100 Best Public Health Books of All Time

We've researched and ranked the best public health books in the world, based on recommendations from world experts, sales data, and millions of reader ratings. Learn more

Featuring recommendations from Reid Hoffman, Charles T. Munger, Malcolm Gladwell, and 225 other experts.
1
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 first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. If you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they’d weigh more than 50 million metric tons—as much as a hundred Empire State Buildings. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets... more
Recommended by Carl Zimmer, A.J. Jacobs, and 2 others.

Carl ZimmerYes. This is a fascinating book on so many different levels. It is really compelling as the story of the author trying to uncover the history of the woman from whom all these cells came. (Source)

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2
This powerful and inspiring book shows how one person can make a difference, as Kidder tells the true story of a gifted man who is in love with the world and has set out to do all he can to cure it.

Tracy Kidder is a winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the author of the bestsellers The Soul of a New Machine, House, Among Schoolchildren, and Home Town. He has been described by the Baltimore Sun as the "master of the non-fiction narrative." This powerful and inspiring new book shows how one person can make a difference, as Kidder tells the true story...
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Richard BransonToday is World Book Day, a wonderful opportunity to address this #ChallengeRichard sent in by Mike Gonzalez of New Jersey: Make a list of your top 65 books to read in a lifetime. (Source)

Bill Gates[On Bill Gates's reading list in 2011.] (Source)

Roger ThurowYes, and I have chosen this is in connection with social entrepreneurship and what Yunus does with social business. So, this is on the medical and health side, and poverty and hunger and malnourishment are distinctly a part of that. Mountains Beyond Mountains looks at the work of Dr Paul Farmer setting sail against the inequities in the healthcare world. It’s practical and inspirational. It’s... (Source)

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3

The Hot Zone

A highly infectious, deadly virus from the central African rain forest suddenly appears in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. There is no cure. In a few days 90 percent of its victims are dead. A secret military SWAT team of soldiers and scientists is mobilized to stop the outbreak of this exotic "hot" virus. The Hot Zone tells this dramatic story, giving a hair-raising account of the appearance of rare and lethal viruses and their "crashes" into the human race. Shocking, frightening, and impossible to ignore, The Hot Zone proves that truth really is scarier than fiction. less
Recommended by Jon Najarian, Pierre Haski, and 2 others.

Jon NajarianI believe both the corona virus and ebola have a bat connection. Scary, but great book on ebola: Hot Zone by Richard Preston https://t.co/jGEjbrB7pZ (Source)

Pierre Haski@ChuBailiang The hot zone, it made my days during SARS in Beijing, a great book! https://t.co/8E8AYgIhp7 (Source)

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4
Upon its first publication twenty years ago, And The Band Played on was quickly recognized as a masterpiece of investigatve reporting. An international bestseller, a nominee for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and made into a critically acclaimed movie, Shilts' expose revealed why AIDS was allowed to spread unchecked during the early 80's while the most trusted institutions ignored or denied the threat. One of the few true modern classics, it changed and framed how AIDS was discussed in the following years. Now republished in a special 20th Anniversary edition, And the Band... more

Jonathan RauchA harrowing vision of what a world without marriage finally looks like. (Source)

Clara JefferyBook is great but the movie pretty great too and horrifying similar failure of politicized science, just a way shorter timetable now https://t.co/TRUiKs9WTR (Source)

Arthur AmmannHe was concerned because his friends were infected and some of them were dying. (Source)

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5
From Steven Johnson, the dynamic thinker routinely compared to James Gleick, Dava Sobel, and Malcolm Gladwell, The Ghost Map is a riveting page-turner about a real-life historical hero, Dr. John Snow. It's the summer of 1854, and London is just emerging as one of the first modern cities in the world. But lacking the infrastructure—garbage removal, clean water, sewers—necessary to support its rapidly expanding population, the city has become the perfect breeding ground for a terrifying disease no one knows how to cure. As the cholera outbreak takes hold, a physician and a local curate... more

Seth MnookinThe Ghost Map is a book that I oftentimes give to people to show them how cool and exciting and accessible and gripping stories about scientific discoveries can be. (Source)

Alison AlvarezI read the Ghost Map, a book about 1854 London Cholera outbreak. The outbreak was stopped because of a map created by Dr. John Snow. You can see hints of this map in some of our customer discovery tools because it was such an effective way of pinpointing a solution to a seemingly insurmountable problem. (Source)

Stephen EvansJohnson looks at London during a specific moment in time, August 1854, and focuses on a particular incident, an outbreak of cholera in Soho, in Central London. (Source)

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6
Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming the dangers of childbirth, injury, and disease from harrowing to manageable. But when it comes to the inescapable realities of aging and death, what medicine can do often runs counter to what it should.

Through eye-opening research and gripping stories of his own patients and family, Atul Gawande, a practicing surgeon, reveals the suffering this dynamic has produced. Nursing homes, devoted above all to safety, battle with residents over the food they are allowed to eat and the choices they are allowed to make. Doctors,...
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Malcolm GladwellAmerican medicine, Being Mortal reminds us, has prepared itself for life but not for death. This is Atul Gawande's most powerful--and moving--book. (Source)

Barack ObamaPresident Obama is spending his Hawaiian vacation playing golf, getting together with high school friends and reading a handful of dark novels set in foreign lands, according to a book list released by the White House Wednesday. The presidential reading list includes [...] two works of non-fiction for the trip: [...] "Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End" by Dr. Atul Gawande. (Source)

Indra NooyiJust finished "Being Mortal" by Atul Gawande. A beautifully written book. Captivating. (Source)

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7

The Emperor of All Maladies

A Biography of Cancer

Alternate Cover Edition ISBN 1439107955 (ISBN13: 9781439107959)

The Emperor of All Maladies is a magnificent, profoundly humane “biography” of cancer—from its first documented appearances thousands of years ago through the epic battles in the twentieth century to cure, control, and conquer it to a radical new understanding of its essence.

Physician, researcher, and award-winning science writer, Siddhartha Mukherjee examines cancer with a cellular biologist’s precision, a historian’s perspective, and a biographer’s passion. The result is an astonishingly lucid and...
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Recommended by Bill Gates, Timothy J. Jorgensen, and 2 others.

Bill GatesI loved [this] brilliant book about cancer. (Source)

Timothy J. JorgensenA tremendous amount of cancer biology comes through in that book through the eyes of the victims and the people up close and personal. (Source)

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8
Explaining what William McNeill called The Rise of the West has become the central problem in the study of global history. In Guns, Germs, and Steel Jared Diamond presents the biologist's answer: geography, demography, and ecological happenstance. Diamond evenhandedly reviews human history on every continent since the Ice Age at a rate that emphasizes only the broadest movements of peoples and ideas. Yet his survey is binocular: one eye has the rather distant vision of the evolutionary biologist, while the other eye--and his heart--belongs to the people of New Guinea, where he... more

Bill GatesFascinating.... Lays a foundation for understanding human history. (Source)

Daniel EkA brilliant Pulitzer Prize-winning book about how the modern world was formed, analyzing how societies developed differently on different continents. (Source)

Yuval Noah HarariA book of big questions, and big answers. The book turned me from a historian of medieval warfare into a student of humankind. (Source)

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9
Every day, we make decisions on topics ranging from personal investments to schools for our children to the meals we eat to the causes we champion. Unfortunately, we often choose poorly. The reason, the authors explain, is that, being human, we all are susceptible to various biases that can lead us to blunder. Our mistakes make us poorer and less healthy; we often make bad decisions involving education, personal finance, health care, mortgages and credit cards, the family, and even the planet itself.

Thaler and Sunstein invite us to enter an alternative world, one that takes our...
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Dan ArielyNudge is a very important book. One of the reasons Nudge is so important is because it’s taking these ideas and applying them to the policy domain. Here are the mistakes we make. Here are the ways marketers are trying to influence us. Here’s the way we might be able to fight back. If policymakers understood these principles, what could they do? The other important thing about the book is that it... (Source)

Eric RiesA pioneer in behavioral economics and just recently awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics, his classic book on how to make better decisions. (Source)

Ryan HolidayThis might feel like a weird book to include, but I think it presents another side of strategy that is too often forgotten. It’s not always about bold actors and strategic thrusts. Sometimes strategy is about subtle influence. Sometimes it is framing and small tweaks that change behavior. We can have big aims, but get there with little moves. This book has excellent examples of that kind of... (Source)

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10
Lia Lee was born in 1982 to a family of recent Hmong immigrants, and soon developed symptoms of epilepsy. By 1988 she was living at home but was brain dead after a tragic cycle of misunderstanding, over-medication, and culture clash: "What the doctors viewed as clinical efficiency the Hmong viewed as frosty arrogance." The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down is a tragedy of Shakespearean dimensions, written with the deepest of human feeling. Sherwin Nuland said of the account, "There are no villains in Fadiman's tale, just as there are no heroes. People are presented as she saw them,... more

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Don't have time to read the top Public Health books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.

Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:

  • Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
  • Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
  • Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
11

The New York Times bestselling author of Better and Complications reveals the surprising power of the ordinary checklist

We live in a world of great and increasing complexity, where even the most expert professionals struggle to master the tasks they face. Longer training, ever more advanced technologies‚neither seems to prevent grievous errors. But in a hopeful turn, acclaimed surgeon and writer Atul Gawande finds a remedy in the humblest and simplest of techniques: the checklist.

First introduced decades ago by the U.S. Air Force, checklists...

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Bill GatesA great read. (Source)

David AllenAtul is really talking about how absolutely powerful checklists are, and I think he makes a very creative point: that checklist are not just some static, boring thing. They actually allow you to do excellent work and free up your brain by not having to keep remembering what you need to do when. That then allows your brain to be a lot more creative about whatever it is you’re doing. (Source)

Timothy FerrissRamit and I are both obsessed with checklists and love a book by Atul Gawande titled The Checklist Manifesto. I have this book on a shelf in my living room, cover out, as a constant reminder. (Source)

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12
“Science writing as detective story at its best.” —Jennifer Ouellette, Scientific American

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year, a Scientific American Best Book of the Year, and a Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Ebola, SARS, Hendra, AIDS, and countless other deadly viruses all have one thing in common: the bugs that transmit these diseases all originate in wild animals and pass to humans by a process called spillover. In this gripping account, David Quammen takes the reader along on this astonishing...
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Recommended by Kaleigh Rogers, and 1 others.

Kaleigh Rogers@rachsyme Spillover is a fantastic book though. I'd also recommend Pandemic and/or The Fever by @soniashah (Source)

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13
At the height of WWI, 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. It killed more people in twenty-four months than AIDS killed in twenty-four years, more in a year than the Black Death killed in a century. But this was not the Middle Ages, and 1918 marked the first collision of science and epidemic disease. Magisterial in its breadth of perspective and depth of research and now revised to reflect the growing danger of the avian flu, The Great Influenza is... more

Greg Dworkin@heshsson yes1 brilliant book, which also explains flu better than most other things you will read (Source)

Kyle Bass@Holykisses Remember the Great Influenza of 1918 (amazing book by Barry)...40-50 million died at a 10% kill rate. The higher the rate, the faster it is likely to burn itself out. 10% is a global pandemic nightmare. (Source)

Dave CollumI guess it is a good time to point out that "The Great Influenza" is a great book. If you think modern medicine would have mitigate this one, you haven't read the book. https://t.co/t4uHPgfLE6 (Source)

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14
From two of our most fiercely moral voices, a passionate call to arms against our era’s most pervasive human rights violation: the oppression of women and girls in the developing world.

With Pulitzer Prize winners Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn as our guides, we undertake an odyssey through Africa and Asia to meet the extraordinary women struggling there, among them a Cambodian teenager sold into sex slavery and an Ethiopian woman who suffered devastating injuries in childbirth. Drawing on the breadth of their combined reporting experience, Kristof and WuDunn depict our...
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Zainab SalbiHalf the Sky was one of the tipping points in the discussion of how we re-energise the women’s movement and expand it to a mainstream audience that is more inclusive of women and men; individuals who are deeply concerned about global issues but who have not necessarily been aware about women’s issues before. This book elevated the topic of women’s rights and made it acceptable for every woman and... (Source)

Mia FarrowWomen in so much of the world are doing so much of the labour without having any of the rights or reaping their share of the profits. (Source)

Pierre FerrariOne of the most powerful books I've ever read on #GenderEquality is Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by @NickKristof & @WuDunn: https://t.co/uj5rfxlmZm. Let's do more to support women in our daily lives! #WomenWednesday #SDGs (Source)

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15
Factfulness: The stress-reducing habit of only carrying opinions for which you have strong supporting facts.

When asked simple questions about global trends—what percentage of the world’s population live in poverty; why the world’s population is increasing; how many girls finish school—we systematically get the answers wrong. So wrong that a chimpanzee choosing answers at random will consistently outguess teachers, journalists, Nobel laureates, and investment bankers.

In Factfulness, Professor of International Health and global TED phenomenon...
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Barack ObamaAs 2018 draws to a close, I’m continuing a favorite tradition of mine and sharing my year-end lists. It gives me a moment to pause and reflect on the year through the books I found most thought-provoking, inspiring, or just plain loved. It also gives me a chance to highlight talented authors – some who are household names and others who you may not have heard of before. Here’s my best of 2018... (Source)

Bill GatesThis was a breakthrough to me. The framework Hans enunciates is one that took me decades of working in global development to create for myself, and I could have never expressed it in such a clear way. I’m going to try to use this model moving forward. (Source)

Nigel WarburtonIt’s an interesting book, it’s very challenging. It may be over-optimistic. But it does have this startling effect on the readers of challenging widely held assumptions. It’s a plea to look at the empirical data, and not just assume that you know how things are now. (Source)

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16

When Breath Becomes Air

At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from a naïve medical student “possessed,” as he wrote, “by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life” into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the... more

Bill GatesI don’t know how Kalanithi found the physical strength to write this book while he was so debilitated by the disease and then potent chemotherapy. But I’m so glad he did. He spent his whole brief life searching for meaning in one way or another -- through books, writing, medicine, surgery, and science. I’m grateful that, by reading this book, I got to witness a small part of that journey. I just... (Source)

Ryan HolidayDespite its popularity, When Breath Becomes Air is actually underrated. It’s make-you-cry good. (Source)

Bethany S. MandelMore Shabbat reading recommendations: This book was breathtaking and such a powerful advertisement for the joy of parenthood. https://t.co/V8BH97eiL9 (Source)

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17
Recommended by Arthur Ammann, and 1 others.

Arthur AmmannJust as in the Old Testament, I don’t think people always want to hear the message of a prophet. (Source)

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18
"On par with Rachel Carson's Silent Spring ... This chilling exploration of the decline of public health should be taken seriously by leaders and policymakers around the world."--Publishers Weekly, Starred Review In this meticulously researched and ultimately explosive new book by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the New York Times bestseller The Coming Plague, Laurie Garrett takes on perhaps the most crucial global issue of our time. She asks: is our collective health in a state of decline? If so, how dire is this crisis and has the public health... more

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19
Pathologies of Power uses harrowing stories of life—and death—in extreme situations to interrogate our understanding of human rights. Paul Farmer, a physician and anthropologist with twenty years of experience working in Haiti, Peru, and Russia, argues that promoting the social and economic rights of the world’s poor is the most important human rights struggle of our times. With passionate eyewitness accounts from the prisons of Russia and the beleaguered villages of Haiti and Chiapas, this book links the lived experiences of individual victims to a broader analysis of structural... more

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20
"Jarvious Cotton's great-great-grandfather could not vote as a slave. His great-grandfather was beaten to death by the Klu Klux Klan for attempting to vote. His grandfather was prevented from voting by Klan intimidation; his father was barred by poll taxes and literacy tests. Today, Cotton cannot vote because he, like many black men in the United States, has been labeled a felon and is currently on parole."

As the United States celebrates the nation's "triumph over race" with the election of Barack Obama, the majority of young black men in major American cities are locked behind...
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Recommended by Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Temin, and 2 others.

Mark ZuckerbergI read The New Jim Crow, a study of how the U.S. justice system disproportionately criminalizes and jails blacks and Latinos. Making our criminal justice system fairer and more effective is a huge challenge for our country. I’m going to keep learning about this topic, but some things are already clear: We can’t jail our way to a just society, and our current system isn’t working (adapted with... (Source)

Peter TeminThe new Jim Crow that Michelle Alexander is talking about is mass incarceration. (Source)

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Don't have time to read the top Public Health books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.

Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:

  • Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
  • Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
  • Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
21
Why We Sleep is an important and fascinating book…Walker taught me a lot about this basic activity that every person on Earth needs. I suspect his book will do the same for you.” —Bill Gates

A New York Times bestseller and international sensation, this “stimulating and important book” (Financial Times) is a fascinating dive into the purpose and power of slumber.

With two appearances on CBS This Morning and Fresh Air's most popular interview of 2017, Matthew Walker has made abundantly clear that sleep is one of the most...
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Bill GatesExplains how neglecting sleep undercuts your creativity, problem solving, decision-making, learning, memory, heart health, brain health, mental health, emotional well-being, immune system, and even your life span. (Source)

Brad FeldSeveral friends, who know I both love to sleep and am intrigued with how sleep works, recommended that I read Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams. It was excellent. While my self-assessment of my sleep habits are very positive, I learned a few things. More importantly, I now have a much better understanding of the “Why” surrounding sleep, especially around sleep’s importance to... (Source)

Alexis Ohanian Sr.Agree! Best book I've read this year. Wasted so many hours just proving to myself I'd be the last one up working at @reddit and for what??? Stupid. Diminishing marginal returns after enough hours without sleep. https://t.co/cT7fDNBF3A (Source)

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22
An alternate cover edition exists here.

