Health Wars

Meggie Dillon's life has been turned upside down by World War II. Her older brother Eddie enlisted and was shipped off to fight in Europe. And people say that anywhere else Grandpa would be turned in because he's German, and people might think he's a spy. Is it true? Could Grandpa be taken away?

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.

When the ashes had settled after World War II and the Allies convened an international war crimes trial in Nuremberg, a psychiatrist, Douglas Kelley, and a psychologist, Gustave Gilbert, tried to fathom the psychology of the Nazi leaders using extensive psychiatric interviews, IQ tests, and Rorschach inkblot tests. Never before or since has there been such a detailed study of governmental leaders who orchestrated mass killings.

Nixon declared the war on cancer in 1971. Forty-five years and billions of dollars later, it looks like we have lost the battle. Or have we? When a natural, non-toxic way to fight cancer is discovered, it is big news in the scientific community. But instead of being embraced, it is fiercely opposed by those tied to the pharmaceutical industry. Research by the late Mirko Beljanski, PhD, - one of the first green molecular biologists - revealed that natural molecules can selectively target cancer cells and work alongside many chemotherapy drugs.

This profoundly moving memoir is the remarkable and inspiring true story of Sandra Uwiringiyimana, a girl from the Democratic Republic of the Congo who tells the tale of how she survived a massacre, immigrated to America, and overcame her trauma through art and activism. Sandra was just 10 years old when she found herself with a gun pointed at her head. She had watched as rebels gunned down her mother and six-year-old sister in a refugee camp.

African American Slave Medicine offers a critical examination of how African American slaves' medical needs were addressed during the years before and surrounding the Civil War. Drawing upon ex-slave interviews conducted during the 1930s and 1940s by the Works Project Administration (WPA), Dr. Herbert C. Covey inventories many of the herbal, plant, and non-plant remedies used by African American folk practitioners during slavery.

They call Gabriela "Tree Girl". Gabi climbs trees to be within reach of the eagles and watch the sun rise into an empty sky. She is at home among the outstretched branches of the Guatemalan forests. Then one day from the safety of a tree, Gabi witnesses the sights and sounds of an unspeakable massacre. She vows to be Tree Girl no more and joins the hordes of refugees struggling to reach the Mexican border. She has lost her whole family; her entire village has been wiped out.

Heroines of Mercy Street tells the true stories of the nurses at Mansion House, the Alexandria, Virginia, mansion turned wartime hospital and setting for the new PBS drama Mercy Street. Among the Union soldiers, doctors, wounded men from both sides, freed slaves, politicians, speculators, and spies who passed through the hospital in the crossroads of the Civil War were nurses who gave their time freely and willingly to save lives and aid the wounded.

“Doomed from birth” was how psychologist Harold Skeels described two girls at the Orphans’ Home in Davenport, Iowa, in 1934. Following prevailing eugenic beliefs, Skeels and his colleague Marie Skodak assumed that the girls had inherited their parents’ low intelligence and sent them to an institution. To their astonishment, under the women’s care, the children’s IQ scores became normal. Recasting Skeels and his team as intrepid heroes, Marilyn Brookwood weaves years of prodigious archival research to show how after decades of backlash, the Iowans finally prevailed.

Sometimes the hardest battle is the one after the war. As one of the soldiers on the front line of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Lieutenant Scotti was taught that weakness is what gets you killed: No hesitation, focus your energies on your objective, and complete the mission. Upon returning from war, Scotti approached his new life the same way. He ignored the creeping depression and numbness he called "The Blue Cascade" and charged ahead toward his goal to get an MBA, secure a high-paying finance job, and retire young and rich.

Alan Riding introduces a pageant of 20th-century artists who lived and worked under the Nazis and explores the decisions each made about whether to stay or flee, collaborate or resist. We see Maurice Chevalier and Edith Piaf singing before French and German audiences; Picasso painting and occasionally selling his work from his Left Bank apartment; and Marcel Carné and Henri-Georges Clouzot, among others, directing movies....

Dr. Aileen Burford-Mason's new book, The War Against Viruses, explains how we can help reduce the risk and severity of COVID-19 infection. But it goes beyond this, showing how staying well in general, and avoiding winter colds and flus in particular, is possible with optimal nutrition. Dr. Burford-Mason creates a personal supplement regime that can overcome potential dietary shortfalls by strengthening our immune response to infection, thus helping to reduce the potential for lethal illness.

Wounded traces the journey made by a casualty from the battlefield to a hospital in Britain. It is a story told through the testimony of those who cared for him - stretcher bearers and medical officers, surgeons and chaplains, orderlies and nurses - from the aid post in the trenches to the casualty clearing station and the ambulance train back to Blighty. We feel the calloused hands of the stretcher-bearers; we see the bloody dressings and bandages; we smell the nauseating gangrene and, at London’s stations, the gas clinging to the uniforms of the men arriving home.

Nicholas Wright’s WARHEAD is a groundbreaking new book that shows listeners how wars are a consequence of common brain systems that deal with conflict, competition, and social cooperation. Journeying through ten brain regions, Wright begins his explanation at the base of the brain, the brainstem, climbing step-by-step until he reaches the frontal pole looking at how each region influences the human propensity towards war. While brain anatomy provides the framework, each chapter is brought to life through battle stories from history.

I believe in miracles because my sobriety is one. For years, I was an addict, a slave to pornography. Every time I tried to quit, it just got worse. I was tired of trying to slay a dragon that was impossible to kill. So I gave up fighting. I lost hope. After years of losing the war, I finally saw that all the things I believed about pornography addiction were not true. Porn addiction is strong and derives its power by trapping its victims in thirteen lies.

For 4,000 years, the size and vitality of cities, economies, and empires were heavily determined by infection. Striking humanity in waves, the cycle of plagues set the tempo of civilizational growth and decline, since common response to the threat was exclusion — quarantining the sick or keeping them out. But the unprecedented hygiene and medical revolutions of the past two centuries have allowed humanity to free itself from the hold of epidemic cycles — resulting in an urbanized, globalized, and unimaginably wealthy world.

What motivates those who commit violence in the name of political beliefs? Terrorism today is not solely the preserve of Islam, nor is it a new phenomenon. It emerges from social processes and conditions common to societies throughout modern history, and the story of its origins spans centuries, encompassing numerous radical and revolutionary movements. Marc Sageman is a forensic psychiatrist and government counter-terrorism consultant whose bestselling books provide a detailed, damning corrective to commonplace yet simplistic notions of Islamist terrorism.

The War in The Heaven, by Jamaican author Gem C. Collie, examines the psychological effects of generational victimization in contemporary times. The book exposes perpetual inherited mistreatment due to the constant battle one goes through to fight for individuality against collectivism, social norms, and culture.

The media and politicians have been sounding the alarm for years, and with every fresh tragedy involving a young perpetrator comes another flurry of articles about the dangers of violent media. The problem is this: Their fear isn't supported by the evidence. In fact, unlike the video game-trained murder machines depicted in the press, school shooters are actually less likely to be interested in violent games than their peers. In reality, most well-adjusted children and teenagers play violent video games, all without ever exhibiting violent behavior in real life.

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.