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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorViruses, Plagues and History
Michael B.A. Oldstone · 305 pages
"Nearly 300 million people were killed by smallpox over the course of the twentieth century. During the years 1918 and 1919, a deadly variant of the influenza strain claimed over 20 million lives. And today we face new viral threats: mad cow disease, the Hantavirus, and of course, AIDS. As Michael Oldstone illustrates here, the story of viruses and the story of humanity have overlapped since the d
Phineas Gage: A Gruesome but True Story About Brain Science
John Fleischman · 96 pages
Phineas Gage was truly a man with a hole in his head. Phineas, a railroad construction foreman, was blasting rock near Cavendish, Vermont, in 1848 when a thirteen-pound iron rod was shot through his brain. Miraculously, he survived to live another eleven years and become a textbook case in brain science. At the time, Phineas Gage seemed to completely recover from his accident. He could walk, ta
Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation
Dan Fagin · 538 pages
Recounts the decades-long saga of the New Jersey seaside town plagued by childhood cancers caused by air and water pollution due to the indiscriminate dumping of toxic chemicals.
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.
Birth: The Surprising History of How We Are Born
Tina Cassidy · 312 pages
"Starting with a lively, personal introduction in which Tina Cassidy describes her grandmother's, her mother's, and her own experiences of giving birth, readers are taken on an astounding journey into the history of childbirth. From evolution to the epidural and beyond, Tina Cassidy presents an intelligent, enlightening, and impeccably researched cultural history of how and why we are born the way
The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception
Michel Foucault
Pandora's Lab: Seven Stories of Science Gone Wrong
Paul A. Offit · 287 pages
What happens when ideas presented as science lead us in the wrong direction? History is filled with brilliant ideas that gave rise to disaster, and this book explores some of these missteps: from opium's heyday as the pain reliever of choice to recognition of opioids as a major cause of death in the U.S.; from the rise of trans fats as the golden ingredient for tastier, cheaper food to the heart d
The Remedy: Robert Koch, Arthur Conan Doyle, and the Quest to Cure Tuberculosis
Thomas Goetz · 298 pages
"The riveting history of tuberculosis, the world's most lethal disease, the two men whose lives it tragically intertwined, and the birth of medical science. In 1875, tuberculosis was the deadliest disease in the world, accountable for a third of all deaths. A diagnosis of TB-often called consumption-was a death sentence. Then, in triumph of medical science, a German doctor named Robert Koch deploy
The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic - and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World
Steven Johnson · 299 pages
A thrilling historical account of the worst cholera outbreak in Victorian London-and a brilliant exploration of how Dr. John Snow's solution revolutionized the way we think about disease, cities, science, and the modern world.From the dynamic thinker routinely compared to Malcolm Gladwell, E. O. Wilson, and James Gleick, The Ghost Map is a riveting page-turner with a real-life historical hero that
The Speckled Monster: A Historical Tale of Battling Smallpox
Jennifer Lee Carrell · 474 pages
A timely book about history's first desperate efforts to conquer smallpoxThe Speckled Monster tells the dramatic story of two parents who dared to fight back against smallpox. After barely surviving the agony of smallpox themselves, they flouted eighteenth-century medicine by borrowing folk knowledge from African slaves and Eastern women in frantic bids to protect their children. From their hero
Starvation Heights: A True Story of Murder and Malice in the Woods of the Pacific Northwest
Gregg Olsen · 423 pages
In 1911 two wealthy British heiresses, Claire and Dora Williamson, came to a sanitorium in the forests of the Pacific Northwest to undergo the revolutionary "fasting treatment" of Dr. Linda Burfield Hazzard. It was supposed to be a holiday for the two sisters. But within a month of arriving at what the locals called Starvation Heights, the women were emaciated shadows of their former selves, waiti
A Cabinet of Medical Curiosities
Jan Bondeson · 250 pages
Before museums there were cabinets of medical curiosities: a dried mermaid might sit next to a giant's shinbone; the skeletons of conjoined twins beside an Egyptian mummy. In this well-illustrated book, the author uses his medical expertise to explore some of these medical freaks, outright frauds and popular myths. He debunks some as mere superstition and offers medical diagnoses for other cases.
Blood and Guts: A Short History of Medicine
Roy Porter · 224 pages
Mankind's battle to stay alive is the greatest of all subjects. This brief, witty and unusual book by Britain's greatest medical historian compresses into a tiny span a lifetime spent thinking about millennia of human ingenuity in the quest to cheat death. Each chapter sums up one of these battlefields (surgery, doctors, disease, hospitals, laboratories and the human body) in a way that is both fr
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.
The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons: The History of the Human Brain as Revealed by True Stories of Trauma, Madness, and Recovery
Sam Kean · 432 pages
Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill
Robert Whitaker · 341 pages
In Mad in America, medical journalist Robert Whitaker reveals an astounding truth: Schizophrenics in the United States currently fare worse than patients in the world's poorest countries, and quite possibly worse than asylum patients did in the early nineteenth century. With a muckraker's passion, Whitaker argues that modern treatments for the severely mentally ill are just old medicine in new bot
The Anatomist: A True Story of Gray's Anatomy
Bill Hayes · 250 pages
"Hayes's history of the illustrated medical text "Gray's Anatomy" coincides with the hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of its first publication. Fascinated by the fact that little was known about the famous book's genesis, Hayes combed through nineteenth-century letters and medical-school records, learning that, besides Henry Gray, the brilliant scholar and surgeon who wrote the text, another anato
The Gene: An Intimate History
Siddhartha Mukherjee · 593 pages
The Gene is the story of one of the most powerful and dangerous ideas in our history, from bestselling, prize-winning author Siddhartha Mukherjee. Spanning the globe and several centuries, The Gene is the story of the quest to decipher the master-code that makes and defines humans, that governs our form and function. This is an epic, moving history of a scientific idea coming to life, by the aut
Flu: The Story Of The Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus that Caused It
Gina Kolata · 338 pages
The fascinating, true story of the world's deadliest disease. In 1918, the Great Flu Epidemic felled the young and healthy virtually overnight. An estimated forty million people died as the epidemic raged. Children were left orphaned and families were devastated. As many American soldiers were killed by the 1918 flu as were killed in battle during World War I. And no area of the globe was safe. Es
Asleep: The Forgotten Epidemic that Remains One of Medicine's Greatest Mysteries
Molly Caldwell Crosby · 291 pages
Crosby, acclaimed author of "The American Plague," explores the frightening history of a long forgotten disease--sleeping sickness--and details the frantic effort to conquer it before it strikes again.
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)
Red Madness: How a Medical Mystery Changed What We Eat
Gail Jarrow · 192 pages
One hundred years ago, a mysterious disease called pellagra spread across the American South - "one of the most horrible, pitiful afflictions mankind has ever suffered." No one knew what caused it or how to treat it. Millions of men, women, and children were left weak, disfigured, insane, and, in some cases, dead. Many were also left to worry -- would they be pellagra's next victims? Author Gail J
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
Mary Roach · 304 pages
A hilarious and witty look into the history of using cadavers for science, grave diggers, and options to consider about your burial plan. A dark and uncomfortable subject made more palatable and downright funny.