Health History

In Patient Zero, Richard A. McKay presents a carefully documented and sensitively written account of the life of Gaetan Dugas, a gay man whose skin cancer diagnosis in 1980 took on very different meanings as the HIV/AIDS epidemic developed - and who received widespread posthumous infamy when he was incorrectly identified as patient zero of the North American outbreak.

First published in 1910, this classic book is considered Ehret's health masterpiece. He explains how to successfully conduct and complete a fast in order to gain maximum strength and energy for joyful living. Also included are essays based on Ehret's teachings by Fred Hirsch and long-time devotee Teresa Mitchell.

Strengthen your sense of well-being and embrace empowering new approaches with this invaluable investigation into mental health in the Asian American community. Asian Americans are experiencing a racial reckoning regarding their identity, inspiring them to radically reconsider the cultural...

Why do some families thrive in adversity while others fragment? How can families weather difficult transitions together? Why do our families so often exasperate us? And how can even small changes greatly improve our relationships? In Every Family Has a Story, bestselling psychotherapist Julia...

For centuries, the human heart seemed beyond our understanding: an inscrutable shuddering mass that was somehow the driver of emotion and the seat of the soul. As cardiologist and best-selling author Sandeep Jauhar tells in The Heart, it was only recently that we demolished age-old taboos and devised the transformative procedures that changed the way we live. Deftly alternating between historical episodes and his own work, Jauhar tells the colorful and little known story of the doctors who risked their careers and the patients who risked their lives to know and heal our most vital organ.

Stuart Jamieson's story is the story of four decades of advances in heart surgery. Taut, elegantly crafted, and ever-attentive to the patients for whom he was the last best chance, Close to the Sun is an adventurous, riveting account based on the experience of over 40,000 heart surgeries, where everything was on the line every moment in the O.R.

Yoga is so prevalent in the modern world - practiced by pop stars, taught in schools, and offered in yoga centers, health clubs, and even shopping malls - that we take its presence, and its meaning, for granted. But how did the current yoga boom happen? And is it really rooted in ancient Indian practices, as many of its adherents claim? In this groundbreaking book, Mark Singleton calls into question many commonly held beliefs about the nature and origins of postural yoga (asana) and suggests a radically new way of understanding the meaning of yoga as it is practiced by millions today.

A pathbreaking neuroscientist reveals how our social instincts turn Me into Us, but turn Us against Them - and what we can do about it. The great dilemma of our shrinking world is simple: never before have those we disagree with been so present in our lives. The more globalization dissolves national borders, the more clearly we see that human beings are deeply divided on moral lines - about everything from tax codes to sexual practices to energy consumption - and that, when we really disagree, our emotions turn positively tribal.

In the 1980s, American psychiatry announced that it was time to toss aside Freudian ideas of mental disorder because the true path to understanding and treating mental illness lay in brain science, biochemistry, and drugs. This sudden call to revolution, however, was not driven by any scientific breakthroughs. Nor was it as unprecedented as it seemed. Why had previous efforts stalled? Was this latest call really any different? In Mind Fixers, Anne Harrington offers the first comprehensive history of the troubled search for the biological basis of mental illness.

Ever wondered why your grandmother threw a teabag into the pressure cooker while boiling chickpeas, or why she measured using the knuckle of her index finger? Why does a counter-intuitive pinch of salt make your kheer more intensely flavourful? What is the Maillard reaction and what does it have...

With its signature "DARE to keep kids off drugs" slogan and iconic t-shirts, DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) was the most popular drug education program of the 1980s and 1990s. But behind the cultural phenomenon is the story of how DARE and other antidrug education programs brought the War on Drugs into schools and ensured that the velvet glove of antidrug education would be backed by the iron fist of rigorous policing and harsh sentencing.

Many yoga practitioners explore the benefits of yoga through its poses, but did you know that the magic and mystery of yoga lie within the power of yogic mythology? Myths of the Asanas was the first book to collect and retell the ancient tales of yogic myth to a modern audience, and has since become a beloved resource for yoga practitioners and instructors the world over. This expanded edition contains nine unheard stories about some of the yoga world's most beloved poses.

A "gorgeous, thoughtful, heartbreaking" historical novel, The Cape Doctor is the story of one man’s journey from penniless Irish girl to one of most celebrated and accomplished figures of his time (Lauren Fox, New York Times bestselling author of Send for Me). Beginning in Cork, Ireland...

On this fascinating, inspirational, and often humorous audio program-recorded live-the incomparable Sylvia Browne explains how you can heal your body, mind, and soul by reprogramming your cell memory, virtually eliminating your physical, emotional, and spiritual challenges. Sylvia talks about...

Explore real women’s tales of healthcare trauma and medical misogyny with this “masterfully written” (Sophia A. Nelson, bestselling author of The Woman Code and Black Woman Redefined), meticulously researched, in-depth examination of the women’s health crisis in America—and what we can...

Popular recovery speaker Mary Pearl T talks about relationships and relates them, often humorously, to the traditions. Lots of great stories. Great fun.

As a technology pioneer at MIT and as the leader of three successful start-ups, Kevin Ashton experienced firsthand the all-consuming challenge of creating something new. Now, in a tour-de-force narrative twenty years in the making, Ashton leads us on a journey through humanity’s greatest...

Galen of Pergamum (A.D. 129-ca. 216) began his remarkable career tending to wounded gladiators in provincial Asia Minor. Later in life he achieved great distinction as one of a small circle of court physicians to the family of Emperor Marcus Aurelius, at the very heart of Roman society. Susan Mattern's The Prince of Medicine offers the first authoritative biography in English of this brilliant, audacious, and profoundly influential figure.

"One of America's most courageous young journalists" and the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling memoir Brain on Fire investigates the shocking mystery behind the dramatic experiment that revolutionized modern medicine (NPR). Doctors have struggled for centuries to define insanity--how...

In the tradition of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, this New York Times bestseller is a page-turning account of one of the nation’s last segregated asylums..."a book that left me breathless" (Clint Smith). For centuries, Black patients have been absent from our history books. Madness...