A brilliant young transplant surgeon brings moral intensity and narrative drama to the most powerful and vexing questions of medicine and the human condition. When Pauline Chen began medical school twenty years ago, she dreamed of saving lives. What she did not count on was how much death would be a part of her work. Almost immediately, Chen found herself wrestling with medicine’s most profound paradox, that a profession premised on caring for the... more...

“My sister is pregnant with a Lemon this week, Week 14, and this is amusing. My mother's uterine tumor, the size of a cabbage, is Week 30, and this is terrifying.” When her mother is diagnosed with a rare form of cancer, Karen Babine―a cook, collector of thrifted vintage cast iron, and fiercely devoted daughter, sister, and aunt―can’t help but wonder: feed a fever, starve a cold, but what do we do for cancer? And so she commits herself to... more...

"With When Death Becomes Life, Joshua Mezrich has performed the perfect core biopsy of transplantation—a clear and compelling account of the grueling daily work, the spell-binding history and the unsettling ethical issues that haunt this miraculous lifesaving treatment. Mezrich's compassionate and honest voice, punctuated by a sharp and intelligent wit, render the enormous subject not just palatable but downright... more...

A Look at a Legacy Faced with potential blindness because of a recurring detached retina, James Moore makes a last attempt to save the sight in his right eye. Hoping for a miracle, he travels from Austin to Memphis to meet with eye specialist, Steve Charles, a physician whose inventions of machines, tools, and techniques have been transformative in the field of retinal surgery, and who has performed more vitreoretinal procedures than anyone in history.... 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...

Before opioids destroyed Grant Matheson's career, he was a pillar of his community. Respected physician, loving husband, devoted father, and trusted friend. Grant was a straight-laced kid who grew up to be a clean-living adult. No drinking, no smoking, and certainly no drugs. It took everyone by surprise, most of all himself, when he became addicted to narcotics in his 30s. His story hit local press when he was found guilty of... more...

A surgeon and chemist at Guy’s Hospital in London, Professor Alfred Swaine Taylor used new techniques to search the human body for evidence that once had been unseen. As well as tracing poisons, he could identify blood on clothing and weapons, and used hair and fiber analysis to catch killers. Taylor is perhaps best remembered as an expert witness at one of Victorian England’s most infamous trials – that of William Palmer, ‘The Rugeley... more...

The basis for the movie starring Kathy Bates, Ambulance Girl is an inspiring story by a woman who found, somewhat late in life, that “in helping others I learned to help myself.” Jane Stern was a walking encyclopedia of panic attacks, depression, and hypochondria. Her marriage of more than thirty years was suffering, and she was virtually immobilized by fear and anxiety. As the daughter of parents who both died before she was thirty, Stern was... more...

When Dr. Ellen Einterz first arrives in the town of Kolofata in Cameroon, the situation is dire: patients are exploited by healthcare workers, unsterilized needles are reused, and only the wealthy can afford care. In Life and Death in Kolofata: An American Doctor in Africa, Einterz tells her remarkable story of delivering healthcare for 24 years in one of the poorest countries in the world, revealing both touching stories of those she... more...

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