The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire. Just as a single sick person can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a small but precisely targeted push cause a fashion trend, the popularity of a new product, or a drop in the crime rate. This widely acclaimed bestseller, in which Malcolm Gladwell explores and brilliantly illuminates the tipping point...
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Kevin RoseBunch of really good information in here on how to make ideas go viral. This could be good to apply to any kind of products or ideas you may have. Definitely, check out The Tipping Point, which is one of my favorites. (Source)

Seth GodinMalcolm Gladwell's breakthrough insight was to focus on the micro-relationships between individuals, which helped organizations realize that it's not about the big ads and the huge charity balls... it's about setting the stage for the buzz to start. (Source)

Andy SternI think that when we talk about making change, it is much more about macro change, like in policy. This book reminds you that at times when you're building big movements, or trying to elect significant decision-makers in politics, sometimes it's the little things that make a difference. Ever since the book was written, we've become very used to the idea of things going viral unexpectedly and then... (Source)

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23
In fascinating detail, Sam Quinones chronicles how, over the past 15 years, enterprising sugar cane farmers in a small county on the west coast of Mexico created a unique distribution system that brought black tar heroin—the cheapest, most addictive form of the opiate, 2 to 3 times purer than its white powder cousin—to the veins of people across the United States. Communities where heroin had never been seen before—from Charlotte, NC and Huntington, WVA, to Salt Lake City and Portland, OR—were overrun with it. Local police and residents were stunned. How could heroin, long considered a drug... more
Recommended by David Heinemeier Hansson, and 1 others.

David Heinemeier HanssonDreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic accounts how a few tiny studies on low rates of opium addiction for hospital patients lead to a whole new paradigm for treating pain in the US. From mid 90s to late 2000s, opium pain pills were basically considered non-addictive by much of the medical community. This led to crazy over-prescription, subsequent addiction, and a whole new market... (Source)

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24
Paul Farmer has battled AIDS in rural Haiti and deadly strains of drug-resistant tuberculosis in the slums of Peru. A physician-anthropologist with more than fifteen years in the field, Farmer writes from the front lines of the war against these modern plagues and shows why, even more than those of history, they target the poor. This "peculiarly modern inequality" that permeates AIDS, TB, malaria, and typhoid in the modern world, and that feeds emerging (or re-emerging) infectious diseases such as Ebola and cholera, is laid bare in Farmer's harrowing stories of sickness and suffering. more
Recommended by Bill Gates, and 1 others.

Bill GatesIn this book he really opens your eyes to the vast differences between the health of the rich and the health of the poor. (Source)

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25

Polio

An American Story

Here David Oshinsky tells the gripping story of the polio terror and of the intense effort to find a cure, from the March of Dimes to the discovery of the Salk and Sabin vaccines--and beyond. Drawing on newly available papers of Jonas Salk, Albert Sabin and other key players, Oshinsky paints a suspenseful portrait of the race for the cure, weaving a dramatic tale centered on the furious rivalry between Salk and Sabin. He also tells the story of Isabel Morgan, perhaps the most talented of all polio researchers, who might have beaten Salk to the prize if she had not retired to raise a... more
Recommended by Bill Gates, Seth Mnookin, and 2 others.

Bill GatesInfluenced the decision that Melinda and I made to make polio eradication the top priority of the foundation, as well as my own personal priority. (Source)

Seth MnookinWhat I find so impressive about this book is that Oshinsky really does cover the whole history of a disease but does so in a way that you never feel you’re getting a CliffsNotes version. It’s a pretty unwieldy topic: you could write an entire book just about the year the polio vaccine was rolled out, or what happened since then, or you could write a book, as Paul Offit did, just about the Cutter... (Source)

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26
The full inside story of the breathtaking rise and shocking collapse of a multibillion-dollar startup, by the prize-winning journalist who first broke the story and pursued it to the end in the face of pressure and threats from the CEO and her lawyers.

In 2014, Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes was widely seen as the female Steve Jobs: a brilliant Stanford dropout whose startup "unicorn" promised to revolutionize the medical industry with a machine that would make blood tests significantly faster and easier. Backed by investors such as Larry Ellison and Tim Draper,...
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Recommended by Bill Gates, Brad Feld, Andrew Chen, and 15 others.

Bill GatesA bunch of my friends recommended this one to me. Carreyrou gives you the definitive insider’s look at the rise and fall of Theranos. The story is even crazier than I expected, and I found myself unable to put it down once I started. This book has everything: elaborate scams, corporate intrigue, magazine cover stories, ruined family relationships, and the demise of a company once valued at nearly... (Source)

Brad FeldEvery entrepreneur and VC should read this book. John Carreyrou has done something important here. Maybe this book will finally put a nail in the phrase “fake it till you make it”, but I doubt it. The amount of lying, disingenuousness, blatant and unjustified self-promotion, and downright deceit that exists in entrepreneurship right now is at a local maximum. This always happens when... (Source)

Andrew ChenFinished “bad blood” on the Theranos scandal. Wow. Just wow. It’s a must read for everyone in tech and startups. Just 1-click buy it :) Amazing how far charisma and social proof got them. Here’s the NYT review of the book https://t.co/PyMGxfoG2R (Source)

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27
Michael Pollan's last book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, launched a national conversation about the American way of eating; now In Defense of Food shows us how to change it, one meal at a time. Pollan proposes a new answer to the question of what we should eat that comes down to seven simple but liberating words: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. Pollan's bracing and eloquent manifesto shows us how we can start making thoughtful food choices that will enrich our lives, enlarge our sense of what it means to be healthy, and bring pleasure back to eating.,,, less
Recommended by Richard Branson, Henry Dimbleby, and 2 others.

Richard BransonToday is World Book Day, a wonderful opportunity to address this #ChallengeRichard sent in by Mike Gonzalez of New Jersey: Make a list of your top 65 books to read in a lifetime. (Source)

Henry DimblebyPollan takes the science of food and shows where it’s been misapplied. (Source)

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28
What should we have for dinner? For omnivore's like ourselves, this simple question has always posed a dilemma: When you can eat just about anything nature (or the supermarket) has to offer, deciding what you should eat will inevitably stir anxiety, especially when some of the foods on offer might shorten your life. Today, buffeted by one food fad after another, America is suffering from what can only be described as a national eating disorder. The omnivore's dilemma has returned with a vengeance, as the cornucopia of the modern American supermarket and fast-food outlet confronts us with a... more

Barry EstabrookMichael Pollan looks at food production through four meals. One is a fast-food meal, the other is an industrial-scale organic meal, then there is a small-scale organic meal and finally he actually goes out and either grows or kills, in the case of the meat, the entire meal himself. That is the narrative. (Source)

Gabriel CoarnaMichael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma" --more precisely, the first 3rd of it-- was what first made me realize how badly the Earth, as an ecosystem, is out of balance. (Source)

Tristram StuartHe concludes that there is food out there that tastes good, is good for us and is good for the planet. (Source)

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29
Fast food has hastened the malling of our landscape, widened the chasm between rich and poor, fueled an epidemic of obesity, and propelled American cultural imperialism abroad. That's a lengthy list of charges, but here Eric Schlosser makes them stick with an artful mix of first-rate reportage, wry wit, and careful reasoning.

Schlosser's myth-shattering survey stretches from California's subdivisions where the business was born to the industrial corridor along the New Jersey Turnpike where many fast food's flavors are concocted. Along the way, he unearths a trove of fascinating,...
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Richard BransonToday is World Book Day, a wonderful opportunity to address this #ChallengeRichard sent in by Mike Gonzalez of New Jersey: Make a list of your top 65 books to read in a lifetime. (Source)

Carl HonoréThis book again pulled together a lot of things I was hearing about in a journalistic, methodical, rigorous fashion. I found it a very alarming read, but also a reassuring one. One of the charges leveled at those who sing the praises of slowness is that we can get tarred with the brush of new ageism or airy fairyness. I’m not at all from that school. I’m a journalist and rigorous, and I know that... (Source)

Barry EstabrookEric Schlosser takes apart a single fast-food meal and shows not only how it affects our health but also how the people who serve it to you are treated. He also looks at how the people in the slaughterhouses working with the cattle are treated, and so it shows you the true picture of the all-American meal – burgers and fries. (Source)

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A story of courage and risk-taking, House on Fire tells how smallpox, a disease that killed, blinded, and scarred millions over centuries of human history, was completely eradicated in a spectacular triumph of medicine and public health. Part autobiography, part mystery, the story is told by a man who was one of the architects of a radical vaccination scheme that became a key strategy in ending the horrible disease when it was finally contained in India.

In House on Fire, William H. Foege describes his own experiences in public health and details the remarkable...
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Recommended by Bill Gates, Thomas Frieden, and 2 others.

