Health Biographies

The creator of Deadwood and NYPD Blue reflects on his tumultuous life, driven by a nearly insatiable creative energy and a matching penchant for self-destruction. Life’s Work is a profound memoir from a brilliant mind taking stock as Alzheimer’s loosens his hold on his own past.

Sparked by the experience of moving into a new house, she is inspired to look back across the remarkable professional and personal milestones she has experienced so far. Surrounded by the artifacts of a life well-lived, Shirley discovers the invisible threads that stitch together the seemingly random events of her days, adding meaning even to the mundane.

In Ginger Kid, popular comedian Steve Hofstetter grapples with life after seventh grade...when his world fell apart. Formatted as a series of personal essays, Steve walks his listeners through awkward early dating, family turbulence, and the revenge of the bullied nerds. This YA nonfiction is sure to be the beloved next volume for the first generation of Wimpy Kid fans who are all grown up and ready for a new misfit hero.

This audiobook is Nick Carter's autobiography and self-help hybrid, in which he chronicles his struggles with a dysfunctional family and the unimaginable rigors of becoming an internationally successful pop-star at the age of 12. From his battle with addiction to serious health complications and the pain of his younger sister's tragic death, Nick leaves nothing to the imagination and offers true and heartfelt advice to help listeners overcome obstacles in their own lives.

In gripping prose, one of the world's leading cardiac surgeons lays bare both the wonder and the horror of a life spent a heartbeat away from death. When Stephen Westaby witnessed a patient die on the table during open-heart surgery for the first time, he was struck by the quiet, determined way the surgeons walked away. As he soon understood, this detachment is a crucial survival strategy in a profession where death is only a heartbeat away. In Open Heart, Westaby reflects on over 11,000 surgeries, showing us why the procedures have never become routine and will never be.

Dealing with Early-Onset Alzheimer’s: Love, Laughter & Tears is Sonia Discher’s heartbreaking but empowering story of caring for her husband, Steve. The story follows Steve’s diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer’s at age 50 through treatment, care, and his passing. Sonia provides a look behind the curtain of this terrible sickness to reveal a treasure trove of tips and tricks she used to understand the disease, advocate for her husband, care for her family, and preserve her sanity throughout a confusing and sad time.

In his much-anticipated memoir, The Company I Keep: My Life in Beauty, Chairman Emeritus and former CEO of The Estée Lauder Companies Leonard A. Lauder shares the business and life lessons he learned as well as the adventures he had while helping transform the mom-and-pop business his mother founded in 1946 in the family kitchen into the beloved brand and ultimately into the iconic global prestige beauty company it is today.

Brian Pennie shouldn’t be alive today. His drug addiction was so bad that he was deemed too much of a risk for detox. Determined to confront his demons, he went cold turkey at home. On 8 October 2013, he was finally clean after 15 years of heroin addiction and something extraordinary happened: the world suddenly became beautiful. Given a second chance at life, he devoured every minute of it. Bit by bit he rebuilt his world, returning to university to study neuroscience in a bid to understand the source of his suffering.

When Özlem Cekic became the first Muslim MP in the Danish Parliament, her email inbox was inundated with hate mail and threats, and her gut reaction was to delete and ignore each abusive message. But eventually, she decided to take a risk. She started replying to each message and inviting the senders to meet and engage in dialogue over coffee. And with time, understanding, and patience, she began to make a difference, both in the lives of those who hated her before even meeting her, and in her own life.

David Giffen was once a defrocked priest. Having spent a decade as an Anglican cleric in Southwestern Ontario, David served in leadership in three urban social-justice focused appointments as a priest in the Anglican Church of Canada. David was deprived of ministry and terminated from his appointment as incumbent priest of his parish on December 12th, 2018. He was in his fourth month on medical leave. David was formally accused, investigated and found guilty of sexual misconduct, all while he was drugged out, melting down on social media.

Ever since he was small, John Robison had longed to connect with other people, but by the time he was a teenager, his odd habits—an inclination to blurt out non sequiturs, avoid eye contact, dismantle radios, and dig five-foot holes (and stick his younger brother in them)—had earned him the label “social deviant.” No guidance came from his mother, who conversed with light fixtures, or his father, who spent evenings pickling himself in sherry. It was no wonder he gravitated to machines, which could, at least, be counted on.

After a routine pap smear in 2009, Angela Schmidt Fishbaugh discovered that she had tested positive for BRCA1, a genetic trait that predisposed her to breast and ovarian cancer. After her initial shock - and subsequent to consulting with medical professionals, friends, and family - the proactive mother and teacher embarked on a mission to nip the issue in the bud.

This is perhaps one of the best-loved of all journals. William Wordsworth's sister, Dorothy, began it in May 1800 and resolved to keep it for a short time. She continued it for nearly three years. In it, she brought the Dove Cottage years to vivid and intimate life. She noted the walks and weather, the friends, country neighbours, and travellers on the roads. She set down accounts of the garden, of Wordsworth's marriage, their concern for Coleridge, and the composition of Wordsworth's poetry.

At 24 Amy was a typical type-A law student: smart, driven, and highly competitive. With a full course load and a budding romance, it seemed nothing could slow her down...until her heart began to fail. Amy chronicles her harrowing medical journey from the first misdiagnosis to her astonishing recovery, which is made all the more dramatic by the romantic bedside courtship with her future husband and her uncompromising desire to become a mother.

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.

The Gift of Cancer: A Miraculous Journey to Healing speaks to anyone on a journey of wellbeing, whether suffering from a life-threatening disease or merely desiring to live a better, more fulfilling life. After Brenda's third cancer diagnosis and being told she had a year to live, she boldly stepped away from the accepted medical model, said "no" to chemotherapy, and chose alternative treatment.

Julie fully expected to be breathing at the end of the trip - but driving into Death Valley felt like giving up, surrendering. She'd spent years battling a mysterious illness so extreme that she often couldn't turn over in her bed. The top specialists in the world were powerless to help, and research on her disease, chronic fatigue syndrome, was at a near standstill. Having exhausted the plausible ideas, Julie turned to an implausible one. Going against both her instincts and her training, she followed the advice of strangers she'd met on the Internet.

From the outside, Seana Smith lived an enviable life. An Oxford graduate, a successful career with the BBC and Sydney’s Channel 9, a bestselling author, happily married. But behind this perfect life she had a secret: Seana was a drinker, and alcohol was slowly taking away her life, destroying her health, her emotional well-being, her world. With engaging style and wit, Going Under reveals the true story behind Seana’s lifelong battle with drink. It lays bare a confusing childhood of Scottish sailing adventures and also brutal violence from her bullying, alcoholic father.

A leading oncologist at the University of California-San Francisco, Dr. Pamela Munster has advised thousands of women on how to deal with the life-altering diagnosis of breast cancer. But when she got a call saying that her own mammogram showed "irregularities", she found herself experiencing a whole new side of the disease she thought she was an expert in. Weaving together her personal story with her team's groundbreaking research on the BRCA gene, Twisting Fate is an inspiring guide to living with BRCA mutations.

This is the enormously entertaining story of how a fraudulent surgeon made a fortune by inserting goats' testes into impotent American men. "Doctor" John Brinkley became a world renowned authority on sexual rejuvenation in the 1920s, with famous politicians and even royalty asking for his services.