Health Biographies

Writer and therapist Sahaj Kaur Kohli grew up knowing exactly what it means to straddle multiple cultures at once. Like many children of immigrants, she has often found herself plagued by questions: Can I establish my own values and embrace where I come from? Is prioritizing my mental health really rejecting my culture? How do I set boundaries and care for myself when family and community mean everything? Even after becoming a therapist herself, she saw those same gaps in the mental health world, leading her to wonder, like so many children of immigrants: what about us?

While serving with the Peace Corps in Swaziland, Thomas Cowan encountered the work of Rudolf Steiner and Weston A. Price - two men whose ideas would fascinate and challenge him for decades to come. Both drawn to the art of healing and repelled by the way medicine was - and continues to be - practiced in the United States, Cowan returned from Swaziland, went to medical school, and established a practice.

Seventeen-year-old Elena is vanishing. Every day means renewed determination, so every day means fewer calories. This is the story of a girl whose armor against anxiety becomes artillery against herself as she battles on both sides of a lose-lose war in a struggle with anorexia.

John Forbes Nash, Jr., a prodigy and legend by the age of 30, dazzled the mathematical world by solving a series of deep problems deemed "impossible" by other mathematicians. But at the height of his fame, Nash suffered a catastrophic mental breakdown and began a harrowing descent into insanity, resigning his post at MIT, slipping into a series of bizarre delusions, and eventually becoming a dreamy, ghostlike figure at Princeton, scrawling numerological messages on blackboards.

The Headache Godfather traces the life of Seymour Diamond, MD, who was born in 1925, the son of Jewish immigrants from Ukraine and Slovakia, in Chicago, Illinois. Dr. Diamond revolutionized the practice of headache as a medical specialty when he opened the United States' first private headache practice, the Diamond Headache Clinic, in 1974. It quickly became a headache haven for sufferers from around the world.

At seven, Brandon was a skateboard prodigy. By the time he was fourteen, he was living the dream. Discovered by skate legends Bucky Lasek and Tony Hawk. Touring the US with the elite Powell-Peralta team. Signing autographs and appearing in films and magazines. Brandon had it all. Then he got hooked on heroin. Soon he was living a down-and-out life in a garage, begging for change, and hustling to score his next fix. He stole from his family and friends. He pushed the fantasy that everything was okay, that he was going to rehab, getting help, and getting better. But it was all a lie.

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.

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.

Professor of psychiatry Elyn R. Saks writes about her struggle with schizophrenia in this unflinching account of her mental illness. In The Center Cannot Hold, Saks draws readers into a nightmare world of medications, a misguided health-care system, and social stigmas. But she would not be defeated. With a strength and force of will that most can only imagine, Saks reclaimed her life and went on to achieve great success.

Oskar's school teacher raises the alarm. Oskar's mother is abroad, and he has been left in the care of friends, but has been arriving in school hungry, unkempt and with bruises on his arms, legs and body. Experienced foster carer Cathy Glass is asked to look after him, but as the weeks pass, her concerns deepen. Oskar is far too quiet for a child of six and is clearly scared of something or someone.

With uncommon humanity, candor, wit, and erudition, National Book Award winner Andrew Solomon takes the listener on a journey of incomparable range and resonance into the most pervasive of family secrets. The Noonday Demon examines depression in personal, cultural, and scientific terms. Drawing on his own struggles with the illness and interviews with fellow sufferers, doctors and scientists, policymakers and politicians, drug designers and philosophers, Solomon reveals the subtle complexities and sheer agony of the disease.

Kafka is one of 161 inspired-and inspiring-minds, among them, novelists, poets, playwrights, painters, philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians, who describe how they subtly maneuver the many (self-inflicted) obstacles and (self-imposed) daily rituals to get done the work they love to do, whether by waking early or staying up late; whether by self-medicating with doughnuts or bathing, drinking vast quantities of coffee, or taking long daily walks.

When Angela Kelly and The Queen are together, laughter echoes through the corridors of Buckingham Palace. Angela has worked with The Queen and walked the corridors of the Royal Household for 25 years, initially as Her Majesty’s Senior Dresser and then latterly as Her Majesty’s Personal Advisor, Curator, Wardrobe, and In-house Designer. As the first person in history to hold this title, she shares a uniquely close working relationship with The Queen.

It has been said that everyone knows a cancer survivor, but no one has met an Alzheimer's survivor - until now. In his first two books, Dr. Dale Bredesen outlined the revolutionary treatments that are changing what had previously seemed like the inevitable outcome of cognitive decline and dementia. And in these moving narratives, you can hear directly from the first survivors of Alzheimer’s themselves - their own amazing stories of hope told in their own words.

Best-selling sportswriter Jeff Pearlman draws from almost 300 interviews to take the first full measure of the Lakers’ epic Showtime era. A dazzling account of one of America’s greatest sports sagas, Showtime is packed with indelible characters, vicious rivalries, and jaw-dropping, behind-the-scenes stories of the players’ decadent Hollywood lifestyles. From the Showtime era’s remarkable rise to its tragic end - marked by Magic Johnson’s 1991 announcement that he had contracted HIV - Showtime is a gripping narrative of sports, celebrity, and 1980s-style excess.

Bob Bourne was everything a son wants to emulate—an NHL All-Star, a Sports Illustrated “Sportsman of the Year,” a Stanley Cup champion. Justin Bourne followed in those huge footsteps, leading his teams in scoring year after year, and finally garnering an invitation to the New York Islanders’ training camp—the same team his father had played for.

Superman. Diesel. The Big Aristotle. Shaq Fu. The Big Daddy. The Big Shaqtus. Wilt Chamberneezy. The Real Deal. The Big Shamrock. Shaq....From growing up in difficult circumstances and getting cut from his high-school basketball team to his larger-than-life basketball career, Shaquille O'Neal lays it all out in Shaq Uncut: My Story.

In 1997, Daniel Trush, a bright, active, outgoing twelve-year-old, collapsed on the basketball court and fell into a deep coma. Rushed to the hospital, he was found to have five previously undetected aneurysms in his brain. One had burst, causing a massive cerebral hemorrhage. While Daniel remained comatose, the uncontrolled pressure inside his skull caused him to suffer multiple strokes.

Bats can hear shapes, plants can eat light, and bees can dance maps. When his life took him to a painfully dark place, the poet behind The CryptoNaturalist, Jarod K. Anderson, found comfort and redemption in these facts and the shift in perspective that comes from paying a new kind of attention to nature. Something in the Woods Loves You tells the story of the darkest stretch of a young person’s life, and how deliberate and meditative encounters with plants and animals helped him see the light at every turn.

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.