Bill GatesThis book gives you a great view from the front lines of that battle. (Source)

Thomas FriedenHouse on Fire is a fantastic book about the fight to eradicate smallpox. Before becoming director, Foege led the efforts to eradicate smallpox in India and Africa and came up with a key innovation that led to eradication. As one of the staff at the CDC said of this book, “Even though we know how it comes out, it’s still a page-turner”. It’s so exciting. (Source)

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31
If a man has lost a leg or an eye, he knows he has lost a leg or an eye; but if he has lost a self—himself—he cannot know it, because he is no longer there to know it. Dr. Oliver Sacks recounts the stories of patients struggling to adapt to often bizarre worlds of neurological disorder. Here are people who can no longer recognize everyday objects or those they love; who are stricken with violent tics or shout involuntary obscenities; who have been dismissed as autistic or retarded, yet are gifted with uncanny artistic or mathematical talents. If inconceivably strange, these brilliant tales... more

Suzanne O'SullivanI didn’t choose neurology because of it but the way Oliver Sacks writes about neurology is very compelling. (Source)

Tanya ByronThis is a seminal book that anyone who wants to work in mental health should read. It is a charming and gentle and also an honest exposé of what can happen to us when our mental health is compromised for whatever reason. (Source)

Bradley VoytekI can’t imagine one day waking up and not knowing who my wife is, or seeing my wife and thinking that she was replaced by some sort of clone or robot. But that could happen to any of us. (Source)

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32
The struggle to perform well is universal: each one of us faces fatigue, limited resources, and imperfect abilities in whatever we do. But nowhere is this drive to do better more important than in medicine, where lives are on the line with every decision. In his new book, Atul Gawande explores how doctors strive to close the gap between best intentions and best performance in the face of obstacles that sometimes seem insurmountable. Gawande's gripping stories of diligence, ingenuity, and what it means to do right by people take us to battlefield surgical tents in Iraq, to labor and delivery... more
Recommended by Christina Reynolds, Elad Yom-Tov, and 2 others.

Christina ReynoldsInteresting book on medicine with broader applications for all of us. https://t.co/KUeHOPWMom (Source)

Elad Yom-TovHe has a way of explaining the medical world in a manner that is both compassionate but also very much data driven. (Source)

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33
When people ask Elizabeth Pisani what she does for a living, she says, "sex and drugs." As an epidemiologist researching AIDS, she's been involved with international efforts to halt the disease for fourteen years. With swashbuckling wit and fierce honesty, she dishes on herself and her colleagues as they try to prod reluctant governments to fund HIV prevention for the people who need it most—drug injectors, gay men, sex workers, and johns.Pisani chats with flamboyant Indonesian transsexuals about their boob jobs and watches Chinese streetwalkers turn away clients because their SUVs aren't... more

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34
An Advance Reader Copy exists here.

Award-winning New York Times reporter Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal reveals the dangerous, expensive, and dysfunctional American healthcare system, and tells us exactly what we can do to solve its myriad of problems.
It is well documented that our healthcare system has grave problems, but how, in only a matter of decades, did things get this bad? Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal doesn't just explain the symptoms; she diagnoses and treats the...
more
Recommended by Ezekiel J. Emanuel, Ro Khanna, and 2 others.

Ezekiel J. EmanuelThrough vivid, heart wrenching stories and trenchant analysis, Libby Rosenthal unveils the irrationality, indifference, harmfulness, and downright unfairness of the American health care system that can often seem more driven by profit than caring and compassion. She also offers tremendously helpful advice to patients on how to navigate the system to ensure they get the best outcomes. (Source)

Ro Khanna.⁦@RosenthalHealth⁩ is 100% correct to go after large hospitals for their excessive fees & executive pay. I represent a district with Sutter & Kaiser, but we need to “rein in hospital excesses.” Her book American Sickness is a must read. https://t.co/sqhPgIcoDN (Source)

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35

Silent Spring

Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring was first published in three serialized excerpts in the New Yorker in June of 1962. The book appeared in September of that year and the outcry that followed its publication forced the banning of DDT and spurred revolutionary changes in the laws affecting our air, land, and water. Carson’s passionate concern for the future of our planet reverberated powerfully throughout the world, and her eloquent book was instrumental in launching the environmental movement. It is without question one of the landmark books of the twentieth century. less
Recommended by John Kerry, and 1 others.

John KerryI’d start with Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, which looked at how pesticide use was harming, and in some cases killing, animals and humans, and really was the first book of its kind to illustrate this environmental destruction. I’ve been so involved in the environment for years and years and that has been a great guideline – it was really the awakening, if you will, to the environmental movement... (Source)

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36
In The Healing of America, New York Times bestselling author T. R. Reid shows how all the other industrialized democracies have achieved something the United States can’t seem to do: provide health care for everybody at a reasonable cost.

In his global quest to find a possible prescription, Reid visits wealthy, free market, industrialized democracies like our own—including France, Germany, Japan, the U.K., and Canada—where he finds inspiration in example. Reid sees problems too: He finds poorly paid doctors in Japan, endless lines in Canada, mistreated patients in Britain,...
more

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37
The universal human instinct is to run from an outbreak of disease like Ebola. These doctors run toward it. Their job is to stop epidemics from happening.

They are the disease detective corps of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the federal agency that tracks and tries to prevent disease outbreaks and bioterrorist attacks around the world. They are formally called the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS)—a group founded more than fifty years ago out of fear that the Korean War might bring the use of biological weapons—and, like intelligence operatives in the...
more
Recommended by Russell Poldrack, and 1 others.

Russell PoldrackI should also take this chance to plug @marynmck book Beating Back The Devil which highlight amazing work by @CDCgov (Source)

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38

The Demon in the Freezer

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, his first nonfiction book since The Hot Zone, a #1 New York Times bestseller, 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 U.S. biological weapons program and now the epicenter of... more

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39
In Evicted, Princeton sociologist and MacArthur "Genius" Matthew Desmond follows eight families in Milwaukee as they struggle to keep a roof over their heads. Evicted transforms our understanding of poverty and economic exploitation while providing fresh ideas for solving one of 21st-century America's most devastating problems. Its unforgettable scenes of hope and loss remind us of the centrality of home, without which nothing else is possible. less

Bill GatesIf you want a good understanding of how the issues that cause poverty are intertwined, you should read this book about the eviction crisis in Milwaukee. Desmond has written a brilliant portrait of Americans living in poverty. He gave me a better sense of what it is like to be poor in this country than anything else I have read. (Source)

Satya NadellaNadella is using this season to learn more in a variety of subjects. By the looks of it, he is interested in, among other things, virtual reality, the refugee crisis, and housing for the urban poor. (Source)

Noah KaganSurprising insights into the lives of people who were evicted. I make a lot of assumptions about these people. Turns out I was wrong WHY they get evicted. (Source)

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40
The dramatic story of the Flint water crisis--an inspiring tale of scientific resistance by a relentless physician who stood up to power.

Flint was already a troubled city in 2014 when the state of Michigan--in the name of austerity--shifted the source of its water supply from Lake Huron to the Flint River. Soon after, citizens began complaining about the water that flowed from their taps--but officials rebuffed them, insisting that the water was fine. Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, a pediatrician at the city's public hospital, took state officials at their word and encouraged the...
more
Recommended by Lexi Alexander, and 1 others.

Lexi AlexanderCongrats Doctor Hanna-Attisha. Well deserved. It’s a great book https://t.co/XgoMjECOOW (Source)

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41

On Immunity

An Inoculation

Upon becoming a new mother, Eula Biss addresses a chronic condition of fear--fear of the government, the medical establishment, and what is in your child's air, food, mattress, medicine, and vaccines. She finds that you cannot immunize your child, or yourself, from the world.

In this bold, fascinating book, Biss investigates the metaphors and myths surrounding our conception of immunity and its implications for the individual and the social body. As she hears more and more fears about vaccines, Biss researches what they mean for her own child, her immediate community, America, and...
more
Recommended by Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and 2 others.

Bill GatesThe eloquent essayist Eula Biss uses the tools of literary analysis, philosophy, and science to examine the speedy, inaccurate rumors about childhood vaccines that have proliferated among well-meaning American parents. Biss took up this topic not for academic reasons but because of her new role as a mom. This beautifully written book would be a great gift for any new parent. (Source)

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42
A powerful true story about the potential for mercy to redeem us, and a clarion call to fix our broken system of justice—from one of the most brilliant and influential lawyers of our time

Bryan Stevenson was a young lawyer when he founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a legal practice dedicated to defending those most desperate and in need: the poor, the wrongly condemned, and women and children trapped in the farthest reaches of our criminal justice system. One of his first cases was that of Walter McMillian, a young man who was sentenced to die for a notorious murder he...
more

Richard BransonToday is World Book Day, a wonderful opportunity to address this #ChallengeRichard sent in by Mike Gonzalez of New Jersey: Make a list of your top 65 books to read in a lifetime. (Source)

Chris SaccaProud that @crystale and I could help fund the making of a film about one of our heroes, Bryan Stevenson. If you’ve read the book, then you know how powerful this film is. #JustMercy https://t.co/vNfXK4Imwr (Source)

Howard SchultzPerhaps one of the most powerful and important stories of our time. (Source)

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43
From the era of slavery to the present day, the first full history of black America’s shocking mistreatment as unwilling and unwitting experimental subjects at the hands of the medical establishment.

