Health Biographies

Acclaimed CBS News reporter Barry Petersen writes about hearing the unimaginable; what it meant, what it still means, what he did---and didn't do---and how this beautiful love story needs to be heard by the thousands of families who have already heard that same devastating diagnosis: early onset Alzheimer's disease. Even though Barry has spent his long-time, award-winning television career covering wars and events that shaped the world, he was not even slightly prepared for what happened to his darling wife, Jan, and how it would impact his life.

In his 26 years in the field, Richard Taylor has worked on well over a hundred murder cases, with victims and perpetrators from all walks of life. In this fascinating memoir, Taylor draws on some of the most tragic, horrific and illuminating of these cases - as well as dark secrets from his own family's past - to explore some of the questions he grapples with every day: why do people kill? Does committing a monstrous act make someone a monster? Could any of us, in the wrong circumstances, become a killer?

Best-selling author Georgia Bragg delights young people with her quirky characters and unique subject matter. How They Croaked provides all the gory details of the awful ends of 19 awfully famous people. It details Ludwig Van Beethoven’s expansive finale, Henry VII’s explosive end, Albert Einstein’s great brain escape, and Marie Curie’s glowing demise.

At age 20, Gabrielle Pelicci returned from her modeling career in NYC to her hometown of Scranton, PA, where her mother suddenly passed away. At her mother's funeral, Gabrielle had a spiritual experience that left her reeling and set her on a heroine's journey to learn about both the scientific and mystical explanations of human consciousness.

The eye-opening essays in Disability Visibility, all written by disabled people, offer keen insight into the complex and rich disability experience, examining life's ableism and inequality, its challenges and losses, and celebrating its wisdom, passion, and joy. The accounts in this collection, adapted for audio, ask listeners to think about disabled people not as individuals who need to be “fixed", but as members of a community with its own history, culture, and movements. They offer diverse perspectives that speak to past, present, and future generations.

Beginning in the 1950s, William Masters and Virginia Johnson convinced hundreds of people to shed their clothes and copulate—in the name of science. For more than 40 years, the pair served as the nation's top experts on love, sex, and intimacy. In this eye-opening work, critically acclaimed biographer Thomas Maier presents an unprecedented look at the research team of Masters and Johnson, their pioneering studies of intimacy, and their lasting impact on the love lives of men and women. Masters of Sex offers a titillating portrait of the team's real-life story.

In this enlightening Audio Program, Louise L. Hay discusses the difficulties you may encounter when you're going through a period of "change and transition." She assures you that anything new that you're learning can take time to get accustomed to, and that when you fall back into old patterns...

Part cultural criticism, part rueful confessional, a reformed brand strategist brings to light the impact of influence on us and our society and offers an escape in this ironically persuasive case for not being so easily influenced anymore. “A weirdly practical approach to some ancient...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER For readers of Kristine Barnett's The Spark, Andrew Solomon's Far From the Tree and Ian Brown's The Boy in the Moon, here is a heartfelt, funny and surprising memoir about one year spent driving a bus full of children with special needs. With his last novel, Cataract City...

In 2008, Celeste Mergens was working with an overcrowded orphanage on the outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya, when she learned that menstruating girls sat on cardboard in their rooms for several days each month. This set into motion a simple idea—combining a washable, long-lasting pad with taboo-breaking education-that became a catalyst for an unlikely global movement for equity. Written in short, evocative chapters, The Power of Days tells the story of Mergens's quest to rally a global response to elevate menstrual health.

A book to sweep you away from the shore, into a wild world of water, whale, storm, and starlight ― to experience what it’s like to sail for weeks at a time with life set to a new rhythm. As a young girl, Hannah Stowe was raised at the tide’s edge on the Pembrokeshire coast of Wales...

This fascinating book by psychologist and medical anthropologist Alberto Villoldo, Ph.D., explains the practices for healing outside of ordinary time and space. It shows how to enter the timeless now to heal events that occurred in the past, and to correct the course of destiny. Dr. Villoldo...

Stacy Pershall grew up as an overly intelligent, depressed, deeply strange girl in Prairie Grove, Arkansas, population 1,000. From her days as a 13-year-old Jesus freak through her eventual diagnosis of bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder, this spirited memoir chronicles Pershall's journey through hell and her struggle with the mental health care system.

Kevin Breel burst into the public's awareness when at 19 his TED talk became a worldwide phenomenon. Through the lens of his own near suicide, he shared his profoundly vulnerable story of being young, male, and depressed in a culture that has no place for that. Boy Meets Depression is a book that explores what it means to struggle and tells an honest, heartfelt story about how a meaningful life isn't found in perfection; it's found in our ability to heal and accept the dark parts of ourselves.

Delve into the minds of real people whose actions may shock and stun you, but whose stories have the power to challenge your assumptions and the stigma that surrounds mental illness. I Don't Talk to Dead Bodies shines a powerful, emotional, and surprisingly moving spotlight on the fascinating life of a forensic psychiatrist and the people she works with. It goes beyond the sensationalist headlines to show you just what happens in a world where mental illness occasionally makes good people do bad things.

Comment est morte Lucy ? Pourquoi et comment le corps de Saint Louis a été dispersé à travers le monde ? Que nous apprend l'étude du cerveau de Descartes? L'Histoire est pleine de mystères, c'est peut-être ce qui fait son charme et les résoudre est une aventure passionnante qui s'étend sur plusieurs siècles. N'étant plus une discipline monolithique, l'Histoire voit désormais s'étendre son champ d'action et s'enrichit de rapports fructueux avec l'anthropologie physique, l'ethnologie, l'archéologie, la biologie.

In 2005, Anne Rice startled her readers with her novel Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, and by revealing that, after years as an atheist, she had returned to her Catholic faith. And now, in her powerful memoir, Rice tells the story of the spiritual transformation that produced a complete change in...

From the extra pounds and bullies that left her eating lunch alone at school to the low self-esteem that left her both physically and emotionally vulnerable to abuse, Jasmin Singer's weight defined her life. Even after she embraced a vegan lifestyle and a passion for animal rights advocacy, she defied any skinny vegan stereotypes by getting heavier. It was only after she committed to juice fasts and a diet of whole foods that she lost almost a hundred pounds and realized what it means to be truly full.

Ryan and Kim Smith struggled with dysfunctional eating throughout their lives. They had been on the hamster wheel of diets long before they met. From 2003, they ate their way through a decade plagued by massive weight gain until 2014, at which point they topped out at well over 500 pounds combined. First, Ryan began a weight-loss effort, then Kim followed suit, eventually leading them both to intermittent fasting. The journey transformed not only their relationship with food but with themselves and with each other.

Today, neuroscientists are imaging, mapping, testing, and dissecting the source of the worst behavior imaginable in the brains of the people who lack a conscience: psychopaths. Neuroscientist Dean Haycock examines the behavior of real life psychopaths and discusses how their actions can be explained in scientific terms, from research that literally looks inside their brains to understanding how psychopaths, without empathy but very goal-oriented, think and act the way they do.