Thomas Cowan was a 20-year-old Duke grad―bright, skeptical, and already disillusioned with industrial capitalism―when he joined the Peace Corps in the mid-1970s for a two-year tour in Swaziland. There, he encountered the work of Rudolf Steiner and Weston A. Price―two men whose ideas would fascinate and challenge him for decades to come. Both drawn to the art of healing and repelled by the way medicine was―and continues to... more...

Praise for Dancing with Elephants:"If you need some encouragement in living with joy, read this book. It will change your perspective on everything." --Lana Philips "Sawatsky beautifully models a way to dance in the gale of full catastrophe, to celebrate life, to laugh with it and at himself." --Jon Kabat-Zinn, national bestselling author of Full Catastrophe Living "...beautiful and inspiring book...full of humor and wisdom about the... more...

Told by a unique voice in American medicine, this epic story recounts life-changing experiences in the career of a distinguished physician, and is described by The New York Times as “a true service [to history]. Dr. Reilly deserves a resounding bravo for telling it like it is.” Malcolm Gladwell agrees: “Brendan Reilly has written a beautiful book about a forgotten subject—what it means for a physician to truly care for a patient.” Every... more...

A routine procedure left novelist, memoirist, and poet Judy Goldman's husband paralyzed. Together is her unforgettable account of the struggle to regain their "normal" life and a nuanced portrait of a marriage tested. When Judy Goldman's husband of almost four decades reads a newspaper ad for an injection to alleviate back pain, the outpatient procedure sounds like the answer to his longtime backaches. But rather than restoring his tennis game, the... more...

As a pediatric surgeon, Catherine Musemeche operates on the smallest of human beings, manipulates organs the size of walnuts, and uses sutures as thin as hairs to resolve matters of life or death. Working in the small space of a premature infant’s chest or abdomen allows no margin for error. It is a world rife with emotion and risk. Small takes readers inside this rarefied world of pediatric medicine, where children and newborns... more...

A raccoon bite on the arm doesn’t seem that serious, but it soon becomes a life-or-death medical crisis for Melissa Loomis. After days of treatment for recurring infection, it becomes obvious that her arm must be amputated. Dr. Ajay Seth, the son of immigrant parents from India and a local orthopaedic surgeon in private practice, performs his first-ever amputation procedure. In the months that follow, divine intervention, combined... more...

It takes drive, persistence, and plenty of stamina to practice cardiology at the highest level. The competition for training fellowship spots is intense. Hundreds of applicants from all over the world compete to be accepted into the Cardiovascular Disease Training Fellowship at Johns Hopkins. Only nine are chosen each year. This is the story of one of those fellows. In Alpha Docs, Daniel Mu�oz, MD, recounts his transformation from wide-eyed young... more...

The surprising, behind-the-scenes story of how our medicines are discovered, told by a veteran drug hunter. The search to find medicines is as old as disease, which is to say as old as the human race. Through serendipity— by chewing, brewing, and snorting—some Neolithic souls discovered opium, alcohol, snakeroot, juniper, frankincense, and other helpful substances. Ötzi the Iceman, the five-thousand-year-old hunter frozen in the Italian Alps, was... more...

"Tuesday morning, I spent an hour with a neurologist trying to figure out why I kept tripping over my feet. He pushed and pulled on my legs, whacked me with a reflex hammer and shone a light so deep into my eyes I thought it might illuminate the wall behind my head. That afternoon, I drove home and ordered a new backpacking tent." Pain is an unforgiving equalizer--forget social status, race or gender. For people suffering from chronic pain, "real... more...

"Part elegy, part musings on the great mysteries of life, Vodou Saints is at the same time an inspirational story of lessons learned from Haitians in the over three decades that Dr. Arthur Fournier has worked with them, both in Miami and in Haiti. These lessons span the early days of the AIDS epidemic in Miami, the political turmoil of the Aristide years, the earthquake that devastated Haiti in 2010 and most recently the outbreak of cholera.... more...