that they stagger and collapse and lose their minds. It's one hundred percent fatal. And it's already abroad in America. Deadly Feasts reads like a Michael Crichton thriller - but it's documented fact, bringing sober early warning of a new threat to our very lives that every one of us
Microbe Hunters
Paul de Kruif · 363 pages
Paul de Kruif’s classic account of the first scientists to see and learn about the microscopic world continues to fascinate new readers. This is a timeless dramatization of the scientists, bacteriologists, doctors, and medical technicians who discovered the microbes and invented the vaccines to counter them. De Kruif writes about how seemingly simple but really fundamental discovers of science—for
Survival of the Sickest: A Medical Maverick Discovers Why We Need Disease
Sharon Moalem · 279 pages
Survival of the Sickest: The Surprising Connections Between Disease and Longevity is a 2007 New York Times Bestselling science book by Sharon Moalem, an evolutionary biologist and neurogeneticist, and Jonathan Prince, senior advisor and speechwriter for the Clinton administration. It was originally titled, Survival of the Sickest: A Medical Maverick Discovers Why We Need Disease.
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
Virus X: Tracking the New Killer Plagues
Frank Ryan · 448 pages
Dr. Frank Ryan takes us into the "hot zones" of today's most dangerous outbreaks, then into the research laboratories and hospitals, where he spotlights the scientists and doctors who are risking their lives to contain them. In telling this global story, he uncovers a frightening pattern - and concludes that new, deadlier diseases are even now waiting to emerge. Why do such plagues arise? Where do
Killer Germs: Microbes and Diseases That Threaten Humanity
Barry E. Zimmerman, David J. Zimmerman · 272 pages
The book goes on a fascinating journey into the amazing world of viruses, bacteria, protozoa, fungi, and worms and explores the roles they have played in shaping the course of human history. From biblical plagues, to the AIDS crisis, to supergerms of the future, this updated and revised edition of the original covers the whole gamut of diseases that have threatened humanity since its origins. It a
Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It
Gary Taubes · 257 pages
This book is an eye-opening, myth-shattering examination of what makes us fat, from acclaimed science writer Gary Taubes. In his New York Times best seller, Good Calories, Bad Calories, Taubes argued that our diet's overemphasis on certain kinds of carbohydrates -- not fats and not simply excess calories -- has led directly to the obesity epidemic we face today. The result of thorough research, ke
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales
Oliver Sacks · 243 pages
In his most extraordinary book, “one of the great clinical writers of the twentieth century” (The New York Times) recounts the case histories of patients lost in the bizarre, apparently inescapable world of neurological disorders. Oliver Sacks’s The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat tells the stories of individuals afflicted with fantastic perceptual and intellectual aberrations: patients who
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.
Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic
David Quammen · 592 pages
This work examines the emergence and causes of new diseases all over the world, describing a process called "spillover" where illness originates in wild animals before being passed to humans and discusses the potential for the next huge pandemic. The emergence of strange new diseases is a frightening problem that seems to be getting worse. In this age of speedy travel, it threatens a worldwide pan
Making the Monster: The Science Behind Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (Bloomsbury Sigma)
Kathryn Harkup · 305 pages
Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal
Mary Roach · 348 pages
The irresistible, ever-curious, and always best-selling Mary Roach returns with a new adventure to the invisible realm we carry around inside. “America’s funniest science writer” (Washington Post) takes us down the hatch on an unforgettable tour. The alimentary canal is classic Mary Roach terrain: the questions explored in Gulp are as taboo, in their way, as the cadavers in Stiff and every bit
Pandemic: Tracking Contagions, from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond
Sonia Shah · 288 pages
Scientists agree that a pathogen is likely to cause a global pandemic in the near future. But which one? And how? Over the past fifty years, more than three hundred infectious diseases have either newly emerged or reemerged. Ninety percent of epidemiologists expect that one of them will cause a deadly pandemic sometime in the next two generations. It could be Ebola, avian flu, a drug-resistant sup
I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life
Ed Yong · 368 pages
Joining the ranks of popular science classics like The Botany of Desire and The Selfish Gene, a groundbreaking, wondrously informative, and vastly entertaining examination of the most significant revolution in biology since Darwin—a “microbe’s-eye view” of the world that reveals a marvelous, radically reconceived picture of life on earth. Every animal, whether human, squid, or wasp, is home to
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.
The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race
Walter Isaacson · 560 pages
A scientific biography of Jennifer Doudna, a founder and co-developer of the CRISPR gene-editing mechanism, and an examination of what happened after CRISPR hit the marketplace.
Rabid: A Cultural History of the World's Most Diabolical Virus
Bill Wasik, Monica Murphy · 288 pages
Charts the history, science, and cultural mythology of rabies, documenting how before its vaccine the disease caused fatal brain infections and sparked the creations of monsters, including werewolves, vampires and zombies.
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 Family That Couldn't Sleep: A Medical Mystery
D.T. Max · 336 pages
The Philadelphia Chromosome: A Mutant Gene and the Quest to Cure Cancer at the Genetic Level
Jessica Wapner · 323 pages
This work discusses the history of a genetic mutation, discovered in 1959, that causes chronic myeloid leukemia, and traces the research and breakthroughs that led to the creation of a drug that makes this once-fatal illness now treatable. It focuses on what is widely viewed as the 'poster child' of rational drug development in the cancer research world. The history of the founding of a genetic mu
The Epigenetics Revolution: How Modern Biology Is Rewriting Our Understanding of Genetics, Disease and Inheritance
Nessa Carey · 339 pages
"Epigenetics can potentially revolutionize our understanding of the structure and behavior of biological life on Earth. It explains why mapping an organism's genetic code is not enough to determine how it develops or acts and shows how nurture combines with nature to engineer biological diversity. Surveying the twenty-year history of the field while also highlighting its latest findings and innova
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Rebecca Skloot · 381 pages