Medical Apartheid is the first and only comprehensive history of medical experimentation on African Americans. Starting with the earliest encounters between black Americans and Western medical researchers and the racist pseudoscience that resulted, it details the ways both slaves and freedmen were used in hospitals for experiments conducted without their knowledge—a...
more

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44
In gripping accounts of true cases, surgeon Atul Gawande explores the power and the limits of medicine, offering an unflinching view from the scalpel's edge. Complications lays bare a science not in its idealized form but as it actually is--uncertain, perplexing, and profoundly human.

Complications is a 2002 National Book Award Finalist for Nonfiction.
less

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45
From a former marine and Yale Law School graduate, a powerful account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town that offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America’s white working class

Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis—that of white working-class Americans. The decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly disintegrating over forty years, has been reported on with growing frequency and alarm, but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. J. D. Vance tells the true story...
more

Bill GatesThe disadvantaged world of poor white Appalachia described in this terrific, heartbreaking book is one that I know only vicariously. Vance was raised largely by his loving but volatile grandparents, who stepped in after his father abandoned him and his mother showed little interest in parenting her son. Against all odds, he survived his chaotic, impoverished childhood only to land at Yale Law... (Source)

Ryan HolidayIn terms of other surprising memoirs, I found JD Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy to be another well-written gem. (Source)

Ben ShapiroA very well-written book. [...] The whole thing is a critique of individual decisions. (Source)

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46
A riveting medical detective story that explores the limits of rational thought

In 1998, Andrew Wakefield, a British gastroenterologist with a history of self-promotion, published a paper with a shocking allegation: the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine might cause autism. The media seized hold of the story and, in the process, helped to launch one of the most devastating health scares ever. In the years to come Wakefield would be revealed as a profiteer in league with class-action lawyers, and he would eventually lose his medical license. Meanwhile, one study after another...
more

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47
Does the scientific "theory" that HIV came to North America from Haiti stem from underlying attitudes of racism and ethnocentrism in the United States rather than from hard evidence? Anthropologist-physician Paul Farmer answers in the affirmative with this, the first full-length ethnographic study of AIDS in a poor society. less

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48

Fever 1793

It's late summer 1793, and the streets of Philadelphia are abuzz with mosquitoes and rumors of fever. Down near the docks, many have taken ill, and the fatalities are mounting. Now they include Polly, the serving girl at the Cook Coffeehouse. But fourteen-year-old Mattie Cook doesn't get a moment to mourn the passing of her childhood playmate. New customers have overrun her family's coffee shop, located far from the mosquito-infested river, and Mattie's concerns of fever are all but overshadowed by dreams of growing her family's small business into a thriving enterprise. But when the fever... more

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49
In 1993, Helen Epstein, a scientist working with a biotechnology company searching for an AIDS vaccine, moved to Uganda, where she witnessed first-hand the suffering caused by the HIV virus. The Invisible Cure, dramatic, illuminating and beautifully written, recounts the struggle of international health experts, governments and ordinary Africans to understand the devastating spread of HIV in Africa, and traces how their responses to the crisis have changed in light of new medical developments and political realities.

The AIDS epidemic in Africa is uniquely severe, but...
more
Recommended by Arthur Ammann, and 1 others.

Arthur AmmannSome of these communities affected by HIV have their own ways of dealing with problems and are prevented from doing so…because of…academic colonialism. (Source)

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50
Slave ships brought it to America as far back as 1648-and over the centuries, yellow fever epidemics plagued the United States. Carried along the mighty Mississippi River, it ravaged towns from New Orleans to St. Louis. New York City lost 2,000 lives in one year alone. It even forced the nation's capital to relocate from Philadelphia to Washington, DC.
"The American Plague" reveals the true story of yellow fever, recounting Memphis, Tennessee's near-destruction and resurrection from the epidemic-and the four men who changed medical history with their battle against an invisible foe...
more

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Don't have time to read the top Public Health books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.

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51
From Pulitzer Prize-winner Katherine Boo, a landmark work of narrative nonfiction that tells the dramatic and sometimes heartbreaking story of families striving toward a better life in one of the twenty-first century's great, unequal cities.

In this brilliantly written, fast-paced book, based on three years of uncompromising reporting, a bewildering age of global change and inequality is made human.

Annawadi is a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport, and as India starts to prosper, Annawadians are electric with hope. Abdul, a...
more

Barack ObamaFact or fiction, the president knows that reading keeps the mind sharp. He also delved into these non-fiction reads (Source)

Bill GatesKatherine Boo spent three years getting to know the people of Annawadi, a slum of about 3,000 people on the edge of a sewage-filled lake in India’s largest city. Her book is a poignant reminder of how much more work needs to be done to address the inequities in the world. But it’s also an uplifting story of people striving to make a life for themselves, sacrificing for their families, and in... (Source)

Adam MinterVivid scenes of walking down Mumbai’s Airport Road, lined by shacks and trash pickers, and behind them are walls, and behind them are the finest five star hotels in India. (Source)

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52
The Nazis discovered it. The Allies won the war with it. It conquered diseases, changed laws, and single-handedly launched the era of antibiotics. This incredible discovery was sulfa, the first antibiotic. In The Demon Under the Microscope, Thomas Hager chronicles the dramatic history of the drug that shaped modern medicine.

Sulfa saved millions of lives—among them those of Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt Jr.—but its real effects are even more far reaching. Sulfa changed the way new drugs were developed, approved, and sold; transformed the way doctors treated...
more

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53
The incredible true story of the women who fought America's Undark danger

The Curies' newly discovered element of radium makes gleaming headlines across the nation as the fresh face of beauty, and wonder drug of the medical community. From body lotion to tonic water, the popular new element shines bright in the otherwise dark years of the First World War.

Meanwhile, hundreds of girls toil amidst the glowing dust of the radium-dial factories. The glittering chemical covers their bodies from head to toe; they light up the night like industrious fireflies....
more

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54

Between the World and Me

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER [[ LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD [[ Hailed by Toni Morrison as "required reading," a bold and personal literary exploration of America's racial history by "the single best writer on the subject of race in the United States" (The New York Observer)

"This is your country, this is your world, this is your body, and you must find some way to live within the all of it."

In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates...
more

Barack ObamaThe president also released a list of his summer favorites back in 2015: All That Is, James Salter The Sixth Extinction, Elizabeth Kolbert The Lowland, Jhumpa Lahiri Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates Washington: A Life, Ron Chernow All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr (Source)

Jack DorseyQ: What are the books that had a major influence on you? Or simply the ones you like the most. : Tao te Ching, score takes care of itself, between the world and me, the four agreements, the old man and the sea...I love reading! (Source)

Doug McMillonHere are some of my favorite reads from 2017. Lots of friends and colleagues send me book suggestions and it's impossible to squeeze them all in. I continue to be super curious about how digital and tech are enabling people to transform our lives but I try to read a good mix of books that apply to a variety of areas and stretch my thinking more broadly. (Source)

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55
Beth Macy takes us into the epicenter of America's twenty-plus year struggle with opioid addiction. From distressed small communities in Central Appalachia to wealthy suburbs; from disparate cities to once-idyllic farm towns; it's a heartbreaking trajectory that illustrates how this national crisis has persisted for so long and become so firmly entrenched.

Beginning with a single dealer who lands in a small Virginia town and sets about turning high school football stars into heroin overdose statistics, Macy endeavors to answer a grieving mother's question-why her only son died-and...
more

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56
His goal—to prevent every disease that commonly attacked children—was unattainable. But Maurice Hilleman came close.

Maurice Hilleman is the father of modern vaccines. Chief among his accomplishments are nine vaccines that practically every child gets, rendering formerly deadly diseases—including mumps, rubella, and measles—nearly forgotten.  Author Paul A. Offit’s rich and lively narrative details Hilleman’s research and experiences as the basis for a larger exploration of the development of vaccines, covering two hundred years of medical history and traveling across the globe in...
more
Recommended by Thomas Frieden, and 1 others.

Thomas FriedenAlthough he was not an easy man to work for, there are few people in the history of humanity who have saved more lives than Maurice Hilleman. (Source)

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57

Introduction to Public Health

Introduction To Public Health, Fifth Edition Offers A Thorough, Accessible Overview Of The Expanding Field Of Public Health For Students New To Its Concepts And Actors. Written In Engaging, Nontechnical Language, This Best-Selling Text Explains In Clear Terms The Multi-Disciplinary Strategies And Methods Used For Measuring, Assessing, And Promoting Public Health. Packed With Illustrative Real-World Examples, This Updated Edition Provides Students With Informative Discussions Of The Current Technical Issues And Practical Obstacles Facing Public Health Practitioners And Policymakers Alike. In... more

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58
In recent years, malaria has emerged as a cause célèbre for voguish philanthropists. Bill Gates, Bono, and Laura Bush are only a few of the personalities who have lent their names — and opened their pocketbooks — in hopes of curing the disease. Still, in a time when every emergent disease inspires waves of panic, why aren’t we doing more to eradicate one of our oldest foes? And how does a parasitic disease that we’ve known how to prevent for more than a century still infect 500 million people every year, killing nearly one million of them?

