During a pandemic lockdown full of pyjama dance parties, life talks, and final goodbyes, a family helps a father die with dignity. In April 2020, journalist Mitchell Consky received bad news: his father was diagnosed with a rare and terminal cancer, with less than two months to live. Suddenly, he and his extended family -- many of them healthcare workers -- were tasked with reconciling the social distancing required by the Covid-19 pandemic with a family-based approach to end-of-life care. The result was a home hospice during the first lockdown. Suspended within the chaos of medication and treatments were dance parties, episodes of Tiger King, and his father's many deadpan jokes. Leaning into his journalistic intuitions, Mitchell interviewed his father daily, making audio recordings of final talks, emotional goodbyes, and the unexpected laughter that filled his father's final days. Serving as a catalyst for fatherly affection, these interviews became an opportunity for emotional confession during the slowed-down time of a shuttered world, and reflect how far a family went in making a dying loved one feel safe at home.

Aviation in the 1950s was a positive, exciting sequel to the most destructive war in history. It gave birth to the jet age for passengers, fostering remarkable social changes. Venture into the Stratosphere is a memoir about the exhilaration and challenges in flying the first jetliners. It brings to life a story of diverse elements, such as technical matters in layman's terms, a love story, social interactions, engineering philosophy, the post-war ethos, and the intimate details of the flight deck in routine flying and emergency situations. Readers enjoy the stories that make all their flights fascinating and exciting for years to come!

Paul Erdös, the most prolific and eccentric mathematician of our times, forsook all creature comforts – including a home – to pursue his lifelong study of numbers. He was a man who possessed unimaginable powers of thought, yet was unable to manage some of the simplest daily tasks.

For more than six decades Erdös lived out of two tattered suitcases, criss-crossing four continents at a frenzied pace, chasing mathematical problems. He gave his love to numbers – and they returned in kind, 'revealing their secrets to him as they did to no other mathematician of this century' (Life magazine). Erdös saw mathematics as a search for lasting beauty and ultimate truth. It was a search he never abandoned, even as his life was torn asunder by some of the major political dramas of our time: the Communist revolution in his native Hungary, the rise of Nazism, the Cold War and McCarthyism.

In this brilliantly inventive and playful biography, Hoffman uses Erdös's life and work to introduce readers to a cast of remarkable geniuses, from Archimedes to Stanislaw Ulam, one of the chief minds behind the Los Alamos nuclear project. He draws on years of interviews with Ronald Graham and Fan Chung, Erdos's chief American caretakers and devoted collaborators. With an eye for the hilarious anecdote, Hoffman explains mathematical problems from Fermat's Last Theorem to the more frivolous 'Monty Hall Problem'. What emerges is an intimate look at the world of mathematics and an indelible portrait of Erdös, a charming and impish philosopher-scientist whose accomplishments continue to enrich and inform our world.

This book recounts the life and achievements of Clarence King, widely recognized as one of America's most gifted intellectuals of the nineteenth century, and a legendary figure in the American West. King's genius, singular accomplishments, and near-death adventures unfold in a narrative centered on his personal relationship with his lifelong friend and colleague, James Gardner. The two, upon completing their studies at Yale, traveled by wagon train across the continent and worked with the California Geological Survey. King went on to establish the Geological Exploration of the 40th Parallel, a government mapping program that stretched across the western mountain chains from California to Wyoming. This was the precursor to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). Founded in 1879, with Clarence King as its architect and first director, the USGS became the most important and influential science agency in the nation. The adventurous aspects of conducting geological fieldwork in the West, much of them documented by letters written by King and Gardner, punctuate a book copiously illustrated with historic maps and photographs showing localities and people important to the story.

James T. Costa takes readers on a journey from Charles Darwin's youth and travels on the HMS Beagle to Down House, his bustling home of forty years. To test his insights into evolution, Darwin devised experiments using his garden and greenhouse, the surrounding land and his home-turned-field-station. His experiments yielded universal truths about nature and evidence for his revolutionary arguments in On the Origin of Species and other watershed works. We accompany Darwin in his myriad pursuits against the backdrop of his enduring marriage, chronic illness, grief at the loss of three children and joy in scientific revelation. At each chapter's end, Costa shows how we can investigate the wonders of nature, with directions on how to re-create Darwin's experiments.

