Medical Professional

In Good Blood, best-selling writer Julian Guthrie tells the gripping tale of the race to cure a horrible affliction known as Rh disease that stalked families and caused a mother’s immune system to attack her own unborn child. The story is anchored by two very different men on two continents: Dr. John Gorman in New York, who would land on a brilliant yet contrarian idea, and the unassuming Australian whose almost magical blood - and his unyielding devotion to donating it - would save millions of lives.

Against a global backdrop of wartime suffering and postwar hope, Borrowing Life gathers the personal histories of the men and women behind the team that enabled and performed the modern medical miracle of the world's first successful organ transplant.

Ally was at a breaking point when she woke up in a psych ward at the age of 18. She couldn't put a sentence together, let alone take a shower, eat a meal, or pick up a phone. What had gone wrong? In recent years, she had produced a feature film, a popular reality show for a major network, and had acted in an off-Broadway play. But now Ally was pushed to a psychotic break after struggling since she was seven years old with physical symptoms that no doctor could explain - everything from joint pain to night sweats, memory loss, nausea, and brain fog.

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.

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.

As a teenager, Molly Case underwent an operation that saved her life. Nearly a decade later, she finds herself in the operating room again - this time as a trainee nurse. She learns to care for her patients, sharing not only their pain, but also life-affirming moments of hope. In doing so, she offers a compelling account of the processes that keep them alive, from respiratory examinations to surgical prep, and of the extraordinary moments of human connection that sustain both nurse and patient.

Stuart Jamieson's story is the story of four decades of advances in heart surgery. Taut, elegantly crafted, and ever-attentive to the patients for whom he was the last best chance, Close to the Sun is an adventurous, riveting account based on the experience of over 40,000 heart surgeries, where everything was on the line every moment in the O.R.

When Dr. David Hosack tilled the country's first botanical garden in the Manhattan soil more than 200 years ago, he didn't just dramatically alter the New York landscape; he left a monumental legacy of advocacy for public health and wide-ranging support for the sciences. In melodic prose, historian Victoria Johnson eloquently chronicles Hosack's tireless career to reveal the breadth of his impact. The result is a lush portrait of the man who gave voice to a new, deeply American understanding of the powers and perils of nature.

A brutal siege. A forgotten heroine. A war-torn romance. And a historian determined to uncover the truth. Untold millions who saw Band of Brothers can finally know the whole story of what happened to American soldiers and civilians in Bastogne during that arduous Winter of 1944/45. In the television version of Band of Brothers, a passing reference is made to an African nurse assisting in an aid station in Bastogne. When military historian Martin King watched the episode, he had to know who that woman was; thus began a multi-year odyssey.

Acclaimed CBS News reporter Barry Petersen writes about hearing the unimaginable; what it meant, what it still means, what he did---and didn't do---and how this beautiful love story needs to be heard by the thousands of families who have already heard that same devastating diagnosis: early onset Alzheimer's disease. Even though Barry has spent his long-time, award-winning television career covering wars and events that shaped the world, he was not even slightly prepared for what happened to his darling wife, Jan, and how it would impact his life.

If you’ve ever had a friend, relative, or colleague with cancer, this is the book for you. Wondering what to say, how to help, and/or what to know about your friend with cancer? Now, for the first time, your questions will be answered in this supportive and instructional guide on how to be there for your loved one in his or her time of need.

In Take Me Home from the Oscars, Schwab tells for the first time her story of living an amazing life in television while suffering from rheumatoid arthritis. Schwab recounts with incredible honesty how on the same day she produced and appeared in a major makeover segment for Live with Regis & Kelly in New York and then raced to Chicago to appear on Oprah!, all while balancing medications to ward off the relentless pain that plagued her on-camera and off.

In Mercies in Disguise, acclaimed New York Times reporter and best-selling author Gina Kolata tells the story of the Baxleys, an upstanding family in small-town South Carolina. Many of them were doctors, but still, they are struck down by an inscrutable illness. Finally they discover the cause of the disease after a remarkable sequence of providential events. Meanwhile science, progressing for 50 years along a parallel track, handed the Baxleys a question - not a cure but a blood test that would reveal who had the gene for the disease.

Writer and political activist Mike Marqusee was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a type of blood cancer, in the summer of 2007. At first, disinclined to share his misery with others, he was reluctant to write about his illness. But he then came to realize that doing so provided a precious continuity with his life as a writer before contracting the disease, and a way of reaching out to a wider world that the illness made physically less accessible.

In this powerful, wide-ranging, and emotional story about the limits of medical knowledge, Abel discovers why she wasn't diagnosed with celiac as a child. She considers how environmental fears and Internet anecdotes lead people to avoid gluten. And she grapples with the question that confronts us all: how to live calmly, even joyfully, in the face of uncertainty.

Flight for Life is the heart-stopping account of one of the most gripping rescue missions in African history, told by a doctor involved in saving the lives of Nigerian workers who became victims of a tragic American chemical company explosion. Dr. Stewart and his colleague moved mountains and cut red tape to fly patients to one of the premiere burn centers in the United States.

When Laura Jensen Walker was diagnosed with breast cancer on her first wedding anniversary, she found humor to be healing in the midst of terrifying circumstances. In this energetic and hope-filled book, she draws on her faith and her sense of humor to encourage others going through the same thing. From discovering that "bald is beautiful" to navigating the world of saline breast implants, Walker recounts the highs and lows of coping with cancer.

When Hamed Amiri was 10 years old, he watched his mother give a speech in his home town of Herat, Afghanistan, speaking out for women’s rights and education and against the ruling Taliban. That night, an order was given for her execution. The family packed up their most precious belongings and escaped in darkness, starting what would be a long and dangerous journey. But his mother's was not the only life in danger. Hamed’s older brother suffered from a rare heart condition, and this escape offered a chance of life-saving treatment in the West.

Anders Bortne has a nice life in Oslo. Married to a wonderful woman, with two delightful children, his days are occupied by his creative work. Not all is well though, Anders has been sleepless for 16 years, and it is taking its toll on his life and his family. No remedy has gone untested: sleeping pills, yoga, herbs, acupuncture, hypnosis, but none has worked. What do we know about the most important hours of the day? What is the history of sleep, and how is our health affected?

As one of the world's leading brain surgeons, Dr Jandial is the last hope for many patients who have extreme forms of cancer - patients who can't be saved, but deserve more time. Life on a Knife's Edge is his account of the resilience, courage and belief he has witnessed in his patients, and the lessons he has learned from them.