Health Administration

In 2007, David Goldhill’s father died from infections acquired in a hospital - one of more than two hundred thousand avoidable deaths per year caused by medical error. The bill was enormous - and Medicare paid it. These circumstances left Goldhill angry and determined to understand how world-class technology and personnel could coexist with such carelessness - and how a business that failed so miserably could be paid in full.

Despite billions of dollars invested in medical research and technological breakthroughs in American healthcare made to prolong and improve the lives of patients, a devastating statistic remains. Two thirds of Americans die in healthcare institutions tethered to machines and tubes at bankrupting costs, despite research that shows 80 percent of Americans would prefer to spend their last days in their homes surrounded by loved ones.

From Joseph Romm, Chief Science Advisor for National Geographic's Years of Living Dangerously series and one of Rolling Stone's "100 people who are changing America," Climate Change offers user-friendly, scientifically rigorous answers to the most difficult (and commonly politicized) questions surrounding what climatologist Lonnie Thompson has deemed "a clear and present danger to civilization."

Lurking in our homes, hiding in our offices, and polluting the air we breathe is something sinister. Something we’ve turned a blind eye to for far too long. Dr. Leonardo Trasande, a pediatrician, professor, and world-renowned researcher, tells the story of how our everyday surroundings are making us sicker, fatter, and poorer. Through a blend of narrative, scientific detective work, and concrete information about the connections between chemicals and disease, he reveals what we can do to protect ourselves and our families in the short-term, and how we can help bring the change we deserve.

Over the past three decades, the once-efficient American health care system has evolved into a complex maze of monopolies and a racket of bureaucratic checks, approvals, denials, roadblocks, and detours. This shift has created a massive and at times redundant workforce that frustrates patients, as well as physicians, nurses, and administrative staff. Health care costs the United States more than $11,000 for each person in the country each year - more than double what it costs in most Western European countries to deliver equal or even better care.

When Abortion Was a Crime is the must-listen book on abortion history. Originally published ahead of the thirtieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade, this award-winning study was the first to examine the entire period during which abortion was illegal in the United States, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century and ending with that monumental case in 1973. When Abortion Was a Crime is filled with intimate stories and nuanced analysis, demonstrating how abortion was criminalized and policed—and how millions of women sought abortions regardless of the law.

Well-heeled American corporations have long had a financial stake in undermining scientific consensus and manufacturing uncertainty. In The Triumph of Doubt, former Obama and Clinton official David Michaels details how corrupt science becomes public policy - and where it's happening today.

Today, 90 percent of psychiatric beds are located in jails and prisons across the United States, institutions that confine disproportionate numbers of African Americans. After more than a decade of research, the celebrated scholar and activist Mab Segrest locates the deep historical roots of this startling fact, turning her sights on a long-forgotten cauldron of racial ideology: the state mental asylum system in which psychiatry was born and whose influences extend into our troubled present.

As one of America’s most celebrated vascular surgeons, Dr. Frank Veith’s career was anything but conventional—from working undercover with the CIA to fighting to make vascular surgery an independent specialty to creating the largest vascular conference in the world.

Founding director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy Dr. Michael T. Osterholm and acclaimed author Mark Olshaker examine the lessons of past pandemics, show how the United States and other countries failed to apply those lessons and the emerging science in confronting COVID-19, and look to the future, projecting what the next pandemics might look like and the strategies to mitigate them. The Big One is a comprehensive, compelling, and much-needed wake-up call.

The pathophysiology of COVID-19 garners much attention in health care settings, but the illness is not limited to its biological impact—the pandemic’s effects are a mosaic of social, economic, political, environmental, and evolutionary influences. It led to major global changes that compromised economies, health care systems, and global connectivity. Written by a group of Canadian students, Under the Weather: COVID-19 Biosocial System Dynamics takes an interdisciplinary outlook on the disease and how people have come together in dire times to combat the disease.

Pinter and Martin's Why it Matters series offer succinct, balanced and evidence-based introductions to the topics that affect family life in the 21st century. The Politics of Breastfeeding, first published in 1988, described how big business and vested interests influence the intimate relationship between mothers and their babies to the detriment of all, rich or poor, in the West or in the developing world. In Why the Politics of Breastfeeding Matter, the central ideas of the politics of breastfeeding are distilled into a concise form, making it the perfect introduction to understanding the complex forces that govern what many think of as a simple choice to breastfeed or not.

Until very recently, if you were to ask most doctors, they would tell you there were only two kinds of medicine: the quack kind, and the evidence-based kind. The former is baseless, and the latter based on the best information human effort could buy. Well, Eric Topol isn't most doctors, and he suggests you entertain the notion of a third kind of medicine, one that will make the evidence-based state-of-the-art stuff look scarcely better than an alchemist trying to animate a homunculus in a jar.

In The Long Fix, physician and health-care CEO Vivian S. Lee, MD, cuts to the heart of the health-care crisis. The problem with the way medicine is practiced, she explains, is not so much who's paying, it's what we are paying for. Insurers, employers, the government, and individuals pay for every procedure, prescription, and lab test, whether or not it makes us better - and that is both backward and dangerous.

Government, industry, and the medical profession, however, have a mixed record when it comes to framing policies and generating knowledge to address drug use and misuse. In Strange Trips, Lucas Richert investigates the myths, meanings, and boundaries of recreational drugs, palliative care drugs, and pharmaceuticals as well as struggles over product innovation, consumer protection, and freedom of choice in the medical marketplace.

How has the United States, with more resources than any nation, developed a healthcare system that delivers much poorer results, at near double the cost of any other developed country - such that legendary seer Warren Buffett calls the Medical Industrial Complex "the tapeworm of American economic competitiveness"?

Smokescreen: What the Marijuana Industry Doesn't Want You to Know examines the inside story behind the headlines, containing accounts from Sabet’s time in the Obama administration, to stunning revelations from whistleblowers speaking out for the first time. What it finds is how the marijuana industry is running rampant without proper oversight, leaving Americans’ health seriously at risk.

Written with warmth, accessibility, and vast authority, The Addiction Solution is a practical guide through the world of drug use and abuse and addiction treatment. Here, Lloyd I. Sederer, MD, Chief Mental Health Officer of the NYS Office of Mental Health and the Medical Editor for Mental Health at the Huffington Post, brings together scientific and clinical knowledge, policy suggestions, and case studies to describe our current drug crisis and establish a clear path forward to recovery and health.

Medical students and physicians-in-training embark on a long journey that, although steeped in scientific learning and technical skill building, includes little guidance on the emotional and interpersonal dimensions of becoming a healer. Written for anyone in the health care community who hopes to grow emotionally and cognitively in the way they interact with patients, On Becoming a Healer explains how to foster doctor-patient relationships that are mutually nourishing.

There's a revolution going on right now. On the frontiers of medicine, some doctors have developed an approach for treating people that is more effective, more humane, and more affordable. It's an approach to healthcare that has captured the attention of the media and business elite. It's all happening at Cleveland Clinic, one of the most innovative, forward-looking medical institutions in the nation. In this groundbreaking book, Toby Cosgrove, MD, reveals how the Clinic works so well and argues persuasively for why it should be the model for the nation.