The Next Pandemic is a gripping book that confronts the most urgent question facing our species: when, where, and how will the next major outbreak arrive? Some of history's biggest killers have been infectious diseases: The Black Death killed around 20 million in the 14th century; Spanish Flu killed 50 million in 1918; the AIDS pandemic has killed almost 40 million since 1981. There is no guarantee that we can prevent another such disaster, but whenever a new scare emerges, Dr. Ali Khan is sent to try. This book is Dr. Khan's story of 25 years of containing these near misses, in his long career at the Center for Disease Control. During the 1995 Ebola outbreak in Zaire, Khan worked among Red Cross workers digging mass graves, rescuing struggling patients from near-abandoned hospitals and ultimately finding Patient Zero. In 2001, he traveled to Washington, DC, summoned by a midnight phone call, to prevent anthrax spores from spreading through the Senate Office building's ventilation system. In 2002, he was called to Hong Kong to quarantine victims of SARS, a contagious disease with no cure and no vaccine. In each of these stories, Khan reconstructs the chaos of those first moments on the ground, making life-and-death decisions on limited and conflicting information, with local, federal, and international authorities fighting to contain both the virus and the panic. Through these and other stories, Khan breaks down the sources of the next pandemic: mutation; spillover from other species; lab accidents; bioterrorism; and natural disasters. He shows that the danger of an outbreak is more real than ever in a world of climate change and global commerce, but that we need not only live in fear. His career is a testament to the power of good information, habits, and poise under pressure, as we work to fight whatever exotic contagion comes next. The Next Pandemic is a vivid and necessary book about rampant and violent diseases, and disasters narrowly averted; and the tools we have to keep them at bay.

John Roebling was one of the nineteenth century's most brilliant engineers, ingenious inventors, successful manufacturers, and fascinating personalities. Raised in a German backwater amid the war-torn chaos of the Napoleonic Wars, he immigrated to the US in 1831, where he became wealthy and acclaimed, eventually receiving a carte-blanche contract to build one of the nineteenth century's most stupendous and daring works of engineering: a gigantic suspension bridge to span the East River between New York and Brooklyn. In between, he thought, wrote, and worked tirelessly. He dug canals and surveyed railroads; he planned communities and founded new industries. Horace Greeley called him "a model immigrant"; generations later, F. Scott Fitzgerald worked on a script for the movie version of his life. Like his finest creations, Roebling was held together by the delicate balance of countervailing forces. On the surface, his life was exemplary and his accomplishments legion. As an immigrant and employer, he was respected throughout the world. As an engineer, his works profoundly altered the physical landscape of America. He was a voracious reader, a fervent abolitionist, and an engaged social commentator. His understanding of the natural world however, bordered on the occult and his opinions about medicine are best described as medieval. For a man of science and great self-certainty, he was also remarkably quick to seize on a whole host of fads and foolish trends. Yet Roebling held these strands together. Throughout his life, he believed in the moral application of science and technology, that bridges-along with other great works of connection, the Atlantic Cable, the Transcontinental Railroad-could help bring people together, erase divisions, and heal wounds. Like Walt Whitman, Roebling was deeply committed to the creation of a more perfect union, forged from the raw materials of the continent. John Roebling was a complex, deeply divided yet undoubtedly influential figure, and this biography illuminates not only his works but also the world of nineteenth-century America. Roebling's engineering feats are well known, but the man himself is not; for alongside the drama of large scale construction lies an equally rich drama of intellectual and social development and crisis, one that mirrored and reflected the great forces, trials, and failures of nineteenth century America.

When Michael Collins decides to become a surgeon, he is totally unprepared for the chaotic life of a resident at a major hospital. A natural overachiever, Collins' success, in college and medical school led to a surgical residency at one of the most respected medical centers in the world, the famed Mayo Clinic. But compared to his fellow residents Collins feels inadequate and unprepared. All too soon, the euphoria of beginning his career as an orthopedic resident gives way to the feeling he is a counterfeit, an imposter who has infiltrated a society of brilliant surgeons.
This story of Collins' four-year surgical residency traces his rise from an eager but clueless first-year resident to accomplished Chief Resident in his final year. With unparalleled humor, he recounts the disparity between people's perceptions of a doctor's glamorous life and the real thing: a succession of run down cars that are towed to the junk yard, long weekends moonlighting at rural hospitals, a family that grows larger every year, and a laughable income.
Collins' good nature helps him over some of the rough spots but cannot spare him the harsh reality of a doctor's life. Every day he is confronted with decisions that will change people's lives-or end them-forever. A young boy's leg is mangled by a tractor: risk the boy's life to save his leg, or amputate immediately? A woman diagnosed with bone cancer injures her hip: go through a painful hip operation even though she has only months to live? Like a jolt to the system, he is faced with the reality of suffering and death as he struggles to reconcile his idealism and aspiration to heal with the recognition of his own limitations and imperfections.
Unflinching and deeply engaging, "Hot Lights, Cold Steel" is a humane and passionate reminder that doctors are people too. This is a gripping memoir, at times devastating, others triumphant, but always compulsively readable.

