Health History

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have taken a tremendous toll on the mental health of our troops. In 2005, then-Senator Barack Obama took to the Senate floor to tell his colleagues that "many of our injured soldiers are returning from Iraq with traumatic brain injury", which doctors were calling the "signature wound" of the Iraq War. Alarming stories of veterans taking their own lives raised a host of vital questions: For instance, why hadn't the military been better prepared to treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and traumatic brain injury (TBI)?

What Are the Chances? reveals how psychology and neuroscience explain the significance of the idea of luck. Barbara Blatchley explores how people react to random events in a range of circumstances, examining the evidence that the belief in luck helps us cope with a lack of control. She tells the stories of lucky and unlucky people as well as the accidental discoveries that fundamentally changed what we know about the brain.

A Healthy Society offers a new approach to politics–and a new approach to building a healthier world. Dr. Meili argues that health delivery too often focuses on treatment of immediate causes and ignores fundamental conditions that lead to poor health such as income, education, employment, housing, and environment.

Germany, 1945. The soldiers who liberated the Gross-Rosen concentration camp said the war was over, but nothing feels over to 18-year-old Zofia Lederman. Her body has barely begun to heal; her mind feels broken. And her life is completely shattered: Three years ago, she and her younger brother, Abek, were the only members of their family to be sent to the right, away from the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Everyone else—her parents, her grandmother, radiant Aunt Maja—they went left.

The first major bioterror event in the United States - the anthrax attacks in October 2001 - was a clarion call for scientists who work with “hot” agents to find ways of protecting civilian populations against biological weapons. In The Demon in the Freezer, Richard Preston takes us into the heart of USAMRIID, the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Maryland, once the headquarters of the US biological weapons program and now the epicenter of national biodefense.

Food and Drug Administration approval for COVID-19 vaccines and the controversial Alzheimer's drug Aduhelm made headlines, but few of us know much about how the agency does its work. Why is the FDA the ultimate United States authority on a drug's safety and efficacy? In Drugs and the FDA, Mikkael Sekeres—a leading oncologist and former chair of the FDA's cancer drug advisory committee—tells the story of how the FDA became the most trusted regulatory agency in the world.

In 1959, a Cincinnati pharmaceutical firm, the William S. Merrell Company, quietly began distributing samples of an exciting new wonder drug already popular around the world. Touted as a sedative without risks, thalidomide was handed out freely, under the guise of clinical trials, by doctors who believed approval by the Food and Drug Administration was imminent. But in 1960, when the application for thalidomide landed on the desk of FDA medical reviewer Frances Kelsey, she quickly grew suspicious.

For much of recorded history, people considered the heart to be the most important organ in the body. In cultures around the world, the heart—not the brain—was believed to be the location of intelligence, memory, emotion, and the soul. Over time, views on the purpose of the heart have transformed. Modern medicine and science dismissed what was once the king of the organs as a mere blood pump subservient to the brain, yet the heart remains a potent symbol of love and health and an important part of our cultural iconography.

A quiet revolution has been underway in recent years, with study after study revealing substantial same-sex sexual behavior in animals. Join celebrated author Eliot Schrefer on an exploration of queer behavior in the animal world—from albatrosses to bonobos to clownfish to doodlebugs. In sharp and witty prose Schrefer uses science, history, anthropology, and sociology to illustrate the diversity of sexual behavior in the animal world. Interviews with researchers in the field offer additional insights for readers and aspiring scientists.

One bright spring morning in the woods of France, a soldier, blinded by the war, is found by a little girl named Coco, and her older sister Marcelle. In return for their kindness, the soldier tells the sisters marvelous tales, each story connected to the keepsake he carries in his pocket: a perfect, tiny, silver donkey.

In 1976 a deadly virus emerged from the Congo forest. As swiftly as it came, it disappeared, leaving no trace. Over the four decades since, Ebola has emerged sporadically, each time to devastating effect. It can kill up to 90 percent of its victims. In between these outbreaks, it is untraceable, hiding deep in the jungle. The search is on to find Ebola's elusive host animal.

From evolution to the epidural and beyond, Tina Cassidy presents an intelligent, enlightening, and impeccably researched cultural history of how and why we're born the way we are. Women have been giving birth for millennia, but that's about the only constant in the final stage of the great process that is human reproduction. Why is it that every culture and generation seems to have its own ideas about the best way to give birth?

This is the sequel to Freckles - the moving story of a young girl whose kindness and wholesome philosophy brightens the lives of everyone she meets.

Our devices and data are woven into our lives. We can't simply reject them. Margaret Morris argues we need to adapt technology creatively to our needs and values. In Left to Our Own Devices, Morris offers examples of individuals applying technologies in unexpected ways - uses that go beyond those intended by developers and designers. Morris examines these kinds of personalized life hacks, chronicling the ways that people have adapted technology to strengthen social connection, enhance well-being, and affirm identity.

At the University of Wisconsin, Dr. Joshua Mezrich creates life from loss, transplanting organs from one body to another. In this intimate, profoundly moving work, he illuminates the extraordinary field of transplantation that enables this kind of miracle to happen every day.

Clever and ambitious, Emma Jung yearned to study the natural sciences at the University of Zurich. But the strict rules of proper Swiss society at the beginning of the 20th century dictated that a woman of Emma's stature - one of the richest heiresses in Switzerland - travel to Paris to "finish" her education, to prepare for marriage to a suitable man. Engaged to the son of one of her father's wealthy business colleagues, Emma's conventional and predictable life was upended when she met Carl Jung.

Are art and science separated by an unbridgeable divide? Can they find common ground? In this book, neuroscientist Eric R. Kandel, whose remarkable scientific career and deep interest in art give him a unique perspective, demonstrates how science can inform the way we experience a work of art and seek to understand its meaning. Kandel illustrates how reductionism - the distillation of larger scientific or aesthetic concepts into smaller, more tractable components - has been used by scientists and artists alike to pursue their respective truths.

Norman Lebrecht has devoted half of his life to pondering and researching the mindset of the Jewish intellectuals, writers, scientists, and thinkers who turned the tides of history and shaped the world today as we know it. In Genius & Anxiety, Lebrecht begins with the Communist Manifesto in 1847 and ends in 1947, when Israel was founded. This robust, magnificent volume, beautifully designed, is an urgent and necessary celebration of Jewish genius and contribution.

Looking for books on essential oils and aromatherapy? You’ve come to the right place. Essential Oils Guide Book contains everything a new or seasoned oils enthusiast would want to know. You’ll explore the many benefits of aromatherapy and essential oils. From home remedies to picking your first starter kit of oils, it’s all here.

September 1962: On a moonless night over the raging Atlantic Ocean, a thousand miles from land, the engines of Flying Tiger flight 923 to Germany burst into flames, one by one. Pilot John Murray didn't have long before the plane crashed headlong into the 20-foot waves at 120 mph. As the four flight attendants donned life vests, collected sharp objects, and explained how to brace for the ferocious impact, 68 passengers clung to their seats. They all expected to die.