Academic Life

Life Blood, written by a renowned leukaemia physician, tells unforgettable stories of his leukaemia patients’ battles to be cured but also uniquely describes the stresses that doctors face when looking after extremely ill young people during an extraordinary time in their lives. In reflecting on his long and illustrious career, Professor Marks’ memoir offers frank descriptions of his own medical family, some personal experiences of ill-health and his relationships with colleagues and patients in the NHS. Partly written during the Covid pandemic and as he approached retirement, Life Blood offers highly informed and compassionate views on modern medicine, from a pivotal point in both the author’s own professional life and the history of healthcare.

Sal Maggio dropped out of college, and joined the NJ Army National Guard. Then he entered the New Jersey State Police Academy, graduated, and started his police career in central New Jersey as a general road trooper. After numerous transfers (none for disciplinary reasons), Maggio spent 19 years on the "road" as a trooper and road sergeant. He recalls many incidents encountered, while working the highways and policing the towns and townships that do not have a local police department.

The Life and Letters of John Muir, Volume Two is the second volume of John Muir's letters, written by a Scottish-American naturalist, author, and advocate for wilderness preservation in the United States. The letters in this volume cover the period from 1873 to 1903 and provide additional insight into Muir's thoughts, experiences, and the development of his beliefs about the natural world.

Billionaire entrepreneur, distinguished public servant, and father of a former governor and presidential candidate, Jon M. Huntsman, Sr., has been very fortunate in life. The company he founded in 1970, the Huntsman Corporation, is now one of the largest petrochemical manufacturers in the world, employing more than 12,000 people and generating over $10 billion in revenue each year. Success in business, though, has always been a means to an end - never an end in itself.

With over 30 years of experience as a nurse, Anthea thought she had seen it all. But with Covid came the greatest trial, personally and professionally, of her life. Thrust into hourly challenges–many a matter of life and death–while on the Critical Care units of St George’s in south London, Anthea processed her shocking experiences through writing. It started with an email to request biscuits. But her appeal to help boost the morale of her fellow nurses soon turned into a series of astonishingly moving stories detailing the realities of being a front line worker.

When Dr. Ellen Einterz first arrives in the town of Kolofata in Cameroon, the situation is dire: Patients are exploited by healthcare workers, unsterilized needles are reused, and only the wealthy can afford care. In Life and Death in Kolofata: An American Doctor in Africa, Einterz tells her remarkable story of delivering healthcare for 24 years in one of the poorest countries in the world, revealing both touching stories of those she is able to help and the terrible suffering of people born in extreme poverty.

In a fascinating blend of biography and history, Joseph Tartakovsky tells the epic and unexpected story of our Constitution through the eyes of 10 extraordinary individuals - some renowned, like Alexander Hamilton and Woodrow Wilson, and some forgotten, like James Wilson and Ida B. Wells-Barnett. Tartakovsky brings to life their struggles over our supreme law from its origins in revolutionary America to the era of Obama and Trump. Tartakovsky shows how America’s unique constitutional culture grapples with questions like democracy, free speech, and the role of government.

As a kid, Aomawa Shields was always bumping into things, her neck craned up at the sky, dreaming of becoming an astronaut. A year into an astrophysics PhD program, plagued by self-doubt and discouraged by a white male professor who suggested that she—a young Black woman who also loved fashion, makeup, and the arts—didn’t belong, she left astronomy and pursued acting professionally for a decade, before a day job working for NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope drew her back to the stars.

Born and raised in Turkey, Osman moved to the United States in 1982, earned a PhD in physical organic chemistry, and built a successful life, with a stellar scientific career, cerebral hobbies, and two wonderful children. However, a sudden layoff at age 50 and a dysfunctional marriage caused him to question both his professional trajectory and his personal lifestyle. The resulting gradual awakening caused him to change his attitude and approach to life as he navigated the next stages of his life after 50.

In Life After Medical School, Dr. Bill Truels presents a compilation of both humorous and serious short stories and poems depicting his 50 years of experience as a practicing physician. Written initially for medical students and health care workers, these accounts have become popular with the general public, and anyone with a career that threatens to overtake their family life.

When reviewing the great figures of feminism, few would call to mind the creator of the Cosmo Girl, but as Jennifer Scanlon argues in her fascinating biography Bad Girls Go Everywhere: The Life of Helen Gurley Brown, the longtime editor of Cosmopolitan and diva of the New York magazine world powerfully changed the way modern culture views the single woman.

Despite being raised in a loving family, life had left Ellen Busch traumatized and at her wit's end. Busch had no home, no job, no relationship, and no hope of having a family. Even though Ellen escaped from an abusive husband, she was controlled by the unshakable stigma of dyslexia that erased any shred of self-worth. Busch couldn’t see that she was a victim of trauma until one fateful day, on a crowded highway, when she had a moment of realization that would change the trajectory of her life.

What happens when the life you’ve always dreamed of disappears in the blink of an eye? For Inez Ribustello, that day came twenty years ago on September 11th, 2001. Ribustello grew up in the small town of Tarboro, North Carolina but found her way to The Big Apple to attend culinary school in 1998. In New York City, her love for wine, food, often enjoying both at the same time, was born. She knew that working at Windows on the World - on the top floor of the Twin Towers - was where she was meant to be.

He Called Me Tin is a story of triumph and perseverance. From childhood distress to an attempt at suicide to being scarred by religion to being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis to the strife of racism and discrimination as a government employee to being assaulted and nearly kidnapped abroad, she has overcome in peace....

How do attorneys who represent clients facing the death penalty cope with the stress and trauma of their work? Through conversations with 20 of the most experienced and dedicated post-conviction capital defenders in the United States, Fighting for Their Lives explores this emotional territory for the first time. Through vivid interviews amplified by the author's responses and commentary, these attorneys reveal aspects of their internal experience that they have never talked about until now.

Crisis rarely comes with a warning. When blindsided by trauma, betrayal, or soul-crushing news, it’s natural to want to give up. Is it possible to rise above calamity and even thrive despite the turmoil? Britney Ruby Miller, entrepreneur and CEO of a nationally ranked, family-owned restaurant group, says yes, it absolutely is.

Two incredible women, an unlikely friendship and a united mission to save the lives of some of the world's poorest and most desperate women. Healing Lives reveals the untold tale of Mamitu Gashe, Dr Catherine Hamlin's protégée, and the inspiring almost 60-year friendship between the two women. In 1962, three years after Drs Catherine and Reg Hamlin arrived in Ethiopia, an illiterate peasant girl sought their aid. Mamitu Gashe was close to death and horrifically injured during childbirth after an arranged marriage in a remote mountain village.

Against a global backdrop of wartime suffering and postwar hope, Borrowing Life gathers the personal histories of the men and women behind the team that enabled and performed the modern medical miracle of the world's first successful organ transplant.

For Efrem Harkham, hospitality isn't just a job - it's a way of life. And that attitude is evident when you walk into any of Harkham’s one-hundred-plus luxury hotels. In a true, rags-to-riches American success story, Harkham built a renowned international hotel brand that is synonymous with comfort and refinement.

What are you going to do for the rest of your life? For David Lawrence, Jr., a brilliant newspaper editor and publisher with a distinguished, three-decade-long journalism career who retired in 1999 at the age of 56, the answer in his words was to dedicate his life to a "[N]ewly energized purposefulness: that every child have a real chance to succeed."