Medical Biography

In Miracles and Mayhem in the ER, Dr. Brent Russell shares true-life stories of his early days as an emergency room doctor. Contemplative and oftentimes hilarious, Dr. Russell leads the listener through the glass doors and down the narrow halls of the ER where desperate patients, young and old, come to get well. Occasionally heart wrenching and always fast-paced, Miracles and Mayhem in the ER will have listeners holding their breath one second and celebrating the next.

Growing up in Brooklyn, New York, it never occurred to Uché Blackstock and her twin sister, Oni, that they would be anything but physicians. In the 1980s, their mother headed an organization of Black women physicians, and for years the girls watched these fiercely intelligent women in white coats tend to their patients and neighbors, host community health fairs, cure ills, and save lives.

Following Kate Marshall’s first year in the mortuary at a north of England NHS hospital, with each month exploring the people she meets, in life and death, as well as her own growing awareness of life behind the veil. Sorry for Your Loss is haunting, uplifting and informative, with many moments of laughter, and shows us that the way we approach death can make life all the more precious.

Around the clock, across the country, these highly skilled and compassionate men and women sacrifice and struggle for us and our families. You have never heard their true stories. Not like this. From big-city and small-town hospitals. From behind the scenes. From the heart. This book will make you laugh, make you cry, make you understand.

After his December 2003 arrest, registered nurse Charlie Cullen was quickly dubbed "The Angel of Death" by the media. But Cullen was no mercy killer, nor was he a simple monster. He was a favorite son, husband, beloved father, best friend, and celebrated caregiver. Implicated in the deaths of as many as 300 patients, he was also perhaps the most prolific serial killer in American history.

The late Dr. Michihiko Hachiya was director of the Hiroshima Communications Hospital when the world's first atomic bomb was dropped on the city. Though his responsibilities in the appalling chaos of a devastated city were awesome, he found time to record the story daily, with compassion and tenderness. Dr. Hachiya's compelling diary was originally published by the UNC Press in 1955, with the help of Dr. Warner Wells of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

In this absorbing narrative, Dr. Chris Honey, an accomplished neurosurgeon at Vancouver General Hospital, weaves his personal journey together with case studies that reflect the thrill of scientific discovery and the limitations of medicine. Operating on a terminally ill child amid an Ebola outbreak in Liberia, he questions his preconceptions about what it means to "win" against a disease. Reflecting on his own path into neurosurgery, he brings to life a relatively new, high stakes field of medicine—one that historically demanded emotional detachment and often attracts extreme personalities

A silent epidemic of chronic illnesses afflicts tens of millions of Americans: These are diseases that are poorly understood, frequently marginalized, and can go undiagnosed and unrecognized altogether. Renowned writer Meghan O’Rourke delivers a revelatory investigation into this elusive category of “invisible” illness that encompasses autoimmune diseases, post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome, and now long COVID, synthesizing the personal and the universal to help all of us through this new frontier.

Lynda Van Devanter was the girl next door, the cheerleader who went to Catholic schools, enjoyed sports, and got along well with her four sisters and parents. After high school she attended nursing school and then did something that would shatter her secure world for the rest of her life: in 1969, she joined the army and was shipped to Vietnam. When she arrived in Vietnam her idealistic view of the war vanished quickly. She worked long hours in cramped, ill-equipped, understaffed operating rooms. She saw friends die.

In this revelatory memoir, doctor Cynthia Li shares the truth other doctors don’t always understand and often won’t share if they do - that chronic illness is complicated, and that treatment is not just a matter of test results and prescriptions but requires a more comprehensive approach. By sharing her own struggle with a disabling autoimmune crisis, which forced her to question her own conventional medical training and embrace the integrative principles of functional medicine, Li reveals the insider knowledge sufferers need to truly begin healing - mind, body, and spirit.

In this follow-up to the hugely popular Angels in the ER, Dr. Robert D. Lesslie shares more of his life-changing emergency-room encounters with nurses, doctors, patients, friends, and strangers who’ve served as God’s hands in the direst of circumstances. You’ll be deeply moved by these tales of both triumph and tragedy from the ER front line, as well as by the profound faith that has sustained Dr. Lesslie for more than 30 years on the job.

In the spirit of Oliver Sacks Awakenings and the TV series House, Dr. Eric Manheimer's Twelve Patients is a memoir from the medical director of Bellevue Hospital that uses the plights of 12 very different patients - from dignitaries at the nearby UN, to supermax prisoners from Riker's Island, to illegal immigrants, and Wall Street tycoons - to illustrate larger societal issues.

In an audiobook that is The Big Sick meets Dad Is Fat, Jeannie Gaffigan, writer/director/producer/accused supermom and wife of best-selling author/comedian Jim Gaffigan, writes with humor and heart about the pear-sized brain tumor she had removed, the toll it took on her enormous family, and the priceless lessons she learned along the way.

Internationally acclaimed neurosurgeon Dr Eben Alexander always considered himself a man of science. His unwavering belief in evidence-based medicine fuelled a career in the top medical institutions of the world. But all this was set to change. One morning in 2008 he fell into a coma after suffering a rare form of bacterial meningitis. Scans of his brain revealed massive damage. Death was deemed the most likely outcome.

Cory Friedman woke up one morning when he was five years old with the uncontrollable urge to twitch his neck. From that day forward his life became a hell of irrepressible tics and involuntary utterances, and Cory embarked on an excruciating journey from specialist to specialist to discover the cause of his disease. Soon it became unclear what tics were symptoms of his disease and what were side effects of the countless combinations of drugs. The only certainty is that it kept getting worse. Simply put: Cory Friedman's life was a living hell.

As revelatory as Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal, physician and award-winning author Louise Aronson’s Elderhood is an essential, empathetic look at a vital but often disparaged stage of life. For more than 5,000 years, 'old' has been defined as beginning between the ages of 60 and 70. That means most people alive today will spend more years in elderhood than in childhood, and many will be elders for 40 years or more. Yet at the very moment that humans are living longer than ever before, we’ve made old age into a disease.

A riveting exploration of the most difficult and important part of what doctors do, by Yale School of Medicine physician Dr. Lisa Sanders, author of the monthly New York Times Magazine column "Diagnosis", the inspiration for the hit Fox TV series House, M.D. In Every Patient Tells a Story, Dr. Lisa Sanders takes us bedside to witness the process of solving diagnostic dilemmas, providing a firsthand account of the expertise and intuition that lead a doctor to make the right diagnosis.

As a retired brain surgeon, Henry Marsh thought he understood illness, but he was unprepared for the impact of his diagnosis of advanced cancer. And Finally explores what happens when someone who has spent a lifetime on the frontline of life and death finds himself contemplating what might be his own death sentence. As he navigates the bewildering transition from doctor to patient, he is haunted by past failures and projects yet to be completed, and frustrated by the inconveniences of illness and old age.

Heart disease is the number-one killer in the world. Despite ever-advancing medical procedures and more powerful pharmaceutical drugs, the rate of heart disease continues to rise. According to Dr. Stephen Hussey, this is due in part to misunderstandings about how the heart really functions and how to keep it healthy. These misunderstandings result in improper medical approaches and off-target intervention therapies.

Michele Harper is a female African-American emergency room physician in a profession that is overwhelmingly male and white. Brought up in Washington, DC, in a complicated family, she went to Harvard, where she met her husband. They stayed together through medical school until two months before she was scheduled to join the staff of a hospital in central Philadelphia, when he told her he couldn't move with her. Her marriage at an end, Harper began her new life in a new city, in a new job, as a newly single woman.