Now available in trade paperback, this is the heart-rending drama of one family's courage, heartbreak, sacrifice, and triumph in confronting an agonizing medical condition, written by two master storytellers.

Cory Friedman woke up one morning when he was five years old with the uncontrollable urge to twitch his neck and his life was never the same again. From that day forward his life became a hell of uncontrollable tics, urges, and involuntary utterances. Eventually he is diagnosed with Tourette's Syndrome and Obsessive Compulsive disorder, and Cory embarks on an excruciating journey from specialist to specialist, enduring countless combinations of medications in wildly varying doses. Soon it becomes unclear what tics are symptoms of his disease and what are side effects of the drugs. The only certainty is that it kept getting worse. Despite his lack of control, Cory is aware of every embarrassing movement, and sensitive to every person's reaction to his often aggravating presence. Simply put: Cory Friedman's life is a living hell.
AGAINST MEDICAL ADVICE is the true story of one family's decades-long battle for survival in the face of extraordinary difficulties and a rigid medical establishment.

Marylebone has been home to its fair share of rogues, villains and eccentrics, and their stories are told here. The authors also want to remind the reader that alongside the glamour of Society, there has also been hardship and squalor in the parish, as was graphically illustrated in Charles Booth's poverty maps of London in 1889. Over the past 10 years the Marylebone Journal has printed historical essays on the people, places, and events that have helped shape the character of the area. Some are commemorated with a blue plaque, but many are not. This is not a check-list of the grandees of Marylebone, though plenty appear in these pages. The essays have been grouped into themes of: history, politicians and warriors, culture and sport (from pop music and television to high art), love and marriage (stories from romance to acrimonious divorce), criminals, science and medicine, buildings and places, and the mad bad and dangerous to know - those whose stories don't fit a convenient box but are too good not to tell.

Nnedi Okorafor was never supposed to be paralyzed. A college track star and budding entomologist, Nnedi's lifelong battle with scoliosis was just a bump in her plan - something a simple surgery would easily correct. But when Nnedi wakes from the surgery to find she can't move her legs, her entire sense of who she is begins to waver. Confined to a hospital bed for months, unusual things begin to happen. Psychedelic bugs crawl her hospital walls; strange dreams visit her nightly. She begins to feel as if she's turning into a cyborg. Unsure if she'll ever walk again, Nnedi begins to put these experiences into writing, conjuring up strange, fantastical stories. What Nnedi discovers during her confinement would prove to be the key to her life as a successful science fiction writer: In science fiction, when something breaks, something greater often emerges from the cracks. While she may be bedridden, instead of stopping her journey Nnedi's paralysis opens up new windows in her mind, kindles her creativity and ultimately leads her to become more alive than she ever could have imagined. Nnedi takes the reader on a journey from her hospital bed deep into her memories, from her painful first experiences with racism as a child in Chicago to her powerful visits to her parents' hometown in Nigeria, where she got her first inkling that science fiction has roots beyond the West. This was not the Africa that Nnedi knew from Western literature - an Africa that she always read was a place left behind. The role of technology in Nigeria opened her eyes to future-looking Africa: cable TV and cell phones in the village, 419 scammers occupying the cybercafes, the small generator connected to her cousin's desktop computer, everyone quickly adapting to portable tech devices due to unreliable power sources. Nnedi could see that Africa was far from broken, as she'd been taught, and her experience there planted the early seeds of sci-fi - a genre that speculates about technologies, societies, and social issues - from an entirely new lens. In Broken Places & Outer Spaces, Nnedi uses her own experience as a jumping off point to follow the phenomenon of creativity born from hardship. From Frida Kahlo to Mary Shelly, she examines great artists and writers who have pushed through their limitations, using hardship to fuel their work. Through these compelling stories and her own, Nnedi reveals a universal truth: What we perceive as limitations have the potential to become our greatest strengths - far greater than when we were unbroken.

