Books We Read

The world is filled with bizarre and fascinating ways to fall ill. A notorious stomach bug turns a suburban dinner party into a disaster that almost claims its host; a diminutive woman routinely eats more than her football-playing boyfriend but continually loses weight; a young executive is diagnosed with lung cancer, yet the tumors seem to wax and wane inexplicably. In these fifteen edge-of-your-seat, real-life medical detective stories, practicing physician and award-winning author Jonathan Edlow, shows the doctor as detective and the epidemiologist as elite sleuth in stories that are as gripping as the best thrillers.

From HIV to H1N1, pandemics pose one of the greatest threats to global health in the twenty-first century. Defined as epidemics of infectious disease across large geographic areas, pandemics can disseminate globally with incredible speed as humans and goods move faster than ever before. Whilevaccines, drugs, quarantine, and education can reduce the severity of many outbreaks, factors such as global warming, population density, and antibiotic resistance have complicated our ability to fight disease. Respiratory infections like influenza and SARS spread quickly as a consequence of modern,mass air travel, while unsafe health practices promote the spread of viruses like HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C.In Pandemics: What Everyone Needs to Know, Nobel Prize-winning immunologist Peter C. Doherty addresses the history of pandemics and explores the ones that persist today. He considers what promotes global spread, the types of pathogens most present today and the level of threat they pose, and how tocombat outbreaks and mitigate their effects.Concise and informative, Pandemics will serve as the best compact consideration of this topic, written by a major authority in the field.

The book explores the central question facing humanity today: how can we best survive the ten great existential challenges that are now coming together to confront us? Besides describing these challenges from the latest scientific perspectives, it also outlines and integrates the solutions, both at global and individual level and concludes optimistically. This book brings together in one easy-to-read work the principal issues facing humanity. It is written for the two next generations who will have to deal with the compounding risks they inherit, and which flow from overpopulation, resource pressures and human nature. The author examines ten intersecting areas of activity (mass extinction, resource depletion, WMD, climate change, universal toxicity, food crises, population and urban expansion, pandemic disease, dangerous new technologies and self-delusion) which pose manifest risks to civilization and, potentially, to our species' long-term future. This isn't a book just about problems. It is also about solutions. Every chapter concludes with clear conclusions and consensus advice on what needs to be done at global level --but it also empowers individuals with what they can do for themselves to make a difference. Unlike other books, it offers integrated solutions across the areas of greatest risk. It explains why Homo sapiens is no longer an appropriate name for our species, and what should be done about it. 

This book is the principal account of epidemiology's role in the development of effective measures to identify, prevent, and treat diseases. Throughout history, epidemiologists have challenged conventional knowledge, elucidating mysteries of causality and paving the way for remedies. From the outbreak of the bubonic plague, cholera, and cancer to the search for an effective treatment of AIDS and the origins of Alzheimer's disease, epidemiological thought has been crucial in shaping our understanding of population health issues. Alfredo Morabia's lucid retelling sheds new light on the historical triumphs of epidemiological research and allows for contemporary readers, patients, and nontechnical audiences to make sense of the immense amount of health information disseminated by the media. By drawing from both historical and contemporary sources, Morabia provides the reader with the tools to differentiate health beliefs from health knowledge. The book covers important topics, including the H1N1 swine flu epidemic, breast cancer, the effects of aspirin, and the link between cigarettes and lung cancer.

'Silent Victories' takes a unique approach in its exploration of ten major public health issues addressed in the 20th century: for each issue, leading scientists in the field trace the discoveries, practices and programs that reduced morbidity and mortality from disease and injury

Faithfully Translated by James Macmullen Rigg

Faithfully Translated by James Macmullen Rigg

A vast intellectual drama of the forces that play upon modern man, The Magic Mountain is set in a sanitorium in the Swiss Alps--a community organized with exclusive reference to ill health, and a symbol of the diseased society of Europe before 1914.

A haunting tale of human resilience in the face of unrelieved horror, Camus' novel about a bubonic plague ravaging the people of a North African coastal town is a classic of twentieth-century literature.

Soon to be a major motion picture from New Line/Stone Village Pictures, this movie tie-in edition of the bestselling book traces an exceptional half-century story of unrequited love."

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale Oryx and Crake is at once an unforgettable love story and a compelling vision of the future. Snowman, known as Jimmy before mankind was overwhelmed by a plague, is struggling to survive in a world where he may be the last human, and mourning the loss of his best friend, Crake, and the beautiful and elusive Oryx whom they both loved. In search of answers, Snowman embarks on a journey-with the help of the green-eyed Children of Crake-through the lush wilderness that was so recently a great city, until powerful corporations took mankind on an uncontrolled genetic engineering ride. Margaret Atwood projects us into a near future that is both all too familiar and beyond our imagining.

In 1978 Susan Sontag wrote "Illness as Metaphor," a classic work described by "Newsweek" as "one of the most liberating books of its time." A cancer patient herself when she was writing the book, Sontag shows how the metaphors and myths surrounding certain illnesses, especially cancer, add greatly to the suffering of patients and often inhibit them from seeking proper treatment. By demystifying the fantasies surrounding cancer, Sontag shows cancer for what it is--just a disease. Cancer, she argues, is not a curse, not a punishment, certainly not an embarrassment and, it is highly curable, if good treatment is followed. Almost a decade later, with the outbreak of a new, stigmatized disease replete with mystifications and punitive metaphors, Sontag wrote a sequel to "Illness""as Metaphor," extending the argument of the earlier book to the AIDS pandemic. These two essays now published together, "Illness""as Metaphor "and "AIDS and Its Metaphors," have been translated into many languages and continue to have an enormous influence on the thinking of medical professionals and, above all, on the lives of many thousands of patients and caregivers.

New York Times-bestselling author Robin Cook takes on the cutting-edge world of gene-modification in this pulse-pounding new medical thriller. When an unidentified, seemingly healthy young woman collapses suddenly on the New York City subway and dies upon reaching the hospital, her case is an eerie reminder for veteran medical examiner Jack Stapleton of the 1918 flu pandemic. Fearful of a repeat on the one hundredth anniversary of the nightmarish contagion, Jack autopsies the woman within hours of her demise and discovers some striking anomalies: first, that she has had a heart transplant, and second, that, against all odds, her DNA matches that of the transplanted heart. Although the facts don't add up to influenza, Jack must race against the clock to identify the woman and determine what kind of virus could wreak such havoc--a task made more urgent when two other victims succumb to a similar rapid death. But nothing makes sense until his investigation leads him into the fascinating realm of CRISPR/CAS9, a gene-editing biotechnology that's captured the imagination of the medical community. . . and the attention of its most unethical members. Drawn into the dark underbelly of the organ transplant market, Jack will come face-to-face with a megalomaniacal businessman willing to risk human lives in order to conquer a lucrative new frontier in medicine--and if Jack's not careful, the next life lost might be his own.