Gideon Mantell and the Discovery of Dinosaurs is a scholarly yet accessible biography--the first in a generation--of a pioneering dinosaur hunter and scholar. Gideon Mantell discovered the Iguanodon (a famous tale set right in this book) and several other dinosaur species, spent over twenty-five years restoring Iguanodon fossils, and helped establish the idea of an Age of Reptiles that ended with their extinction at the conclusion of the Mesozoic Era. He had significant interaction with such well-known figures as James Parkinson, Georges Cuvier, Charles Lyell, Roderick Murchison, Charles Darwin, and Richard Owen. Dennis Dean, a well-known scholar of geology and the Victorian era, here places Mantell's career in its cultural context, employing original research in archives throughout the world, including the previously unexamined Mantell family papers in New Zealand.

NOW A LIFETIME ORIGINAL MOVIE PREMIERING IN OCTOBER!Having recently graduated from Columbia Journalism School and landed her dream job at 20/20, the last thing 27-year-old Geralyn expects to hear is a breast cancer diagnosis. And there is one part of the diagnosis that no one will discuss with her: what it means to be a young girl with cancer in a beauty-obsessed culture. Trying to find herself, while losing her vibrancy and her looks, Geralyn embarks on a road to self-acceptance that will inspire all women. Although her book is explicitly about a period of time where she was driven by fear and uncertainty about the future, Geralyn managed a transformation that will encourage all women under siege to discover their own courage and beauty. The important and outrageous lessons of "Why I Wore Lipstick "come fast and furious with the same gusto that Geralyn has learned to bring to every moment of her life.

Hailed as the Thomas Edison and Henry Ford of Silicon Valley, Robert Noyce was a brilliant inventor, a leading entrepreneur, and a daring risk taker who piloted his own jets and skied mountains accessible only by helicopter. Now, in The Man Behind the Microchip, Leslie Berlin captures not only this colorful individual but also the vibrant interplay of technology, business, money, politics, and culture that defines Silicon Valley. Here is the life of a giant of the high-tech industry, the co-founder of Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel who co-invented the integrated circuit, the electronic heart of every modern computer, automobile, cellular telephone, advanced weapon, and video game. With access to never-before-seen documents, Berlin paints a fascinating portrait of Noyce: he was an ambitious and intensely competitive multimillionaire who exuded a "just folks" sort of charm, a Midwestern preacher's son who rejected organized religion but would counsel his employees to "go off and do something wonderful," a man who never looked back and sometimes paid a price for it. In addition, this vivid narrative sheds light on Noyce's friends and associates, including some of the best-known managers, venture capitalists, and creative minds in Silicon Valley. Berlin draws upon interviews with dozens of key players in modern American business-including Andy Grove, Steve Jobs, Gordon Moore, and Warren Buffett; their recollections of Noyce give readers a privileged, first-hand look inside the dynamic world of high-tech entrepreneurship. A modern American success story, The Man Behind the Microchip illuminates the triumphs and setbacks of one of the most important inventors and entrepreneurs of our time.

In THE MONK IN THE GARDEN, award-winning author Robin Marantz Henig vividly evokes a little-known chapter in science, taking us back to the birth of genetics, a field that continues to challenge the way we think about life itself. Shrouded in mystery, Gregor Mendel's quiet life and discoveries make for fascinating reading. Among his pea plants Henig finds a tale filled with intrigue, jealousy, and a healthy dose of bad timing. She "has done a remarkable job of fleshing out the myth with what few facts there are" (Washington Post Book World) and has delivered Mendel's story with grace and glittering prose. THE MONK IN THE GARDEN is both a "classic tale of redemption" (New York Times Book Review) and a science book of the highest literary order.