This book is an enthusiastic account of Pierre Laszlo's life and pioneering work on catalysis of organic reactions by modified clays, and his reflections on doing science from the 1960s to 1990s. In this autobiography, readers will discover a first-hand testimony of the chemical revolution in the second half of the 20th century, and the author's perspective on finding a calling in science and chemistry, as well as his own experience on doing science, teaching science and managing a scientific career. During this period, Pierre Laszlo led an academic laboratory and worked also in three different countries: the US, Belgium and France, where he had the opportunity to meet remarkable colleagues. In this book, he recalls his encounters and collaborations with important scientists, who shaped the nature of chemistry at times of increased pace of change, and collates a portrait of the worldwide scientific community at that time. In addition, the author tells us about the turns and twists of his own life, and how he ended up focusing his research on clay based chemistry, where clay minerals were turned in his lab to catalysis of key chemical transformations. Given its breath, the book offers a genuine information on the life and career of a chemist, and it will appeal not only to scientists and students, but also to historians of science and to the general reader.

Astronomer, planetary scientist, astrophysicist, exobiologist, educator, public figure, skeptic--all these hats represent important parts of Carl Sagan's complex, multifaceted career. Perhaps best known as the host of the popular television series Cosmos, Sagan offered to the world his extraordinary gift for cross-disciplinary research, his deep well of integrated visions and fruitful ideas, his vivid imagination, and his wealth of nonstop enthusiasm.
This concise, lively biography examines Carl Sagan's steady growth as a man, as a scientist, and as a communicator--a man who had both odd quirks and great charisma, who had an immensely eclectic knowledge base and a unique understanding of the central place of science in the human experience, all of which dovetailed smoothly with his phenomenal ability to communicate.
Separate chapters are devoted to Sagan's interest in the origin of life, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), and his work on Cosmos, where he collaborated with Ann Druyan, whom he eventually married and who remained his wife to the end of his life. There are also sections on Sagan's public advocacy for science and critical stance toward pseudoscience and his role as an activist for the environment and the safe use of atomic power.
This updated, paperback edition of Carl Sagan: A Biography contains many new photos as well as textual additions by Ann Druyan. Veteran science writers Spangenburg and Moser have captured much of the enthusiasm, gift for effective communication, and unflinching honesty that characterized Carl Sagan's life and career.

'A hymn to life, love, family, and spirit' DAVID MITCHELL, author of Cloud Atlas The vividly told, gloriously illustrated memoir of an artist born with disabilities who searches for freedom and connection in a society afraid of strange bodies. ***WINNER OF THE BARBELLION PRIZE*** In 1958, amongst the children born with spina bifida is Riva Lehrer. She endures endless medical procedures and is told she will never have a job, a romantic relationship or an independent life. But everything changes when as an adult Riva is invited to join a group of artists, writers, and performers who are building Disability Culture. Their work is daring, edgy, funny, and dark, and it rejects tropes that define disabled people as pathetic, frightening or worthless, instead insisting that disability is an opportunity for creativity and resistance. Riva begins to paint their portraits - and her art begins to transform the myths she's been told her whole life about her body, her sexuality, and other measures of normal. 'A brilliant book, full of strangeness, beauty, and wonder' Audrey Niffenegger 'Wonderful. An ode to art and the beauty of disability' Cerrie Burnell 'Stunning' Alison Bechdel ***SHORTLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD***

You don't have to change your life overnight--instead, you can make small changes that leave a lasting impact. In The 2% Way, discover the simple, revolutionary practice behind the against-the-odds success story of Dr. Myron L. Rolle. Dr. Rolle has led a remarkable life: from earning a scholarship to a prestigious private high school to becoming a top-rated recruit at Florida State University; from winning the Rhodes Scholarship for study at Oxford to playing football in the NFL and then becoming a neurosurgery resident at Harvard. In this inspiring book, Dr. Rolle tells the story of his incredible journey, revealing how a strong work ethic, deep faith, and the family values instilled by his Bahamian immigrant parents set the stage for the transformative life philosophy that enabled him to overcome adversity, defy expectations, and create a life of meaning and purpose. Whether you're struggling with your own obstacles, looking to improve yourself, searching for your purpose and identity, or seeking inspiration, Dr. Rolle's story will give you the encouragement and tools you need to: Make incremental improvements that lead to long-lasting results Build a life full of purpose and meaning Tackle life with the assurance that you're moving in the right direction The 2% Way will change the way you think about self-improvement, proving that you have the power to make strides toward the life you've always dreamed of.

