"Excellent" poetry and prose about physicians and their patients, by Raymond Carver, Kay Redfield Jamison, Rachel Naomi Remen, and more ( Library Journal).A Life in Medicine collects stories, poems, and essays by and for those in the healing profession, who are struggling to keep up with the science while staying true to the humanitarian goals at the heart of their work. Organized around the central themes of altruism, knowledge, skill, and duty, ...

**#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • OVER TWO MILLION COPIES SOLDThis inspiring, exquisitely observed memoir finds hope and beauty in the face of insurmountable odds as an idealistic young neurosurgeon attempts to answer the question, What makes a life worth living?**“Unmissable . . . Finishing this book and then forgetting about it is simply not an option.”—Janet Maslin, The New York TimesONE...

A riveting exploration of the most difficult and important part of what doctors do, by Yale School of Medicine physician Dr. Lisa Sanders, author of the monthly New York Times Magazine column "Diagnosis," the inspiration for the hit Fox TV series House, M.D."The experience of being ill can be like waking up in a foreign country. Life, as you formerly knew it, is on hold while you travel through this other world as unknown as it is unexpected. When...

The international bestseller from the author of Being MortalIn these gripping accounts of true cases, bestselling author Atul Gawande performs exploratory surgery on medicine itself, laying bare a science not in its idealised form, but as it actually is - complicated, perplexing and profoundly human.This is a stunningly well-written account of the life of a surgeon: what it is like to cut into people's bodies and the terrifying - literally life and...

An international bestseller and National Book Award winner, Sherwin B. Nuland’s How We Die has become the definitive text on perhaps the single most universal human concern: death. This new edition includes an incisive afterword that examines the current state of health care and our relationship with life as it approaches its terminus. It also discusses how we can take control of our own final days and those of our loved ones. Nuland’s masterful How We Die has become a mo...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A candid and moving memoir of how one woman’s pregnancy forced her to confront her definition of how to live a successful life“Slyly ironic, frequently hilarious, [Martha] Beck’s memoir charts the journey from being smart to becoming wise.”—TimeThis edition includes a new afterword about Adam.From the moment Martha and her husband, John, accidentally conceived their seco...

Surgeon Bernie S. Siegel gives an inspirational, first-hand account of how patients can participate in their own recovery.Unconditional love is the most powerful stimulant of the immune system. The truth is: love heals. Miracles happen to exceptional patients every day—patients who have the courage to love, those who have the courage to work with their doctors to participate in and influence their own recovery.

A New York Times Notable Book. This "harrowing, lyrical autobiographical memoir . . . is a striking meditation on the distorting effects of our culture's preoccupation with physical beauty" (Publishers Weekly).It took Lucy Grealy twenty years of living with a distorted self-image and more than thirty reconstructive procedures before she could come to terms with her appearance after childhood cancer and surgery that left her jaw disfigured. As a yo...

For any woman who has experienced illness, chronic pain, or endometriosis comes an inspiring memoir advocating for recognition of women's health issuesIn the fall of 2010, Abby Norman's strong dancer's body dropped forty pounds and gray hairs began to sprout from her temples. She was repeatedly hospitalized in excruciating pain, but the doctors insisted it was a urinary tract infection and sent her home with antibiotics. Unable to get out of bed, much less attend c...

An inspiring and profoundly enlightening exploration of one doctor’s discovery of how hope can changethe course of illnessSince the time of the ancient Greeks, human beings have believed that hope is essential to life. Now, in this groundbreaking book, Harvard Medical School professor and New Yorker staff writer Jerome Groopman shows us why.The search for hope is most urgent at the patient’s bedside. The Anatomy of Hope takes us there, bring...

A memoir of reinvention after a stroke at age thirty-three.Christine Hyung-Oak Lee woke up with a headache on the morning of December 31, 2006. By that afternoon, she saw the world—quite literally—upside down. By New Year's Day, she was unable to form a coherent sentence. And after hours in the ER, days in the hospital, and multiple questions and tests, her doctors informed her that she had had a stroke.For months afterward, Lee outsourced her memories to a journal, taking ...

Important and provocative, The Undead examines why even with the tools of advanced technology, what we think of as life and death, consciousness and nonconsciousness, is not exactly clear and how this problem has been further complicated by the business of organ harvesting.Dick Teresi, a science writer with a dark sense of humor, manages to make this story entertaining, informative, and accessible as he shows how death determination has become more complicated than ever. T...