Medical Biography

I got into medical school by saying I was black. I lied. Honestly, I am about as black as my sister Mindy Kaling. Once upon a time, I was an ethically challenged, hard-partying Indian-American frat boy enjoying my third year of college. That is until I realized I didn't have the grades or test scores to get into medical school. Legitimately.

Starting on the evening before he begins work as a doctor, this audiobook charts Max Pemberton's touching and funny journey through his first year in the NHS. Progressing from youthful idealism to frank bewilderment, Max realises how little his job is about 'saving people' and how much of his time is taken up by signing forms and trying to figure out all the important things no one has explained yet - for example, the crucial question of how to tell whether someone is dead or not.

At 28, Jessica Fechtor was happily immersed in graduate school and her young marriage and thinking about starting a family. Then one day she went for a run, and an aneurysm burst in her brain. She nearly died. She lost her sense of smell and the sight in her left eye and was forced to the sidelines of the life she loved. Jessica's journey to recovery began in the kitchen as soon as she was able to stand at the stovetop and stir. There, she drew strength from the restorative power of cooking and baking.

Recalling remarkable cases - and people - from a career launched in the first days of Emergency Medicine, Dr. Paul Seward leads us in his memoir through suspenseful diagnoses and explorations of anatomy. Within the conditions of great stress and rapid decision-making that are routine in the ER, Dr. Seward tells us that medical staff must be more than technicians of the body: They must be restorers of the human.

Having once aspired to be a journalist, Griggs found that the only way to make sense of what she was witnessing around her and maintain her sanity was to keep a diary. The Sky Was Falling is her day-to-day account of what most of us were grateful to only see in the news—the sharply increasing case numbers, the dwindling supply of respirators, the lack of clarity on how to treat this new disease.

When the partner of Emmy Award–winning screenwriter Abi Morgan abruptly collapsed from a mysterious illness, doctors were concerned that he would not survive. Then, six months later, Jacob woke from his coma, to the delight and relief of his family and friends—except this proved to be anything but a Hollywood ending. Because to Jacob, the woman standing at his bedside, who had cared for him all these months, was not his partner. Not his children’s mother. Not the woman he loved. Sure, she looked like his Abi, but this was an imposter, living someone else’s life.

A work of great personal courage and a literary tour de force, this bestseller is Styron's true account of his experience of crippling depression. Styron is perhaps the first writer to convey the full terror of depression's psychic landscape, as well as the illuminating path to recovery.

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.

Trauma surgeon Dr. Brian H. Williams has seen it all—gunshot wounds, stabbings, traumatic brain injuries—and ushers us into the trauma bay, where the wounds of a national emergency amass. As a Harvard-trained physician, he learned to keep his head down and his scalpel ready. As a Black man, he learned to swallow rage when patients told him to take out the trash. Just days after the tragic police shootings of two Black men, he tried to save the lives of officers shot in the deadliest incident for US law enforcement since 9/11.

Fresh out of medical residency, Dr. Benjamin Gilmer joined a rural North Carolina clinic only to find that its previous doctor shared his last name. Dr. Vince Gilmer was loved and respected by the community—right up until he strangled his ailing father and then returned to the clinic for a regular week of work. Vince’s eventual arrest for murder shocked his patients. How could their beloved doctor be capable of such violence? The deeper Benjamin looked into Vince’s case, the more he became obsessed with discovering what pushed a good man toward darkness.

Often misdiagnosed and misunderstood, traumatic brain injury (TBI) may be a life-altering event that can produce a wide range of symptoms affecting physical as well as psychological health. Now, a physician shares her personal journey with TBI after suffering a life-changing accident. In this touching and informative book, Dr. Chrisanne Gordon chronicles her struggles - the high points as well as the lows - as she is challenged to make sense of what happened and realizes that her medical training did not prepare her for these struggles.

On January 12, 2010, a major earthquake struck near Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Hundreds of thousands of people died, and the greater part of the capital was demolished. Dr. Paul Farmer, U.N. deputy special envoy to Haiti, who had worked in the country for nearly thirty years treating infectious diseases like tuberculosis and AIDS, and former President Bill Clinton, the U.N. special envoy to Haiti, had just begun to work on an extensive development plan to improve living conditions in Haiti.

His name was Joshua Silver. He was 23 years old, educated, and had an impressive vocabulary. The NYPD had found Joshua Silver naked in Times Square, barking like a dog. It was just another night for Julie Holland, the attending doctor in the world famous Bellevue Hospital's psychiatric emergency room.

Out of the crucible of medical training, award-winning writer Terrence Holt shapes this stunning account of residency, the years-long ordeal in which doctors are made. "Amid all the mess and squalor of the hospital, with its blind random unraveling of lives", Internal Medicine finds the compassion from which doctors discover the strength to care.

From his unarmed air ambulance, Munk and his team treated patients suffering from severe trauma, possible Ebola hemorrhagic fever, elephantiasis, malaria, and gunshot wounds. In Urgent Calls from Distant Places, the missions described are real and compelling.

For six decades, Pittsburgh-based forensic scientist Cyril Wecht has been an outspoken authority when horrible things happen to everyday people--murders, childhood deaths, tragic accidents and police brutality. His expertise and testimony have been called upon in high-profile cases, including the deaths of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., Elvis Presley, JonBenet Ramsey, Laci Peterson and others.

In July 1952, Dr. Walter Freeman arrived at the gates of a West Virginia asylum. In his medical bag he carried two metal picks and a surgical hammer. He had invented a “cheap, easy” ten-minute lobotomy. The press described it as a miracle cure, a new frontier in psychosurgery. That summer, in just twelve days, Freeman lobotomized 228 men, women, and children in West Virginia’s public mental hospitals. His blitzkrieg of brain surgery became known as “Operation Ice Pick,” named after the tools he wielded.

With compassionate stories of his patients and their conditions, Dr. Leschziner illustrates the neuroscience behind our sleeping minds, revealing the many biological and psychological factors necessary in getting the rest that will not only maintain our physical and mental health, but improve our cognitive abilities and overall happiness.

Do you feel like your life is a series of shattered dreams? Have you bought into the lie that you'll never amount to anything? In Think Big, Dr. Ben Carson is here to tell you some good news: none of that is true.

New Year's Eve 2020 was supposed to be a turning point to better days for twenty-nine-year-old Katie Coleman. Instead, she found herself in the ER processing the earth-shattering news of a stage IV cancer diagnosis, one that had come after years of being assured she was "too young for cancer" and a repeated misdiagnosis of anxiety. Too Young for Cancer tells the story of Katie's journey from diagnosis with an ultra-rare cancer through treatment, recovery, and a life-altering shift in perspective.