Medical Biography

Based on the film by acclaimed documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, The Mayo Clinic: Faith, Hope, Science chronicles the history of this unique organization, from its roots as an unlikely partnership between a country doctor and a Franciscan order of nuns to its position today as a worldwide model for patient care, research, and education. The book demonstrates how the institution’s remarkable 150-year history continues to inspire the way medicine is practiced there today.

Picking up from where his first memoir left off, Dr Tom is back with more of his gloriously eccentric stories. Still based as a locum in his beloved Scotland, he now takes time out from the surgery for stints as a medical researcher, travelling wherever he is called, from Rio to Jerusalem, Vienna to Singapore.

Henry Marsh has spent a lifetime operating on the surgical front line. There have been exhilarating highs and devastating lows, but his love for the practice of neurosurgery has never wavered. Following the publication of his celebrated New York Times best seller Do No Harm, Marsh retired from his full-time job in England to work pro bono in Ukraine and Nepal. In Admissions he describes the difficulties of working in these troubled, impoverished countries and the further insights it has given him into the practice of medicine.

Blinded at age three, Mike May defied expectations by breaking world records in downhill speed skiing, joining the CIA, and becoming a successful inventor, entrepreneur, and family man. He had never yearned for vision. Then, in 1999, a chance encounter brought startling news: a revolutionary stem-cell transplant surgery could restore May's vision.

Has there ever been a time in your life when you’ve felt alone or unsure where to turn for answers? It may have come with the diagnosis of a life-threatening illness, loss of a job, a death of a loved one, or any trauma that threatened everything you knew to be true. In Unexpected: Finding Resilience through Functional Medicine, Science, and Faith, Dr. Jill Carnahan introduces a new paradigm for listeners who are going through uncertain times. For the skeptic or the faithful, Unexpected is a valuable guide for living an extraordinary life of love and resilience.

Oftentimes, psychic "gifts" don’t feel like a gift at all. In this thrilling memoir, Sarah K. Grace describes in vivid detail what it's like to be in the trenches of some of California's busiest 911 systems as both a paramedic and highly sensitive clairvoyant/empath.

In late 2022, in Rome, Hanif Kureishi had a fall. When he came to, he realized he could no longer walk. He could do nothing without the help of others and required constant care in a hospital. So began a yearlong odyssey through the medical systems of Rome and Italy, with the hope of somehow being able to return home to his house in London.

Free Refills is the harrowing tale of a Harvard-trained medical doctor run horribly amok through his addiction to prescription medication, and his recovery. Dr. Peter Grinspoon seemed to be a total success: A Harvard-educated MD with a thriving practice; married with two great kids and a gorgeous wife; a pillar of his community. But lurking beneath the thin veneer of having it all was an addict fueled on a daily boatload of prescription meds. When the police finally came calling - after a tip from a sharp-eyed pharmacist - Grinspoon's house of cards came tumbling down fast.

By the age of 13, Lily Bailey was convinced she was bad. She had killed someone with a thought, spread untold disease, and ogled the bodies of other children. Only by performing an exhausting series of secret routines could she make up for what she'd done. But no matter how intricate or repetitive, no act of penance was ever enough. Beautifully written and astonishingly intimate, Because We Are Bad recounts a childhood consumed by obsessive compulsive disorder.

A perfect blend of medical drama and spiritual insight, Gray Matter is a fascinating account of Dr. David Levy's decision to begin asking his patients if he could pray for them before surgery. Some are thrilled. Some are skeptical. Some are hostile, and some are quite literally transformed by the request.

Have you ever wondered what it's like to save a life? In his book Life Changing Paramedic Stories, Dion talks about 12 life-changing experiences while working as a Canadian paramedic.

With compassionate stories of his patients and their conditions, Dr. Leschziner illustrates the neuroscience behind our sleeping minds, revealing the many biological and psychological factors necessary in getting the rest that will not only maintain our physical and mental health, but improve our cognitive abilities and overall happiness.

In Shock is a riveting first-hand account from a young critical care physician, who in the passage of a moment is transfigured into a dying patient. This transposition, coincidentally timed at the end of her medical training, instantly lays bare the vast chasm between the conventional practice of medicine and the stark reality of the prostrate patient.

This is the spellbinding tale of a mysterious doctor who revolutionized neonatal care more than 100 years ago and saved some 7,000 babies. Dr. Martin Couney's story is a kaleidoscopic ride through the intersection of ebullient entrepreneurship, enlightened pediatric care, and the wild culture of world's fairs at the beginning of the American Century.

In the summer of 2015, Ross Douthat was moving his family, with two young daughters and a pregnant wife, from Washington, DC, to a sprawling farmhouse in a picturesque Connecticut town when he acquired a mysterious and devastating sickness. It left him sleepless, crippled, wracked with pain - a shell of himself. After months of seeing doctors and descending deeper into a physical inferno, he discovered that he had a disease which, according to CDC definitions, does not actually exist.

Trauma surgeon Dr. Brian H. Williams has seen it all—gunshot wounds, stabbings, traumatic brain injuries—and ushers us into the trauma bay, where the wounds of a national emergency amass. As a Harvard-trained physician, he learned to keep his head down and his scalpel ready. As a Black man, he learned to swallow rage when patients told him to take out the trash. Just days after the tragic police shootings of two Black men, he tried to save the lives of officers shot in the deadliest incident for US law enforcement since 9/11.

As a retired brain surgeon, Henry Marsh thought he understood illness, but he was unprepared for the impact of his diagnosis of advanced cancer. And Finally explores what happens when someone who has spent a lifetime on the frontline of life and death finds himself contemplating what might be his own death sentence. As he navigates the bewildering transition from doctor to patient, he is haunted by past failures and projects yet to be completed, and frustrated by the inconveniences of illness and old age.

In Take Me Home from the Oscars, Schwab tells for the first time her story of living an amazing life in television while suffering from rheumatoid arthritis. Schwab recounts with incredible honesty how on the same day she produced and appeared in a major makeover segment for Live with Regis & Kelly in New York and then raced to Chicago to appear on Oprah!, all while balancing medications to ward off the relentless pain that plagued her on-camera and off.

Karen Fine always knew that she wanted to be a vet and wasn't going to let anything stop her: not her allergy to cats, and not the fact that in the '80s veterinary medicine was still a mostly male profession. Inspired by her grandfather, a compassionate doctor who paid house calls to all his (human) patients, Dr. Fine persevered, and brought her Oupa's principles into her own practice, which emphasizes the need to understand her patients’ stories to provide the best possible care.

If you’ve ever had a friend, relative, or colleague with cancer, this is the book for you. Wondering what to say, how to help, and/or what to know about your friend with cancer? Now, for the first time, your questions will be answered in this supportive and instructional guide on how to be there for your loved one in his or her time of need.