Health Sociology

The Well-Tuned Brain is a call to action. Swept along by the cascading advances of today's technology, most of us take for granted that progress brings improvement. Despite spectacular material advance, however, the evidence grows that we are failing to create a sustainable future for humanity. We are out of tune with the planet that nurtures us.

In 1866, 12 men and women and one small child were forced aboard a leaky schooner and cast away to a natural prison on the Hawaiian island of Molokai. Two weeks later, a dozen others were exiled, and then 40 more, and then 100 more. Tracked by bounty hunters and torn screaming from their families, the luckless were loaded into shipboard cattle stalls and abandoned in a lawless place where brutality held sway. Many did not have leprosy, and most of those who did were not contagious.

An entertaining guide to the statistics of personal risk, The Norm Chronicles will enlighten anyone who has ever worried about the dangers we encounter in our daily lives.

A study of individuals who miraculously recovered from terminal illnesses draws on medical, genetic, psychological, and spiritual profiles to argue that the key to healing lies in the functioning of the immune system.

Dans cette méditation tout en intimité et en sensualité, l'anthropologue Françoise Héritier traque ces choses agréables auxquelles notre être profond aspire, ces images et ces émotions, ces moments empreints de souvenirs qui font le goût de notre existence, qui la rendent plus riche, plus intéressante que ce que nous croyons souvent et dont rien, jamais, ne pourra être enlevé à chacun.

Two days before Shea and Larami Serrano were to be married, four months into her pregnancy with twin boys, she went into labor. Stuck in a hospital room, fearing the worst, and dismantling a year’s worth of preparations in a matter of hours - the couple decides that the show must go on. Told from Shea’s and Larami’s dual perspectives, this memoir shows the powerful bond that can arise from adversity, a sense of humor, and mutual trust.

What really drives success and failure? Can I trust you? It's the question that strikes at the heart of human existence. Whether we're talking about business partnerships, romantic relationships, child-parent bonds, or the brave new world of virtual interaction, trust, when correctly placed, is what makes our world spin and lives flourish. Renowned psychologist David DeSteno brings together the latest research from diverse fields, including psychology, economics, biology, and robotics, to create a compelling narrative about the forces that have shaped the human mind's propensities to trust.

Outraged by the downward spiral of American intellect and culture, Michael R. LeGault offers the flip side of Malcolm Gladwell's best-selling phenomenon, Blink, which celebrated impulse thinking over factual knowledge or critical analysis. If best-selling books are advising us to not think, LeGault argues, it comes as no surprise that sharp, incisive reasoning is on the decline, leading our society to incompetence and failure.

For decades they assumed that people who face adversity - a difficult childhood, career turbulence, sudden bouts of bad luck - will succumb to their circumstances. Yet over and over again they found a significant percentage are able to overcome their life circumstances and achieve spectacular success. How is it that individuals who are not “supposed” to succeed manage to overcome the odds? Are there certain traits that such people have in common?

Our society worships at the fountain of youth, but are we missing out on an extraordinary stage in life? Daniel Klein ponders whether it is better to be forever young or to grin toothlessly and live an authentic old age. He journeys to the Greek island of Hydra to discover the secrets of ageing happily. Drawing on the lives of Greek locals as well as philosophers, he uncovers the pleasures that are available only late in life.

For too long, we've thought of fathers as little more than sources of authority and economic stability in the lives of their children. Yet cutting-edge studies drawing unexpected links between fathers and children are forcing us to reconsider our assumptions and ask new questions: What changes occur in men when they are "expecting"? Do fathers affect their children’s language development? What are the risks and rewards of being an older-than-average father at the time the child is born?

Birth control offers women the opportunity to prevent pregnancy, plan and space their births, or have no births at all. And yet, in the United States, half of all pregnancies remain unintended, and access to birth control is beset by inequities in education, access, and coverage. Birth Control: What Everyone Needs to Know will offer more than a user's guide to available means of contraception: it will examine how supported family-planning infrastructure impacts society as a whole.

Un billón, a Spanish phrase for "one billion", represents a movement inspired by the Spanish song written and sung by Enfermera Marysol, aka Marysol Uribe. Marysol, the author and music artist, is a bilingual Latina healthcare professional who has worked in the medical field for six years. Un Billón begins with the origin story of Enfermera Marysol, but the movement is about empowering you to strive to reach one billion, too.

In this transporting book, David Oliver Relin shines a light on the work of Geoffrey Tabin and Sanduk Ruit, gifted ophthalmologists who have dedicated their lives to restoring sight to some of the world’s most isolated, impoverished people through the Himalayan Cataract Project, an organization they founded in 1995. Tabin was the high-achieving bad boy of Harvard Medical School, an accomplished mountain climber and adrenaline junkie as brilliant as he was unconventional.

In recent years, we have gained unprecedented control over choices about our health. But these choices are hard and often full of psychological traps. As a result, we’re liable to misuse medication, fall for pseudoscientific cure-alls, and undergo needless procedures. In Your Life Depends on It, Talya Miron-Shatz explores the preventable ways we make bad choices about everything from nutrition to medication, from pregnancy to end-of-life care.

If you’re already questioning the medical establishment and you’re looking for alternatives to drugs that often address the symptoms rather than the disease, these are the books for you.

You absolutely can reverse your diabetes. At last, a breakthrough program that's been proven to work better, faster, cheaper, and safer than prescription drugs. If you or someone you love is struggling with diabetes, then this audiobook is for you. It will provide you with the practical answers you have been looking for. A proven step-by-step plan to normalize your blood sugar within days (that’s right, days) and reverse your diabetes in three weeks or less.

A family tragedy, the loss of his youngest brother at the age of 18 from an osteosarcoma of the skull, triggered Dr. Drouin’s interest in studying medicine. Unsatisfied with the model of healing he encountered in medical school, he explored many other models of medicine that eventually led him to practice what is now called integrative medicine. He soon realized that for these complementary modalities to be accepted and integrated into our healthcare system, they must be scientifically recognized and become part of the curriculum in medical schools.

This book is part memoir and part guidebook that would be helpful to anyone considering bariatric weight loss surgery. Jamie gives a brutally honest account of the year after her weight loss surgery where she lost 143 lbs. Filled with tips, advice, and emotion, this book is a must for anyone considering a gastric bypass, gastric sleeve or a SADI-S (single anastomosis duodenal-ileal bypass with sleeve) procedure.

The traditional office was probably doomed anyway. Then a global shutdown changed everything we thought we knew about work, including where and when it needed to take place. Automation and the Fourth Industrial Revolution have accelerated, and perhaps as much as one third of the world’s permanent workforce will soon become remote. In The Nowhere Office, Julia Hobsbawm offers a strategic and practical guide to navigating this pivotal moment in the history of work and provides lessons for how both employees and employers can adapt.