James Tobin, award-winning author of "Ernie Pyle's War" and "The Man He Became," has penned the definitive account of the inspiring and impassioned race between the Wright brothers and their primary rival Samuel Langley across ten years and two continents to conquer the air.
For years, Wilbur Wright and his younger brother, Orville, experimented in obscurity, supported only by their exceptional family. Meanwhile, the world watched as Samuel Langley, armed with a contract from the US War Department and all the resources of the Smithsonian Institution, sought to create the first manned flying machine. But while Langley saw flight as a problem of power, the Wrights saw a problem of balance. Thus their machines took two very different paths--Langley's toward oblivion, the Wrights' toward the heavens--though not before facing countless other obstacles. With a historian's accuracy and a novelist's eye, Tobin has captured an extraordinary moment in history. "To Conquer the Air" is itself a heroic achievement.

The Beginner Books -- "Their cartoon format and irreverent wit make difficult ideas accessible and entertaining."

-- Newsday

aking us through the upheavals in biological thought which made The Origins of Species possible, Jonathan Miller introduces us to that odd revolutionary, Charles Darwin -- a remarkably timid man who spent most of his life in seclusion; a semi-invalid riddled with doubts, fearing the controversy his theories might unleash; yet also the man who finally undermined belief in God's creation. Along the way we meet a fascinating cast of characters: Darwin's scientific predecessors, his contemporaries (including Alfred Russell Wallace, whose anticipation of natural selection forced Darwin to publish), his opponents, and his successors whose work in modern genetics provided necessary modifications to Darwin's own work.

Splendidly illustrated, this clever, witty, highly informative book is the perfect introduction to Darwin's life and thought.

Nikola Tesla, a Serbian-American, invented the radio, the induction motor, the neon lamp and the remote control. His breakthrough came in alternating current, which pitted him against Thomas Edison's direct current empire and bitter patent battles ensued. But Tesla's technology was superior and he prevailed. He had no business sense, could not capitalise on this success and his most advanced ideas were unrecognised for decades. Tesla's personal life was magnificently bizarre. Strikingly handsome, he was germophobic and never shook hands. He required nine napkins when he sat down to dinner. In later years he ate only white food and conversed with the pigeons in Bryant Park. This authoritative and highly readable biography takes account of all phases of this remarkable life.

The Dressing Station is a searing portrait of devastation on the battlefield that illuminates the consequences of war and the ambiguities of relief work at a time when these issues couldn't matter more. (Caroline Fraser, Outside) From treating the casualties of apartheid in Cape Town to operating on Kurdish guerrillas in northern Iraq at the end of the Gulf War, Jonathan Kaplan has saved (and lost) lives in the remotest corners of the world in the most extreme conditions. He has been a hospital surgeon, a ship's physician, an air-ambulance doctor, and a trauma surgeon. He has worked in locations as diverse as England, Burma, Eritrea, the Amazon, Mozambique, and the United States. In this story of unforgettable adventure and tragedy, Dr. Kaplan explores the great challenge of his career -- to maintain his humanity even when that option does not seem possible. The Dressing Station is a haunting and elucidating look into the nature of human violence, the shattering contradictions of war, and the complicated role of medicine in this modern world. A unique mix of biography and reportage, both personal and clinical, it is a rare insight into the mind of a surgeon. -- Sue Cullinan, Time Eloquent ... Beautifully written ... Provides a startling glimpse of battlefield surgery in those conflicts that CNN does not cover. -- Abraham Verghese, The New York Times Book Review Kaplan ... has a keen sense of the smaller moments that leaven the agonies of daily life. -- Julian B. Orenstein, The Washington Post

Washington, DC, born and Wisconsin educated, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings was an unlikely author of a coming-of-age novel about a poor central Florida child and his pet fawn-much less one that has become synonymous with Florida literature writ large. Rawlings was a tough, ambitious, and independent woman who refused the conventions of her early-twentieth-century upbringing. Determined to forge a literary career beyond those limitations, she found her voice in the remote, hardscrabble life of Cross Creek, Florida. There, Rawlings purchased a commercial orange grove and discovered a fascinating world out of which to write-and a dialect of the poor, swampland community that the literary world had yet to hear. She employed her sensitive eye, sharp ear for dialogue, and philosophical spirit to bring to life this unknown corner of America in vivid, tender detail, a feat that earned her the Pulitzer Prize in 1938. Her accomplishments came at a price: a failed first marriage, financial instability, a contentious libel suit, alcoholism, and physical and emotional upheaval. With intimate access to Rawlings's correspondence and revealing early writings, Ann McCutchan uncovers a larger-than-life woman who writes passionately and with verve, whose emotions change on a dime, and who drinks to excess, smokes, swears, and even occasionally joins in on an alligator hunt. The Life She Wished to Live paints a lively portrait of Rawlings, her contemporaries-including her legendary editor, Maxwell Perkins, and friends Zora Neale Hurston, Ernest Hemingway, and F. Scott Fitzgerald-and the Florida landscape and people that inspired her.