In The Fever, the journalist Sonia...
more
Recommended by Bill Gates, Sue Desmondhellmann, and 2 others.

Bill GatesIf you want to read just one book about malaria, The Fever is probably the best choice. Author Sonia Shah doesn’t overwhelm you with data and analytics, but she does cover the whole history of the disease, which—as the title suggests—goes back further than you might think. The book was published in 2010, so it’s not totally up to date (most notably, we’ve made progress with rolling out bed nets... (Source)

Sue DesmondhellmannHere’s one for your #SummerReadingList 📚: #TheFever by @soniashah is a terrific book that puts #malaria work into historic context- one of my favorite genres of writing. 🤓 https://t.co/uB6coVU5sf (Source)

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59
Deborah Blum, writing with the high style and skill for suspense that is characteristic of the very best mystery fiction, shares the untold story of how poison rocked Jazz Age New York City. In The Poisoner's Handbook Blum draws from highly original research to track the fascinating, perilous days when a pair of forensic scientists began their trailblazing chemical detective work, fighting to end an era when untraceable poisons offered an easy path to the perfect crime.

Drama unfolds case by case as the heroes of The Poisoner's Handbook—chief medical examiner...
more
Recommended by Michelle Francl, and 1 others.

Michelle FranclDeborah Blum’s book reminds me that molecules are powerful witnesses, if only we have the skills to interrogate them, and sometimes they are killers. (Source)

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60
Feeling tired, achy, and congested? You'll hope not after reading science writer Gina Kolata's engrossing Flu, a fascinating look at the 1918 epidemic that wiped out around 40 million people in less than a year and afflicted more than one of every four Americans. This tragedy, just on the heels of World War I and far more deadly, so traumatized the survivors that few would talk about it afterward. Kolata reports on the scientific investigation of this bizarre outbreak, in particular the attempts to sequence the virus' DNA from tissue samples of victims. She also looks at the social and... more

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Don't have time to read the top Public Health books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.

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61
Scientists agree that a pathogen is likely to cause a global pandemic in the near future. But which one? And how?

Over the past fifty years, more than three hundred infectious diseases have either newly emerged or reemerged, appearing in territories where they’ve never been seen before. Ninety percent of epidemiologists expect that one of them will cause a deadly pandemic sometime in the next two generations. It could be Ebola, avian flu, a drug-resistant superbug, or something completely new. While we can’t know which pathogen will cause the next pandemic, by unraveling the story...
more

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62

My Own Country

A Doctor's Story

By the bestselling author of Cutting for Stone, a story of medicine in the American heartland, and confronting one's deepest prejudices and fears.
Nestled in the Smoky Mountains of eastern Tennessee, the town of Johnson City had always seemed exempt from the anxieties of modern American life. But when the local hospital treated its first AIDS patient, a crisis that had once seemed an urban problem had arrived in the town to stay.
Working in Johnson City was Abraham Verghese, a young Indian doctor specializing in infectious diseases. Dr. Verghese became by necessity the local AIDS...
more

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63
Doctor and social activist Paul Farmer shares a collection of charismatic short speeches that aims to inspire the next generation. One of the most passionate and influential voices for global health equity and social justice, Farmer encourages young people to tackle the greatest challenges of our times. Engaging, often humorous, and always inspiring, these speeches bring to light the brilliance and force of Farmer’s vision in a single, accessible volume.

A must-read for graduates, students, and everyone seeking to help bend the arc of history toward justice, To Repair the...
more

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64
An utterly original exploration of the world of human waste that will surprise, outrage--and entertain

Produced behind closed doors, disposed of discreetly, and hidden by euphemism, bodily waste is something common to all and as natural as breathing, yet we prefer not to talk about it. But we should--even those of us who take care of our business in pristine, sanitary conditions. For it's not only in developing countries that human waste is a major public health threat: population growth is taxing even the most advanced sewage systems, and the disease spread by waste kills more...
more

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65
The informative and witty expose of the "bad science" we are all subjected to, called "one of the essential reads of the year" by New Scientist.

We are obsessed with our health. And yet — from the media's "world-expert microbiologist" with a mail-order Ph.D. in his garden shed laboratory, and via multiple health scares and miracle cures — we are constantly bombarded with inaccurate, contradictory, and sometimes even misleading information. Until now. Ben Goldacre masterfully dismantles the questionable science behind some of the great drug trials, court cases, and missed...
more

Timothy FerrissI agree wholeheartedly with a lot of the co-opted science, which people can read a book called Bad Science, which is by a doctor named Ben Goldacre. It’s great. (Source)

Tim HarfordThis book changed the way I thought about my own writing and it changed the way I thought about the world. It really is one of the best books I have ever read. (Source)

Sarah-Jayne BlakemoreIt’s just a brilliant book, and he’s a fearless defender of science. (Source)

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66

The End of Poverty

The landmark exploration of economic prosperity and how the world can escape from extreme poverty for the world's poorest citizens, from one  of the world's most renowned economists

Hailed by Time as one of the world's hundred most influential people, Jeffrey D. Sachs is renowned for his work around the globe advising economies in crisis. Now a classic of its genre, The End of Poverty distills more than thirty years of experience to offer a uniquely informed vision of the steps that can transform impoverished countries into prosperous ones....
more

Bill Gates[On Bill Gates's reading list in 2011.] (Source)

Jeffrey D SachsThe book is an attempt to put forward this proposition that we have in our hands now the means to end extreme poverty within our generation. (Source)

Gretchen PetersJeffrey Sachs gives a fascinating and very basic new way of looking at development. Essentially, we all benefit when the poorest people are better off. (Source)

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67
Imagine a world where your phone is too big for your hand, where your doctor prescribes a drug that is wrong for your body, where in a car accident you are 47% more likely to be seriously injured, where every week the countless hours of work you do are not recognised or valued. If any of this sounds familiar, chances are that you're a woman.

Invisible Women shows us how, in a world largely built for and by men, we are systematically ignoring half the population. It exposes the gender data gap – a gap in our knowledge that is at the root of perpetual, systemic discrimination against...
more

Konnie Huq@FenTiger697 @WokingAmnesty @CCriadoPerez @Hatchards @radioleary Brilliant book by the brilliant @CCriadoPerez 😍 (Source)

Feminist Next Door@Rockmedia Awesome book (Source)

Nigel ShadboltInvisible Women is an exposé of just how much of the world around us is designed around the default male. Deploying a huge range of data and examples, Caroline Criado Perez, who is a writer, broadcaster and award winning campaigner, presents on overwhelming case for change. Every page is full of facts and data that support her fundamental contention that in a world built for and by men, gender... (Source)

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68
Every year, the average American eats 33 pounds of cheese and 70 pounds of sugar. They ingest 8,500 milligrams of salt a day, double the recommended amount, almost none of which comes from salt shakers. It comes from processed food, an industry that hauls in $1 trillion in annual sales.

In Salt Sugar Fat, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Michael Moss shows how this happened. Featuring examples from some of the most recognizable (and profitable) companies and brands of the last half century--including Kraft, Coca-Cola, Lunchables, Kellogg, Nestlé, Oreos,...
more
Recommended by Sharon Hayes, and 1 others.

Sharon Hayes@novenator @andrewmarsh6 @williamorr2110 @EmmaKinery Fat alone doesn't cause obesity. Excess calories do. This is science. There's a fantastic book called "Salt Sugar Fat" that looks at what the food industry does to get consumers hooked. (Source)

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69
Winner of the 2011 Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Best Business Book of the Year Award

Billions of government dollars, and thousands of charitable organizations and NGOs, are dedicated to helping the world's poor. But much of their work is based on assumptions that are untested generalizations at best, harmful misperceptions at worst.

Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo have pioneered the use of randomized control trials in development economics. Work based on these principles, supervised by the Poverty Action Lab, is being carried out in dozens of countries....
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Recommended by Bill Gates, Harini Calamur, and 2 others.

Bill GatesDoes a great job of bringing alive the complexities of poor people’s lives. (Source)

Harini Calamur@ask0704 Read his book. I don't agree with some of the things he says. But, it is a great read on understanding poverty (Source)

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70
Winner of the 1983 Pulitzer Prize and the Bancroft Prize in American History, this is a landmark history of how the entire American health care system of doctors, hospitals, health plans, and government programs has evolved over the last two centuries.

"The definitive social history of the medical profession in America....A monumental achievement."—H. Jack Geiger, M.D., New York Times Book Review
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Recommended by Austin Frakt, and 1 others.