Bill Gates is one of the most powerful figures of the past four decades. But the world-famous public image he has so carefully crafted is not the whole truth. In this explosive new book, Anupreeta Das (finance editor of the New York Times) takes you behind the façade.

From his early years, when he was a divisive figure in the burgeoning tech industry, we see the Microsoft co-founder morph into a ruthless capitalist, only to change yet again when he fashions himself into a global do-gooder. But as Das’s revelatory reporting shows us: billionaires have secrets and philanthropy can have a dark side.

Drawing upon hundreds of interviews with current and former employees of the Gates Foundation, Microsoft, and those with insight into the Gates universe, Das delves into Gates’s relationships with Warren Buffett, Jeffrey Epstein, Melinda French Gates and others to uncover the man behind the persona. In telling Gates’s story, Das also provides a new way to think about how billionaires wield their influence, manipulate their image and pursue philanthropy to achieve their own ends.

Billionaire, Nerd, Saviour, King is a gripping story of wealth, power and reputation; it will open your eyes to the ways in which the world’s richest people hold us in their thrall.

Anyone alive in the eighteenth century would have known that "the longitude problem" was the thorniest scientific dilemma of the day--and had been for centuries. Lacking the ability to measure their longitude, sailors throughout the great ages of exploration had been literally lost at sea as soon as they lost sight of land. Thousands of lives and the increasing fortunes of nations hung on a resolution. One man, John Harrison, in complete opposition to the scientific community, dared to imagine a mechanical solution--a clock that would keep precise time at sea, something no clock had ever been able to do on land. "Longitude" is the dramatic human story of an epic scientific quest and of Harrison's forty-year obsession with building his perfect timekeeper, known today as the chronometer. Full of heroism and chicanery, it is also a fascinating brief history of astronomy, navigation, and clockmaking, and opens a new window on our world.

En Nuestra Medicina: De Los Remedios para el Aire y Los Remedios para el Alma, la autora presenta una compilacion de experiencias propias que tienen que ver con el cuidado y alcance de su propia salud y, mas tarde, de la de otros. Las experiencias narradas son vividas directamente por la autora quien descubre, interpreta y describe en detalle lo que el ser humano guarda en su cuerpo y en su alma. A partir de la observacion aguda, que hace la autora de algunos eventos concretos que se presentan a lo largo de su vida, sanandose a si misma y a otros, es, que nos explica, como, en un encuentro inesperado entre ella y otros que encuentra en su camino, se da la pauta a un interesante dialogo. En este dialogo, la comunicacion va mas alla de las palabras, expresando un profundo sentir y forma de ver el mundo concreto en que se desenvuelven muchos mexicanos, portadores del conocimiento sobre la Medicina Indigena. Es, a partir de esa comunicacion que, muchos mexicanos herederos de una vasta y diversa cultura antigua nos ofrecen una profunda vision del mundo, y con ello el planteamiento de la resolucion del conflicto eterno que existe entre la salud y la enfermedad. Pareciera que la vida fuese una constante batalla, donde lo concreto; las particulas, los atomos, las celulas que forman parte del cuerpo humano y, lo no concreto; los sentimientos, los pensamientos, lo etereo del Ser, se entrelazan y se desenlazan hasta lograr la sincronizacion, la alineacion al camino que, permitira a los individuos cumplir con su destino. Con ello se permiten los seres de esta Tierra, completar al fin los ciclos, empezar otra vez, abriendo posibilidades nuevas de armonia, amor, paz. A lo largo de este documento, la autora nos ofrece en concreto una interpretacion seria y profunda de los conceptos tradicionales -incluyendo su interpretacion filosofica, sobre los padecimientos que aquejan a los seres humanos, la cual forma parte de la cosmovision de los mexicanos herederos de esta cultura. Sobre todo, y principalmente, enfatiza en observar aquellas causas que dan origen a las enfermedades -consideradas por los indigenas mexicanos, que tienen que ver con la perdida del alma, la conciencia y la salud -hoy mal o bien llamada mental. Presenta asi, las diferentes formas de sanacion que utilizan muchos mexicanos, los cuales hoy carecen de la seriedad e intensidad que se merecen, lo que hace que los problemas de la salud sean cada vez mas dificil de resolver, esa es la principal razon de este libro. Donde la autora plantea retomar esas formas, sin desdenar las tecnicas modernas. Ella solo se enfoca a ofrecer las inmensas posibilidades que los terapeutas de hoy, sean alternativos o tradicionales pudieran utilizar para sanar a su gente.

