SJM LIBRARY

*Selected for the SJM Book Club

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General Histories of Medicine

Bynum, William – The History of Medicine: A Very Short Introduction

Duffin, Jacalyn – History of Medicine: A Scandalously Short Introduction

Gaffney, Adam – To Heal Humankind: The Right to Health in History

McNeill, William – Plagues and Peoples

Porter, Roy – The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity

Rutkow, Ira – Seeking the Cure: A History of Medicine in America

Starr, Paul – The Social Transformation of American Medicine

Wallis, Faith – Medieval Medicine: A Reader

Histories of Specific Illnesses and Events

Alexievich, Svetlana – Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

Cantor, Norman – In the Wake of the Plague: The Black Death & the World It Made

Coss, Stephen – The Fever of 1721: The Epidemic that Revolutionized Medicine and American Politics

Fink, Sheri – Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital

France, David – How to Survive a Plague: The Inside Story of How Citizens and Science Tamed AIDS

Johnson, Steven – The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World

Kandel, Eric – In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind

Kay, Lily – Who Wrote the Book of Life?: A History of the Genetic Code

Kolata, Gina – Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Panic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus that Caused It

Meier, Barry – Pain Killer: An Empire of Deceit and the Origin of America’s Opioid Epidemic

Mukherjee, Siddhartha – The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

Mukherjee, Siddhartha – The Gene: An Intimate History

Oshinsky, David – Bellevue: Three Centuries of Medicine and Mayhem at America’s Most Storied Hospital

Pepin, Jacques – The Origins of AIDS

Powell, J.H. – Bring Out Your Dead: The Great Plague of Yellow Fever in Philadelphia of 1793

Rothman, Sheila – Living in the Shadow of Death: Tuberculosis and the Social Experience of Illness in American History

Shah, Sonia – The Fever: How Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years

Shilts, Randy – And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic

Silberman, Steve – NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity

Spinney, Laura – Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World

Books about Health Inequality and Medical Racism

Alexander, Michelle – The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

Bridges, Khiara – Reproducing Race: An Ethnography of Pregnancy as a Site of Racialization

Cooper-Owens, Diedre - Medical Bondage: Race, Gender and the Origins of American Gynecology

Farmer, Paul – Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues

Farmer, Paul – Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor

*Hanna-Attisha, M.D., Mona- "What the Eyes Don't See: A Story of Crisis, Resistance and Hope in an American City [The Flint, MI Water Crisis]

Metzl, Jonathan – The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease

Nelson, Alondra – Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight Against Medical Discrimination

*Nelson, Alondra – The Social Life of DNA: Race, Reparations, and Reconciliation After the Genome

Pfaff, John – Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration and How to Achieve Real Reform

*Skloot, Rebecca – The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
TallBear, Kim – Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science

*Washington, Harriet – Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present

Books about Medicine and Gender

Federici, Silvia – Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation

Martin, Emily – The Woman in the Body: A Cultural Analysis of Reproduction

Preciado, Paul – Testo Junkie: Sex, Drugs, and Biopolitics in the Pharmacopornographic Era

Reynolds, Handel – The Big Squeeze: A Social and Political History of the Controversial Mammogram

Memoirs about Medicine and Illness

Bauby, Jean-Dominique – The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Cahalan, Susannah – Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness

Cho, Catherine – Inferno

Gunther, John – Death Be Not Proud
Newman, David – Talking with Doctors

Kahkpour, Porohista – Sick: A Life of Lyme, Love, Illness, and Addiction Kalanithi, Paul – When Breath Becomes Air
*Lorde, Audre – The Cancer Journals
Riggs, Nina – The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying

Sacks, Elyn – The Center Cannot Hold Slotnick, Jim – A Short Life

Standefer, Katherine – Lightning Flowers

Memoirs about Medical School and Residency

Gutkind, Lee – Becoming a Doctor: From Student to Specialist, Doctor-Writers Share Their Experiences

Kidder, Tracy – Strength in What Remains

Konner, Melvin – Becoming a Doctor: A Journey of Initiation in Medical School

McCarthy, Matt – The Real Doctor Will See You Shortly: A Physician's First Year

Montross, Christine – Body of Work: Meditations on Mortality from the Human Anatomy Lab

Mullan, Fitzhugh – White Coat, Clenched Fist: The Political Education of an American Physician