Austin FraktThis is a very long, detailed book, and it’s not all that easy for someone who is not deeply into health policy and healthcare to relate it to today. Its purpose is to describe the broad sweep of the history of healthcare in America, through to about 1980. It was published in 1982 so it’s not even that current. But it’s necessary reading for anybody who fancies themselves as a health policy wonk... (Source)

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71

Year of Wonders

When an infected bolt of cloth carries plague from London to an isolated village, a housemaid named Anna Frith emerges as an unlikely heroine and healer. Through Anna's eyes we follow the story of the fateful year of 1666, as she and her fellow villagers confront the spread of disease and superstition. As death reaches into every household and villagers turn from prayers to murderous witch-hunting, Anna must find the strength to confront the disintegration of her community and the lure of illicit love. As she struggles to survive and grow, a year of catastrophe becomes instead annus... more
Recommended by Lynda La Plante, and 1 others.

Lynda La PlanteA remarkable story about the Great Plague of London and holds the reader’s attention as if a terrible crime has been committed and wondering what the outcome can be. (Source)

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72
Medicine is broken. We like to imagine that it’s based on evidence and the results of fair tests. In reality, those tests are often profoundly flawed. We like to imagine that doctors are familiar with the research literature surrounding a drug, when in reality much of the research is hidden from them by drug companies. We like to imagine that doctors are impartially educated, when in reality much of their education is funded by industry. We like to imagine that regulators let only effective drugs onto the market, when in reality they approve hopeless drugs, with data on side effects casually... more
Recommended by Timothy Ferriss, and 1 others.

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73
In the universally acclaimed and award-winning The Bottom Billion, Paul Collier reveals that fifty failed states--home to the poorest one billion people on Earth--pose the central challenge of the developing world in the twenty-first century. The book shines much-needed light on this group of small nations, largely unnoticed by the industrialized West, that are dropping further and further behind the majority of the world's people, often falling into an absolute decline in living standards. A struggle rages within each of these nations between reformers and corrupt leaders--and the... more
Recommended by Bill Gates, Nicholas Kristof, and 2 others.

Bill GatesOn the short list of books that I recommend to people. (Source)

Nicholas KristofThere’s been a tendency for people looking at global poverty to either emphasise the extraordinary difficulty in making a difference or to make it seem almost too easy. What I really liked about The Bottom Billion is that he acknowledges how difficult it can be to end poverty, but also offers some important ideas about how one can actually make a difference. (Source)

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74

The Gene

An Intimate History

La historia de cómo hemos descifrado el código fuente que nos hace humanos abarca todo el planeta y varios siglos -y probablemente defina el futuro que nos espera.

Entrelazando ciencia, historia y vivencias personales, Mukherjee hace un recorrido por el nacimiento, el crecimiento, la influencia y el futuro de una de las ideas más poderosas y peligrosas de la historia de la ciencia: el gen, la unidad fundamental de la herencia, y la unidad básica de toda la información biológica. Desde Aristóteles y Pitágoras, pasando por los descubrimientos relegados de Mendel, la revolución de...
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Bill Gates"Mukherjee wrote this book for a lay audience, because he knows that the new genome technologies are at the cusp of affecting us all in profound ways," Gates wrote. Mukherjee is what Gates calls a "quadruple threat." He's a practicing physician, teacher, researcher, and author. (Source)

Amit Paranjape@vikramsathaye @DrSidMukherjee @kiranshaw Great book. (Source)

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75
Stiff is an oddly compelling, often hilarious exploration of the strange lives of our bodies postmortem. For two thousand years, cadavers—some willingly, some unwittingly—have been involved in science's boldest strides and weirdest undertakings. In this fascinating account, Mary Roach visits the good deeds of cadavers over the centuries and tells the engrossing story of our bodies when we are no longer with them. less

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76
In Baltimore's inner-city neighborhood of Upton/Druid Heights, a man's life expectancy is sixty-three; not far away, in the Greater Roland Park/Poplar neighborhood, life expectancy is eighty-three. The same twenty-year avoidable disparity exists in the Calton and Lenzie neighborhoods of Glasgow, and in other cities around the world.

In Sierra Leone, one in 21 fifteen-year-old women will die in her fertile years of a maternal-related cause; in Italy, the figure is one in 17,100; but in the United States, which spends more on healthcare than any other country in the world, it is one...
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78

Reimagining Global Health

An Introduction

Bringing together the experience, perspective and expertise of Paul Farmer, Jim Yong Kim, and Arthur Kleinman, Reimagining Global Health provides an original, compelling introduction to the field of global health. Drawn from a Harvard course developed by their student Matthew Basilico, this work provides an accessible and engaging framework for the study of global health. Insisting on an approach that is historically deep and geographically broad, the authors underline the importance of a transdisciplinary approach, and offer a highly readable distillation of several historical and... more

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79

Haiti

After the Earthquake

On January 12, 2010 a massive earthquake laid waste to Port-au-Prince, Haiti, killing hundreds of thousands of people. Within three days, Dr. Paul Farmer arrived in the Haitian capital, along with a team of volunteers, to lend his services to the injured.In this vivid narrative, Farmer describes the incredible suffering--and resilience--that he encountered in Haiti. Having worked in the country for nearly thirty years, he skillfully explores the social issues that made Haiti so vulnerable to the earthquake--the very issues that make it an "unnatural disaster." Complementing his account are... more

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80
From 1932 to 1972, the United States Public Health Service conducted a non-therapeutic experiment involving over 400 black male sharecroppers infected with syphilis. The Tuskegee Study had nothing to do with treatment. Its purpose was to trace the spontaneous evolution of the disease in order to learn how syphilis affected black subjects.

The men were not told they had syphilis; they were not warned about what the disease might do to them; and, with the exception of a smattering of medication during the first few months, they were not given health care. Instead of the powerful...
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81
"Epidemiology," by" "award-winning educator and epidemiologist Leon Gordis, is a best-selling introduction to this complex science. Dr. Gordis leverages his vast experience teaching this subject in the classroom to introduce the basic principles and concepts of epidemiology in a clear, uniquely memorable way. He guides you from an explanation of the epidemiologic approach to disease and intervention, through the use of epidemiologic principles to identify the causes of disease, to a discussion of how epidemiology should be used to improve evaluation and public policy. It's your best choice... more

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82
For more than 3000 years, hundreds of millions of people have died or been left permanently scarred or blind by the relentless, incurable disease called smallpox. In 1967, Dr. D.A. Henderson became director of a worldwide campaign to eliminate this disease from the face of the earth.

This spellbinding book is Dr. Henderson’s personal story of how he led the World Health Organization’s campaign to eradicate smallpox—the only disease in history to have been deliberately eliminated. Some have called this feat "the greatest scientific and humanitarian achievement of the past...
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Recommended by Bill Gates, and 1 others.

Bill Gates[On Bill Gates's reading list in 2011.] (Source)

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84
There's a silent, dangerous war going on out there. On one side are parents, bombarded with stories about the dangers of vaccines, now wary of immunizing their sons and daughters. On the other side are doctors, scared to send kids out of their offices vulnerable to illnesses like whooping cough and measles--the diseases of their grandparents.How did anyone come to view vaccines with horror? The answer is rooted in one of the most powerful citizen activist movements in our nation's history. In Deadly Choices, infectious disease expert Paul Offit relates the shocking story of... more

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85
In her extraordinary bestseller, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc immerses readers in the intricacies of the ghetto, revealing the true sagas lurking behind the headlines of gangsta glamour, gold-drenched drug dealers, and street-corner society. Focusing on two romances - Jessica's dizzying infatuation with a hugely successful young heroin dealer, Boy George, and Coco's first love with Jessica's little brother, Cesar - Random Family is the story of young people trying to outrun their destinies. Jessica and Boy George ride the wild adventure between riches and ruin, while Coco and Cesar stick... more

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86
A humorous book about history's worst plagues—from the Antonine Plague, to leprosy, to polio—and the heroes who fought them

In 1518, in a small town in France, Frau Troffea began dancing and didn’t stop. She danced herself to her death six days later, and soon thirty-four more villagers joined her. Then more. In a month more than 400 people had died from the mysterious dancing plague. In late-nineteenth-century England an eccentric gentleman founded the No Nose Club in his gracious townhome—a social club for those who had lost their noses, and other body parts, to the plague...
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87
The Great Plague is one of the most compelling events in human history, even more so now, when the notion of plague—be it animal or human—has never loomed larger as a contemporary public concern

The plague that devastated Asia and Europe in the 14th century has been of never-ending interest to both scholarly and general readers. Many books on the plague rely on statistics to tell the story: how many people died; how farm output and trade declined. But statistics can’t convey what it was like to sit in Siena or Avignon and hear that a thousand people a day are dying...
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88
Since its founding in 1951, the Epidemic Intelligence Service has waged war on every imaginable ailment. When an epidemic hits, the EIS will be there to crack the case, however mysterious or deadly, saving countless lives in the process. Over the years they have successfully battled polio, cholera, and smallpox, to name a few, and in recent years have turned to the epidemics killing us now--smoking, obesity, and gun violence among them.