When Page Dickey moved away from her celebrated garden at Duck Hill, she left a landscape she had spent thirty-four years making, nurturing, and loving. She found her next chapter in southern Connecticut, on 17 acres of rolling fields and woodland around a former Methodist church. In Uprooted, celebrated garden writer Page Dickey reflects on this transition and on what it means for a gardener to start again. In these pages, fol low her journey: searching for a new home, discovering the ins and outs of the landscape surround ing her new garden, establishing the garden, and learning how to be a different kind of gardener. The sur prise at the heart of the book? Although Dickey was sad to leave her beloved garden, she found herself thrilled to begin a new garden in a wilder, larger landscape. Written with humour and elegance, Uprooted is an endearing story about transitions - and the satisfaction and joy that new horizons can bring.

We think of bees as being among the busiest workers in the garden, admiring them for their productivity. But amid their buzzing, they are also great communicators and unusual dancers. As Karl von Frisch (1886-1982) discovered during World War II, bees communicate the location of food sources to each other through complex circle and waggle dances. For centuries, beekeepers had observed these curious movements in hives, and others had speculated about the possibility of a bee language used to manage the work of the hive. But it took von Frisch to determine that the bees' dances communicated precise information about the distance and direction of food sources. As Tania Munz shows in this exploration of von Frisch's life and research, this important discovery came amid the tense circumstances of the Third Reich.The Dancing Bees draws on previously unexplored archival sources in order to reveal von Frisch's full story, including how the Nazi government in 1940 determined that he was one-quarter Jewish, revoked his teaching privileges, and sought to prevent him from working altogether until circumstances intervened. In the 1940s, bee populations throughout Europe were facing the devastating effects of a plague (just as they are today), and because the bees were essential to the pollination of crops, von Frisch's research was deemed critical to maintaining the food supply of a nation at war. The bees, as von Frisch put it years later, saved his life. Munz not only explores von Frisch's complicated career in the Third Reich, she looks closely at the legacy of his work and the later debates about the significance of the bee language and the science of animal communication. This first in-depth biography of von Frisch paints a complex and nuanced portrait of a scientist at work under Nazi rule. The Dancing Bees will be welcomed by anyone seeking to better understand not only this chapter of the history of science but also the peculiar waggles of our garden visitors.

'Kate Winkler Dawson is an unbelievable crime historian and such a talented storyteller.' Karen Kilgariff, cohost of the My Favorite Murder podcast 'Heinrich changed criminal investigations forever, and anyone fascinated by the myriad detective series and TV shows about forensics will want to read [this].' The Washington Post 'An entertaining, absorbing combination of biography and true crime.' Kirkus 'Kate Winkler Dawson has researched both her subject and his cases so meticulously that her reconstructions and descriptions made me feel part of the action rather than just a reader and bystander. She has brought to life Edward Oscar Heinrich's character, determination, and skill so vividly that one is left bemused that this man is so little known to most of us.' Patricia Wiltshire, author of Traces and The Nature of Life and Death Berkeley, California, 1933. In a lab filled with curiosities - beakers, microscopes, Bunsen burners and hundreds of books - sat an investigator who would go on to crack at least 2,000 cases in his 40-year career. Known as the 'American Sherlock Holmes', Edward Oscar Heinrich was one of the greatest - and first - forensic scientists, with an uncanny knack for finding clues, establishing evidence and deducing answers with a skill that seemed almost supernatural. Based on years of research and thousands of never-before-published primary source materials, American Sherlock is a true-crime account capturing the life of the man who spearheaded the invention of a myriad of new forensic tools, including blood-spatter analysis, ballistics, lie-detector tests and the use of fingerprints as courtroom evidence.

