History & Commentary

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells - taken without her knowledge - became one of the most important tools in medicine....

The Emperor of All Maladies reveals the many faces of an iconic, shape-shifting disease that is the defining plague of our generation....

As a war raged across the world, young American women flocked to work, painting watches, clocks, and military dials with a special luminous substance made from radium....

An oddly compelling, often hilarious exploration of the strange lives of our bodies postmortem....

From the author of The Emperor of All Maladies, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and The Gene, a #1 New York Times bestseller, comes his most spectacular book yet, an exploration of medicine and our radical new ability to manipulate cells....

James A. Garfield may have been the most extraordinary man ever elected president....

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is essential listening for understanding the history, philosophy, and evolution of science....

A fascinating account of the world’s most famous disease - polio - told as you have never heard it before. Epidemics of paralysis began to rage in the early 1900s, seemingly out of nowhere....

In The Butchering Art, the historian Lindsey Fitzharris reveals the shocking world of 19th-century surgery on the eve of profound transformation....

Author Cory Franklin, MD, who headed the hospital's intensive care unit from the 1970s through the 1990s, shares his most unique and bizarre experiences....

Medical Apartheid is the first and only comprehensive history of medical experimentation on African Americans....

Mukherjee animates the quest to understand human heredity and its surprising influence on our lives, personalities, identities, fates, and choices....

Neurosurgeon and professor of neurosurgery Theodore H. Schwartz explores what it’s like to hold the scalpel, wield the drill, extract a tumor, fix a bullet hole, and remove a blood clot—when every second can mean life or death.

And the Band Played On is both a tribute to these heroic people and a stinging indictment of the institutions that failed the nation so badly....

Over the past 50 years, rates of autoimmunity and chronic disease have exploded. In this provocative book, Dr. Thomas Cowan argues for a direct causal relationship to a corresponding increase in the number of vaccines American children typically receive....

To these seven narratives of neurological disorder Dr. Sacks brings the same humanity, poetic observation, and infectious sense of wonder....

A brilliant and courageous doctor reveals, in gripping accounts of true cases, the power and limits of modern medicine....

In the winter of 1918, at the height of World War I, history's most lethal influenza virus erupted in an army camp in Kansas, moved east with American troops, then exploded, killing as many as 100 million people worldwide....

The Great Plague is one of the most compelling events in human history—even more so now, when the notion of plague has never loomed larger as a contemporary public concern....

Historian Elsa Richardson leads us on a tour of the gut, exploring all the ways that we have imagined, theorized, and probed the mysteries of the gastroenterological system.

In this eyewitness story of how the anti-vaccine movement grew into a dangerous and prominent anti-science element in American politics, Dr. Peter J. Hotez describes the devastating impacts it has had on Americans’ health and lives....

A journey through history's most famous limbs, organs, and appendages, from TikTok medical historian Dr Suzie Edge....

An incisive yet personal look at the science and history of the most common surgery performed in America—the cesarean section—and an exposé on the disturbing state of maternal medical care.

Whether you're a seasoned herbalist or just starting your journey, Herbalism—Powerful Lost Remedies is your ultimate guide to harnessing the power of nature for your health and well-being.

A remarkable story of the scientists behind a long-forgotten and life-saving cure: the healing viruses that can conquer antibiotic resistant bacterial infections.

A remarkable story of the scientists behind a long-forgotten and life-saving cure: the healing viruses that can conquer antibiotic resistant bacterial infections.

In A Brief History On The Black Death, we embark on a gripping journey through one of humanity's most devastating catastrophes—the Black Death. This meticulously researched and engaging book offers a concise yet comprehensive account of the infamous pandemic that swept across Europe in the 14th century, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. Drawing from a vast array of historical sources and scholarly research, this captivating exploration delves into the origins, spread, and impact of the Black Death with meticulous detail.

The stomach is notoriously outspoken. It growls, gurgles, and grumbles while other organs remain silent. For centuries humans have puzzled over this rowdy organ, deliberating on the extent of its influence over cognition, mental wellbeing, and emotions, and wondering how the gut became so central to our sense of self. Traveling from ancient Greece to Victorian England, eighteenth-century France to modern America, historian Elsa Richardson leads us on a tour of the gut, exploring all the ways that we have imagined, theorized, and probed the mysteries of the gastroenterological system.

Contrary to the familiar story, medication did not improve during the Scientific Revolution. Yet somehow, between 1650 and 1740, the domestic female and the physician switched places in the cultural consciousness: she became the ineffective, potentially dangerous quack, he the knowledgeable, trustworthy expert.

The Aging Revolution is the story of Butler and his disciples: women and men who saw older distressed adults in hospitals and homes, and worse: being ignored by most of the medical establishment. These revolutionaries could not ignore the suffering, and they set out—individually and collectively—to create entirely new ways of caring for aging adults to ease their suffering and improve their quality and length of life.