Medical Biography

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.

This is what it's like to be an emergency doctor. That teenager puking up two liters of vodka and his stomach lining at triage? Yup. Blood pouring out of a terrified pregnant woman? Call me. And, of course, the patient who no longer has a nosebleed screaming at me across the department, "You are the most unfeeling doctor I have ever met!" Fun fun fun. Let me peel back the curtain for you. It's not an iron curtain. In the emerg, it's most likely a crummy fabric curtain that too many other people have sneezed on. Come on in.

Kinder gives us a gripping and raw insight into the life of a first responder, an opportunity to see through an invaluable lens that few will ever experience first hand. More importantly, it’s a story of hope and redemption.

In Impact, 21 women writers consider the effects of concussion on their personal and professional lives. The anthology bears witness to the painstaking work that goes into redefining identity and regaining creative practice after a traumatic event. By sharing their complex and sometimes incomplete healing journeys, these women convey the magnitude of a disability which is often doubted, overlooked, and trivialized, in part because of its invisibility. Impact offers compassion and empathy to all listeners and families healing from concussion and other types of trauma.

When the partner of Emmy Award–winning screenwriter Abi Morgan abruptly collapsed from a mysterious illness, doctors were concerned that he would not survive. Then, six months later, Jacob woke from his coma, to the delight and relief of his family and friends—except this proved to be anything but a Hollywood ending. Because to Jacob, the woman standing at his bedside, who had cared for him all these months, was not his partner. Not his children’s mother. Not the woman he loved. Sure, she looked like his Abi, but this was an imposter, living someone else’s life.

The acclaimed author of Carved in Sand - a veteran investigative journalist who endured persistent back pain for decades - delivers the definitive book on the subject: an essential examination of all facets of the back pain industry, exploring what works, what doesn't, what may cause harm, and how to get on the road to recovery. In her effort to manage her chronic back pain, investigative reporter Cathryn Jakobson Ramin spent years and a small fortune on a panoply of treatments.

Diagnosed with a disease that can't be reversed? Learn how to keep living life to the fullest. Have you received a terminal or chronic diagnosis? Can you ever find joy, peace, or fulfillment in these challenging conditions? The answer is a resounding yes. When author Jarem Sawatsky was diagnosed with Huntington's Disease, he found there were no guides for those living with incurable illness. He quit his job as a professor and devoted his life to exploring the possibilities of living with chronic conditions. Now he's bringing his findings and insights to you.

This Close to Happy is the rare, vividly personal account of what it feels like to suffer from clinical depression, written from a woman's perspective and informed by an acute understanding of the implications of this disease over a lifetime. Taking off from essays on depression she has written for The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine, Daphne Merkin casts her eye back to her beginnings to try to sort out the root causes of her affliction.

Vincent Di Maio, MD, son of a famous New York City medical examiner, is one of the lions of forensic science. In this clear, gritty, and enthralling narrative, Di Maio himself guides us into the inner sanctum, through the cases that have made him famous, from the exhumation of assassin Lee Harvey Oswald and the racially charged shooting of Florida teen Trayvon Martin to the unmasking of a serial baby killer and the mysterious death of troubled genius Vincent van Gogh.

One morning in 2008, desperate and impoverished while trying unsuccessfully to write, Davidson plucked a flyer out of his mailbox that read, "Bus Drivers Wanted". That was the first step toward an unlikely new career: driving a school bus full of special-needs kids for a year. Armed only with a sense of humor akin to that of his charges, a creative approach to the challenge of driving a large, awkward vehicle while corralling a rowdy gang of kids, and unexpected reserves of empathy, Davidson takes us along for the ride.

Do you feel like your life is a series of shattered dreams? Have you bought into the lie that you'll never amount to anything? In Think Big, Dr. Ben Carson is here to tell you some good news: none of that is true.

How does one begin to treat such cases, to counsel people whose lives may be changed forever? How does one train the next generation of clinicians to deal with the moral and medical aspects of brain disease? Dr. Ropper and his colleague answer these questions by taking the listener into a rarified world where lives and minds hang in the balance.

Considering herself unsuitable for any other contribution to the war effort, Monica Dickens opts for nursing, imagining herself gliding through the wards, serene in a pure white halo cap. On enrolment, however, she is promptly stripped of all illusions. Intelligent and headstrong, Monica struggles to submit to the iron rule of the Matron and toils over the mountains of menial work that are a trainee's lot. But there are friends among the staff and patients, night-time escapades to dances with dashing army men and her secret writing project to keep her going.

At age 14, Claire Bidwell Smith - an only child - learned that both of her parents had cancer. The fear of becoming a family of one before she came of age compels Claire to make a series of fraught choices, set against the glittering backdrop of New York and Los Angeles - and the pall of regret. When the inevitable happens, and Claire is alone in the world, she is inconsolable at the revelation that suddenly she is no one's special person.

Often misdiagnosed and misunderstood, traumatic brain injury (TBI) may be a life-altering event that can produce a wide range of symptoms affecting physical as well as psychological health. Now, a physician shares her personal journey with TBI after suffering a life-changing accident. In this touching and informative book, Dr. Chrisanne Gordon chronicles her struggles - the high points as well as the lows - as she is challenged to make sense of what happened and realizes that her medical training did not prepare her for these struggles.

Offering examples of how to make medicine better for the healers and those they serve, If I Betray These Words profiles clinicians across the country who are tough, resourceful, and resilient, but feel trapped between the patient-first values of their Hippocratic oath and the business imperatives of a broken healthcare system. If I Betray These Words confronts the threat and broken promises of moral injury—what it is; where it comes from; how it manifests; and who’s fighting back against it. We need better healthcare—for patients and for the workforce. It’s time to act.

Freedom 55? The so-called “Golden Years”? What if you are slowly losing your memories and your motor skills? Or what if you are the devastated witness as your partner struggles with dementia? Lewy Body Disease is a form of dementia second only to Alzheimer’s in numbers, yet many doctors and almost no lay people have ever heard its name. This is the story of two courageous people, Julie and Ken Sobol, life partners as well as writing partners. Caught up in the frightening and fatal fog of Lewy Body Disease, they started writing this book together.

Informational and positive look on the hard diagnosis. Lifting the stigma, finding that you are not alone in all this. The audiobook is a personal journey, finding what the disease is all about, managing the difficult moments of depressions and hypo-mania episodes until a stable effect is reached, the so-called remission. The author also shares her successes, talents and everything she has learned in an optimistic and positive way.

In The Song of Our Scars, physician Haider Warraich offers a bold reexamination of the nature of pain, not as a simple physical sensation, but as a cultural experience. Warraich, himself a sufferer of chronic pain, considers the ways our notions of pain have been shaped not just by science but by politics and power, by whose suffering mattered and whose didn’t.

In “Bean There, Donor That,” author Rick Daynes takes us on his insightful and life-changing journey through the profound act of kidney donation. This deeply personal journal explores the author’s decision to donate to a stranger. It then takes us through the conflicts of denial, rejection, and resilience, in the process of donation. The after-effects, and incredible ongoing relationship of donor and recipient are inspiring.