'A profound meditation on a problem many of us will face; worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as Atul Gawande's Being Mortal' Kirkus As the American born daughter of immigrants, Dr. Sunita Puri knew from a young age that the gulf between her parents' experiences and her own was impossible to bridge, save for two elements: medicine and spirituality. Between days spent waiting for her mother, an anesthesiologist, to exit the OR, and evenings spent in conversation with her parents about their faith, Puri witnessed the tension between medicine's impulse to preserve life at all costs and a spiritual embrace of life's temporality. And it was that tension that eventually drew Puri, a passionate but unsatisfied medical student, to palliative medicine - a new specialty attempting to translate the border between medical intervention and quality-of-life care. Interweaving evocative stories of Puri's family and the patients she cares for, That Good Night is a stunning meditation on impermanence and the role of medicine in helping us to live and die well, arming readers with information that will transform how we communicate with our doctors about what matters most to us.

This book collects and analyses the available biographical data on Jewish medical practitioners in the Muslim world from the 9th to the 16th century. The biographies are based mainly on information gathered from the wealth of primary sources found in the Cairo Geniza (letters, commercial documents, court orders, lists of donors) and Muslim Arabic sources (biographical dictionaries, historical and geographical literature). The practitioners come from various socio-economic strata and lived in urban as well as rural locations in Muslim countries.Over 600 biographies are presented, enabling readers to explore issues such as professional, daily and personal lives; successes and failures; families; Jewish communities; and inter-religious affairs. Both the biographies and the accompanying discussion shed light on various views and aspects of the medicine practised in this period by Muslim, Jews and Christians.

Here is a multidimensional playland of ideas from the world's most eccentric Nobel-Prize winning scientist. Kary Mullis is legendary for his invention of PCR, which redefined the world of DNA, genetics, and forensic science. He is also a surfer, a veteran of Berkeley in the sixties, and perhaps the only Nobel laureate to describe a possible encounter with aliens. A scientist of boundless curiosity, he refuses to accept any proposition based on secondhand or hearsay evidence, and always looks for the "money trail" when scientists make announcements.

Mullis writes with passion and humor about a wide range of topics: from global warming to the O. J. Simpson trial, from poisonous spiders to HIV, from scientific method to astrology. Dancing Naked in the Mind Field challenges us to question the authority of scientific dogma even as it reveals the workings of an uncannily original scientific mind.

He walked on the Moon. He flew six space missions in three different programs--more than any other human. He served with NASA for more than four decades. His peers called him the ""astronaut's astronaut."" Enthusiasts of space exploration have long waited for John Young to tell the story of his two Gemini flights, his two Apollo missions, the first-ever Space Shuttle flight, and the first Spacelab mission. Forever Young delivers all that and more: Young's personal journey from engineering graduate to fighter pilot, to test pilot, to astronaut, to high NASA official, to clear-headed predictor of the fate of Planet Earth. Young, with the assistance of internationally distinguished aerospace historian James Hansen, recounts the great episodes of his amazing flying career in fascinating detail and with wry humor. He portrays astronauts as ordinary human beings and NASA as an institution with the same ups and downs as other major bureaucracies. He frankly discusses the risks of space travel, including what went wrong with the Challenger and Columbia shuttles. Forever Young is one of the last memoirs produced by an early American astronaut. It is the first memoir written by a chief of the NASA astronaut corps. Young's experiences and candor make this book indispensable to everyone interested in the U.S. space program.

One hundred years on from his birth, and 30 since his death, Richard Feynman's discoveries in modern physics are still thoroughly relevant. Magnificently charismatic and fun-loving, he brought a sense of adventure to the study of science. His extraordinary career included war-time work on the atomic bomb at Los Alamos, a profoundly original theory of quantum mechanics, for which he won the Nobel prize, and major contributions to the sciences of gravity, nuclear physics and particle theory. Interweaving personal anecdotes and recollections with clear scientific narrative, acclaimed science writers John and Mary Gribbin reveal a fascinating man with an immense passion for life - a superb teacher, a wonderful showman and one of the greatest scientists of his generation.