The successful EIS model has spread internationally: former EIS officers on the staff of the Centers for Disease Control have helped to establish...
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Recommended by Thomas Frieden, and 1 others.

Thomas FriedenIt really is. This book is for a new generation what a book written by Berton Roueché called The Medical Detectives was, which I remember reading as a kid. They’re detective stories and they’re interesting and they’re human interest and they’re about saving lives. It’s really exciting. (Source)

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89

The Medical Detectives

This is a classic collection of 25 true narratives of medical investigative reporting by award-winning journalist Berton Roueché. Readers of "The New Yorker" may be familiar with the author's suspenseful tales of strange illnesses, rare diseases, poisons and parasites. less

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90
Barbara Ehrenreich, our sharpest and most original social critic, goes "undercover" in Nickel and Dmined as an unskilled worker to reveal the dark side of American prosperity.

Millions of Americans work full time, year round, for poverty-level wages. In 1998, Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. She was inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that a job -- any job -- can be the ticket to a better life. But how does anyone survive, let alone prosper, on $6 an hour? To find out, Ehrenreich left her home, took the cheapest lodgings...
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Jim Edwards@Astrologic007 @ainecain @businessinsider @B_Ehrenreich @AndrewYang @carolhunter @esaagar @EmmaVigeland @kthalps @ErinBurnett @mviser Nickel and Dimed is a great book and everyone should read it. @B_Ehrenreich (Source)

Steve MarmelSide note — There’s a fantastic book about this: “Nickle and Dimed.” https://t.co/hykM6zvnBS https://t.co/xkCxxPBBnA (Source)

Angela PhamAnother form of non-fiction heartbreak. This is a timeless look at how most of America survives. You cannot be an empathetic business leader without this lens. (Source)

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91
The definitive history of the successful battle to halt the AIDS epidemic from the creator of, and inspired by, the seminal documentary How to Survive a Plague.

A riveting, powerful telling of the story of the grassroots movement of activists, many of them in a life-or-death struggle, who seized upon scientific research to help develop the drugs that turned HIV from a mostly fatal infection to a manageable disease. Ignored by public officials, religious leaders, and the nation at large, and confronted with shame and hatred, this small group of men and women chose to...
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Recommended by Madhu Pai, Natalie Shure, and 2 others.

Madhu PaiThis documentary & book by @ByDavidFrance is one of the best investments anyone can make, if they are in global health. Remarkable story of how affected communities took over and led the fight against AIDS. It is a playbook for any type of advocacy. https://t.co/tfyP64LkQI (Source)

Natalie ShureI finished this book last week and it was absolutely superb. I’d highly recommend it to any organizer! Even if you’ve already seen the companion doc (which is also great!) this adds a lot. I have great taste and you should take this rec very seriously📖🎉🌹✊️ https://t.co/0Aq2VEpyTF (Source)

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92

The plague

A gripping tale of human unrelieved horror, of survival and resilience, and of the ways in which humankind confronts death, The Plague is at once a masterfully crafted novel, eloquently understated and epic in scope, and a parable of ageless moral resonance, profoundly relevant to our times. In Oran, a coastal town in North Africa, the plague begins as a series of portents, unheeded by the people. It gradually becomes a omnipresent reality, obliterating all traces of the past and driving its victims to almost unearthly extremes of suffering, madness, and compassion. less

Jenny DavidsonAlbert Camus’s The Plague probably remains the best-known novel on the topic of epidemic disease. It tells the story of those involved in an epidemic in a North African setting. It is very interested in the details about how quarantines are enforced and the role not just of the government, but of individuals who band together into groups to manage the epidemic. (Source)

Stephen BreyerHe talks about the plague. Well, the plague is that part of a human being which can be very evil. That germ, he says at the end, never dies, it simply goes into remission. It lurks. It lurks in the cupboards, it lurks in the hallways, it lurks in the filing cabinets. (Source)

Arthur AmmannIt’s an amazing book, considering Camus probably never personally experienced a plague. In his novel, Camus captured everything that we were dealing with in the Aids epidemic without Aids existing at that time. Without his knowing what the consequences of the HIV plague were going to be, he seems to have gotten all the actors in there and the myriad of things that you wrestle with. (Source)

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93
An extraordinary, eye-opening book.” —People

"A rousing wake-up call . . . this highly engaging, provocative book prove[s] beyond a reasonable doubt that millions of lives depend on us finally coming to terms with the long-term consequences of childhood adversity and toxic stress.” — Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow

Dr. Nadine Burke Harris was already known as a crusading physician delivering targeted care to vulnerable children. But it was Diego — a boy who had stopped growing after a sexual assault — who galvanized her...
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Recommended by Jamie Grayson, and 1 others.

Jamie GraysonThis is one of the best interviews I’ve ever heard. Explained a lot-even about myself. @DrBurkeHarris I downloaded your book (because I LOVE listening to you speak) and cannot wait to listen. Keep ON. What a gift. Truly. ❤️ https://t.co/KhCa9H0MDD (Source)

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94
A world-leading epidemiologist shares his stories from the front lines of our war on infectious diseases and explains how to prepare for epidemics that can challenge world order.

Every new development--from exploding human and animal populations to trade and travel--intensifies our susceptibility to a devastating epidemic. Ironically, a pandemic on the scale of the 1918 flu that killed perhaps a hundred million people would be deadlier today, despite a century of medical advances. As the current Zika epidemic proves, we are wholly unprepared for these diseases. So...
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95
I come from a country that was created at midnight. When I almost died it was just after midday.

When the Taliban took control of the Swat Valley in Pakistan, one girl spoke out. Malala Yousafzai refused to be silenced and fought for her right to an education.

On Tuesday, October 9, 2012, when she was fifteen, she almost paid the ultimate price. She was shot in the head at point-blank range while riding the bus home from school, and few expected her to survive.

Instead, Malala's miraculous recovery has taken her on an extraordinary journey from a...
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Recommended by Adrienne Kisner, and 1 others.

Adrienne KisnerMalala’s story of triumph is a battle cry for girls (and boys) everywhere. Education can set you free. (Source)

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96

A critically important and startling look at the harmful effects of overusing antibiotics, from the field's leading expert

Tracing one scientist’s journey toward understanding the crucial importance of the microbiome, this revolutionary book will take readers to the forefront of trail-blazing research while revealing the damage that overuse of antibiotics is doing to our health: contributing to the rise of obesity, asthma, diabetes, and certain forms of cancer. In Missing Microbes, Dr. Martin Blaser invites us into the wilds of the human microbiome where for hundreds...

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97
We all witness, in advertising and on supermarket shelves, the fierce competition for our food dollars. In this engrossing exposé, Marion Nestle goes behind the scenes to reveal how the competition really works and how it affects our health. The abundance of food in the United States--enough calories to meet the needs of every man, woman, and child twice over--has a downside. Our over-efficient food industry must do everything possible to persuade people to eat more--more food, more often, and in larger portions--no matter what it does to waistlines or well-being.

Like...
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98
Every animal, whether human, squid, or wasp, is home to millions of bacteria and other microbes. Many people think of microbes as germs to be eradicated, but those that live with us—the microbiome—build our bodies, protect our health, shape our identities, and grant us incredible abilities. In this astonishing book, Ed Yong takes us on a grand tour through our microbial partners, and introduces us to the scientists on the front lines of discovery.

Yong, whose humor is as evident as his erudition, prompts us to look at ourselves and our animal companions in a new light—less as...
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Recommended by Bill Gates, and 1 others.

Bill GatesHelped me see microorganisms in a whole new light. (Source)

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99

The Spirit Level

Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better

A groundbreaking work on the root cause of our ills, which is changing the way politicians think. Why do we mistrust people more in the UK than in Japan? Why do Americans have higher rates of teenage pregnancy than the French? What makes the Swedish thinner than the Greeks? The answer: inequality. This groundbreaking book, based on years of research, provides hard evidence to show how almost everything—-from life expectancy to depression levels, violence to illiteracy-—is affected not by how wealthy a society is, but how equal it is. Urgent, provocative and genuinely uplifting, The Spirit... more
Recommended by Danny Dorling, and 1 others.

Danny DorlingWhat I liked especially about The Spirit Level is the way it builds a case that inequality is phenomenally dysfunctional. (Source)

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100
Adam Kay was a junior doctor from 2004 until 2010, before a devastating experience on a ward caused him to reconsider his future. He kept a diary throughout his training, and This Is Going to Hurt intersperses tales from the front line of the NHS with reflections on the current crisis. The result is a first-hand account of life as a junior doctor in all its joy, pain, sacrifice and maddening bureaucracy, and a love letter to those who might at any moment be holding our lives in their hands. less
Recommended by Quinn Cummings, and 1 others.

Quinn Cummings@lorapenza You might love @amateuradam's book. (Source)

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