Selzer, Richard – Letters to a Young Doctor

Doctors’ Memoirs and Case Stories

Coppola, Chris – Coppola: A Pediatric Surgeon in Iraq

DeRienzo, Chris –  Tiny Medicine: One Doctor's Biggest Lessons from His Smallest Patients

Gawande, Atul – Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance

Gawande, Atul – Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science

Groopman, Jerome – Second Opinions: Eight Clinical Dramas of Decision Making on the Front Lines of Medicine

Holt, Terrence – Internal Medicine: A Doctor’s Stories
Montross, Christine – Falling into the Fire: A Psychiatrist’s Encounters with the Mind in Crisis

Ofri, Danielle – What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine
Reilly, Brendan – One Doctor: Close Calls, Cold Cases, and the Mysteries of Medicine
Sacks, Oliver – An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales
Selzer, Richard – Confessions of a Knife: Notes on the Art of Surgery

Tweedy, Damon – Black Man in a White Coat: A Doctor's Reflections on Race and Medicine 
Verghese, Abraham – My Own Country: A Doctor’s Story
Williams, William Carlos – The Doctor Stories

Books about Bioethics and Contemporary Medical Issues

Callahan, Daniel – In Search of the Good: A Life in Bioethics
Ehrenreich, Barbara – Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer

*Epstein, Steve – Inclusion: Politics of Medical Research

Gawande, Atul – Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End

Jamison, Leslie – The Empathy Exams: Essays

Jonsen, Albert – The Birth of Bioethics

Kubler-Ross, Elisabeth – On Death and Dying: What the Dying Have to Teach Doctors, Nurses, Clergy and Their Own Families

Lerner, Barron – The Good Doctor: A Father, a Son, and the Evolution of Medical Ethics

Lown, Bernard – The Lost Art of Healing: Practicing Compassion in Medicine
Nuland, Sherwin – How We Die: Reflections on Life’s Final Chapter
Nussbaum, Abraham – The Finest Traditions of My Calling

Rothman, David – Strangers at the Bedside: A History of How Law and Bioethics Transformed Medical Decision Making

Sunder Rajan, Kaushik – Pharmocracy: Value, Politics and Knowledge in Global Biomedicine

Warraich, Haider – Modern Death: How Medicine Changed the End of Life

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Books about Healthcare Policy

Reich, Adam – Selling Our Souls: The Commodification of Hospital Care in the United States

*Rosenthal, Elisabeth – An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back

Scientific Surveys

Anderson, Scott – The Psychobiotic Revolution: Mood, Food, and the New Science of the Gut- Brain Connection

Barr, Donald - Introduction to Biosocial Medicine: The Social, Psychological, and Biological Determinants of Human Behavior and Well-Being

Burke Harris, Nadine – The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity

Davis, Daniel – The Compatibility Gene: How Our Bodies Fight Disease, Attract Others, and Define Our Selves

Johnson, George – The Cancer Chronicles: Unlocking Medicine’s Deepest Mystery Sapolsky, Robert – Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

Southwick, Steven and Charney, Dennis – Resilience: The Science of Mastering Life’s Greatest Challenges

Yong, Ed – I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life

Critical and Literary Theory about Medicine

Biss, Eula – On Immunity: An Inoculation
Charon, Rita – Narrative Medicine: Honoring the Stories of Illness
Foucault, Michel – The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception Harraway, Donna – A Cyborg Manifesto
Scarry, Elaine – The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World Sontag, Susan – Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors
Thomas, Lewis – The Medusa and the Snail: More Notes of a Biology Watcher Woolf, Virginia – On Being Ill

Works about Medical Anthropology and Ethnography

Fadiman, Anne – The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures

Livingston, Julie – Improvising Medicine: An African Oncology Ward in an Emerging Cancer Epidemic

Martin, Emily – Flexible Bodies: The Role of Immunity in American Culture from the Days of Polio to the Age of AIDS

Medically Themed Novels and Plays

Boccacio, Giovanni – The Decameron Camus, Albert – The Plague
De Kerangal, Maylis – The Heart

Edson, Margaret – Wit: A Play

Kramer, Larry – The Normal Heart

Maso, Carole - Ava

Shem, Samuel – The House of God Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr – Cancer Ward Verghese, Abraham – Cutting for Stone