Health Biographies

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.

In May 2003 prominent philosopher, author, and professor J. P. Moreland awoke in the middle of the night to a severe panic attack. Though often anxious by temperament and upbringing, Moreland had never experienced such an incident before. Thus began an extended battle with debilitating anxiety and depression. More than a decade later, Moreland continues to manage mental illness. Yet along the way he's moved from shame and despair to vulnerability and hope. In Finding Quiet Moreland comes alongside fellow sufferers with encouragement and practical, hard-won advice.

In medical school, Matt McCarthy dreamed of being a different kind of doctor - the sort of mythical, unflappable physician who could reach unreachable patients. But when a new admission to the critical care unit almost died his first night on call, he found himself scrambling. Visions of mastery quickly gave way to hopes of simply surviving hospital life, where confidence was hard to come by and no amount of med school training could dispel the terror of facing actual patients.

Pat Summitt, the all-time winningest coach in NCAA basketball history and best-selling author of Reach for the Summitt and Raise the Roof, tells for the first time her remarkable story of victory and resilience as well as facing down her greatest challenge: early-onset Alzheimer's disease. Pat Summitt was only 21 when she became head coach of the Tennessee Vols women's basketball team. For 38 years, she has broken records, winning more games than any NCAA team in basketball history.

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.

Mataio (Matt) Faafetai Malietoa Brown offers the men in his barbershop a haircut with a difference: a safe space to be seen and heard without judgement. As the creator of My Fathers Barbers, Matt has inspired a new generation of New Zealand men to break free from the cycle of abuse - and those men have in turn inspired Matt and his wife, Sarah, to create the global anti-violence movement She Is Not Your Rehab.

Lynn grew up the carefree daughter of a Miami undercover narcotics agent—until her dad snuck out of the house in the dark of night without a glance back. She never knew what happened to her father until she was in high school, and he was in prison for drug smuggling. By then, Lynn had developed a dangerous drug and alcohol habit of her own. It was the perfect setup for her to latch onto the only connection to her dad that remained when he was paroled from prison—cocaine.

Science writer Sadie Dingfelder has always known that she’s a little quirky. But while she’s made some strange mistakes over the years, it’s not until she accosts a stranger in a grocery store (whom she thinks is her husband) that she realizes something is amiss. With a mixture of curiosity and dread, Dingfelder starts contacting neuroscientists and lands herself in scores of studies. In the course of her nerdy midlife crisis, she discovers that she is emphatically not neurotypical.

Proclaimed "girl-pervert" Oriana Small, aka Ashley Blue, a veritable artist at heart, weaves through the intricacies of a decade in and out of the adult film industry, love, drugs, and her own firebrand of what it means to live ecstatically. From accolades to agony, Girlvert illuminates the surreality of a life lived beyond all comprehension.

Alle wollen alt werden, niemand will alt sein. Der Widerspruch ist absurd, das Leiden daran real. Wie lernen wir, so gut wie möglich damit zurechtzukommen? Geht das, alt werden und ein erfülltes Leben führen? Mit ihren über 80 Jahren hat sich Elke Heidenreich mit dem Altwerden beschäftigt. Herausgekommen ist dabei ein Buch, wie nur sie es schreiben kann. Persönlich, ehrlich, doch nie gnadenlos, mit einem Wort: lebensklug. Sie denkt über ihr eigenes Leben nach, und das heißt vor allem, über ihre Beziehungen zu anderen Menschen. Im Alter trägt man die Konsequenzen für alles, was man getan hat.

Serial homicide. Stalking. Arson. Gang crime. Who are the people behind these acts of terrible violence? What are their stories? And what is it like to sit opposite them? Dr Gwen Adshead is one of Britain's leading forensic psychiatrists, and she has spent 30 years providing therapy inside secure hospitals and prisons. Whatever her patient's crime, she aims to help them to better know their minds by helping them to articulate their life experience.

In kindergarten, Jarrett Krosoczka's teacher asks him to draw his family, with a mommy and a daddy. But Jarrett's family is much more complicated than that. His mom is an addict, in and out of rehab, and in and out of Jarrett's life. His father is a mystery - Jarrett doesn't know where to find him, or even what his name is. Jarrett lives with his grandparents - two very loud, very loving, very opinionated people who had thought they were through with raising children until Jarrett came along. Only as a teenager can Jarrett begin to piece together the truth of his family.

The Close sisters are descended from very prominent and wealthy ancestors. When the Close sisters were very young, their parents joined a cult called the MRA, or Moral Rearmament. The family was suddenly uprooted to a cult school in Switzerland and, ultimately, to the Belgian Congo where their father became a surgeon in the war-ravaged republic, and ultimately the personal physician to President Mobutu.

A pioneering neuroscientist shares his story of growing up in one of Miami's toughest neighborhoods and how it led him to his groundbreaking work in drug addiction. As a youth, Carl Hart didn't realize the value of school; he studied just enough to stay on the basketball team. At the same time, he was immersed in street life. Today he is a cutting-edge neuroscientist - Columbia University's first tenured African American professor in the sciences.

Growing up the good girl in an Irish American family full of drinkers and terrible sleepers, Kathleen Frazier was 12 when her seemingly innocent sleepwalking turned dangerous. Over the next few years, she was a popular A+ student by day, the star of her high school musical. At night she both longed for and dreaded sleep. Frazier moved to Manhattan in the 1980s, hoping for a life in the theater but getting a run of sleepwalking performances instead.

Tony Hsieh—CEO of Zappos, Las Vegas developer, and beloved entrepreneur—was famous for spreading happiness. He promoted a workplace where bosses treated employees like family members, where stress was replaced by playfulness, and where hierarchies were replaced with equality and collaboration. Happy at Any Cost sheds light on one of our most creative yet vulnerable business leaders. It’s about our intense need to find “happiness” at all costs, our misguided worship of entrepreneurs, the stigmas surrounding mental health, and how fame can mask deeper problems.

Horrifying, heartbreaking and eye-opening, these are the stories, the patients and the cases that have characterised a career spent behind bars. The no-holds-barred memoirs of a GP who went from working at a quiet suburban practice to treating the country’s most dangerous criminals - first in young offenders’ institutions, then at the notorious Wormwood Scrubs and finally at Europe’s largest women-only prison in Europe, Bronzefield.

Volume III of Dick Russell’s monumental biography, The Life and Ideas of James Hillman, takes up the final decades of the pioneering depth psychologist’s explorations of “Soul in the World.” Hillman’s twenty-three-year relationship and ultimately marriage to visual artist Margot McLean provides the backdrop for the diversity of his wide-ranging pursuits—where the aesthetic and the imagination become central motifs for the founder of archetypal psychology.

Dreams from My Mother is an inspiring story about childhood, race, identity, family, friendship, hope and what makes us who we are. Ultimately, it is an incredibly moving story of a mother and a daughter separated by society, but united in the dreams they shared for her future.

At 23, Isa Mazzei was just like any other college graduate: broke, lacking purpose, and searching for an identity. She was also a compulsive seductress with a reputation as a slut and heartbreaker. One day, while working a low-paying retail job, she had a revelation: why not embrace her salacious image and make some money off of it?