A book that enlightens the life of Ahmed H Zewail from his early childhood to his days at CalTech.Born in Damanhur, Egypt, Ahmed H Zewail grew up with his family, studied at a local primary school and eventually graduated from Alexandria University. After completing his schooling, he went on to teach chemistry to undergraduates at the University of Alexandria.His contributions are not only to science but also to society. As a pioneer scientist, he returned to Egypt and had his fingerprints on all the initiatives to encourage scientific research and to upgrade the scientific and technological capabilities of his countrymen. He founded the Zewail City for Science and Technology - a non-profit educational institution for research and innovation in Cairo.A Nobel Prize winner, inventor of the ground-breaking four dimensional microscopy, and together with his other accolades, Ahmed H Zewail is one of the greatest scientists this century has produced. His foresight for the development of both the scientific and cultural fields in Egypt has made him a brilliant jewel for Egypt and the world.

This pioneering book investigates how biographical evidence has been variously used, misused, or not used at all, by clinicians entirely reliant on biographical evidence for the influential posthumous diagnoses they have produced of Winston Churchill as a manic-depressive. Attention is paid, also, to the distinct question of Churchill and "nerves," otherwise known as neurasthenia. This question has a place alongside the manic-depression issue because, by ensuring there is a marked contrast between two lines of biographical inquiry, it facilitates a significant move in the direction of a more rounded, a more securely founded, understanding of how Churchill functioned psychologically, and how he did not. That goal of a more rounded understanding is important, and the contribution Diagnosing Churchill makes towards its achievement is worthwhile, because accuracy in the depiction of key elements in the functioning of a major historical figure, one of the heroes of Western democratic civilization, is enjoined by a principle Churchill expressed thus: "the meanest historian owes something to the truth."

As Louise Brown -- the first baby conceived by in vitro fertilization -- celebrates her 30th birthday, Margaret Marsh and Wanda Ronner tell the fascinating story of the man who first showed that human in vitro fertilization was possible.

John Rock spent his career studying human reproduction. The first researcher to fertilize a human egg in vitro in the 1940s, he became the nation's leading figure in the treatment of infertility, his clinic serving rich and poor alike. In the 1950s he joined forces with Gregory Pincus to develop oral contraceptives and in the 1960s enjoyed international celebrity for his promotion of the pill and his campaign to persuade the Catholic Church to accept it.

Rock became a more controversial figure by the 1970s, as conservative Christians argued that his embryo studies were immoral and feminist activists contended that he had taken advantage of the clinic patients who had participated in these studies as research subjects.

Marsh and Ronner's nuanced account sheds light on the man behind the brilliant career. They tell the story of a directionless young man, a saloon keeper's son, who began his working life as a timekeeper on a Guatemalan banana plantation and later became one of the most recognized figures of the twentieth century. They portray his medical practice from the perspective of his patients, who ranged from the wives of laborers to Hollywood film stars.

The first scholars to have access to Rock's personal papers, Marsh and Ronner offer a compelling look at a man whose work defined the reproductive revolution, with its dual developments in contraception and technologically assisted conception.

On December 10, 2007, just three months shy of her thirtieth birthday, Tyesha Love received a phone call that would change her life forever. After being told she had stage 2 breast cancer, Tyesha's world stopped, the walls closed in, and she fell to the floor sobbing. This is the story of her compelling journey through breast cancer from diagnosis to treatment to triumph. As a single parent, full-time student, and full-time employee, Tyesha, a self-confessed control freak, already had her entire year planned out when she received her diagnosis. No stranger to confronting daily challenges, Tyesha relays how she placed her worries and fears in God's hands and then courageously confronted the tests, surgeries, treatments, and recovery. While sharing the poignant moments like when her one-year-old nephew blew a kiss at her cancer-ridden breast, Tyesha also provides a self-disclosing glimpse into what it is like to fear the unknown, feel the physical pain after a mastectomy, and face herself in the mirror after she loses her hair. Tyesha's moving story is intended to be a testimony for those battling breast cancer with the hope that her journey will become the inspiration to persevere and prevail while believing in faith, hope, and life.