"In me, there is the red of miry clay, the brown of spring floods, the gold of ripening tobacco. All of these hues are me; I am, in the deepest sense, colored." From these fertile soils of love, land, identity, family, and race emerges The Home Place, a big-hearted, unforgettable memoir by ornithologist and professor of ecology J. Drew Lanham. Dating back to slavery, Edgefield County, South Carolina-a place "easy to pass by on the way somewhere else"-has been home to generations of Lanhams. In The Home Place, readers meet these extraordinary people, including Drew himself, who over the course of the 1970s falls in love with the natural world around him. As his passion takes flight, however, he begins to ask what it means to be "the rare bird, the oddity." By turns angry, funny, elegiac, and heartbreaking, The Home Place is a remarkable meditation on nature and belonging, at once a deeply moving memoir and riveting exploration of the contradictions of black identity in the rural South-and in America today.

Families are riddled with untold secrets. But Stephen Hinshaw never imagined that a profound secret was kept under lock and key for 18 years within his family - that his father's mysterious absences, for months at a time, resulted from serious mental illness and involuntary hospitalisations. From the moment his father revealed the truth, during Hinshaw's first spring break from college, he knew his life would change forever. Hinshaw calls this revelation his 'psychological birth.' After years of experiencing the ups and downs of his father's illness without knowing it existed, Hinshaw began to piece together the silent, often terrifying history of his father's life - in great contrast to his father's presence and love during periods of wellness. This exploration led to larger discoveries about the family saga, to Hinshaw's correctly diagnosing his father with bipolar disorder, and to his full-fledged career as a clinical and developmental psychologist and professor. In Another Kind of Madness, Hinshaw explores the burden of living in a family 'loaded' with mental illness and debunks the stigma behind it. He explains that in today's society, mental health problems still receive utter castigation - too often resulting in the loss of fundamental rights, including the inability to vote or run for office or automatic relinquishment of child custody. Through a poignant and moving family narrative, interlaced with shocking facts about how America and the world still view mental health conditions well into in the 21st century, Another Kind of Madness is a passionate call to arms regarding the importance of destigmatising mental illness.

It was a low-level panic at first, but very quickly there were big changes taking place. Day by day, wards were being cleared to make way for Covid-positive patients. Things were getting worse by the day. For the first time in my nursing career, I felt scared. As a palliative care nurse, it is Kelly Critcher's job to look death in the eye - to save a patient while the fight can still be won, and confront life's end with grace and kindness when it can't. In early 2020, everything changed for nurses on the NHS front line. Working on Covid wards and the High Dependency Unit, Kelly spent the height of the coronavirus crisis at Northwick Park hospital - perhaps the UK hospital most deeply ravaged by the illness. She, and many others like her, battled tirelessly in a critical care unit pushed to breaking point, delivering the bad news and fighting the good fight, day-in, day-out, throughout the gravest test our health service has faced since its inception. Kelly's story weaves together her raw, emotional diaries from the COVID frontline with a broader reflection on the truths about a life spent caught between battling for her patients' lives and helping them face down death with courage and compassion. Bringing together the enormity of the last twelve months - and the scars it will leave - this is a book for our times.

While supervising a small group of interns at a major New York medical center, Dr. Robert Marion asked three of them to keep a careful diary over the course of a year. Andy, Mark, and Amy vividly describe their real-life lessons in treating very sick children; confronting child abuse and the awful human impact of the AIDS epidemic; skirting the indifference of the hospital bureaucracy; and overcoming their own fears, insecurities, and constant fatigue. Their stories are harrowing and often funny; their personal triumph is unforgettable.

This updated edition of The Intern Blues includes a new preface from the author discussing the status of medical training in America today and a new afterword updating the reader on the lives of the three young interns who first shared their stories with readers more than a decade ago.

A penetrating, mesmerizing biography of a scientific icon

"Absolutely fascinating . . . Davidson has done a remarkable job."-Sir Arthur C. Clarke

"Engaging . . . accessible, carefully documented . . . sophisticated."-Dr. David Hollinger for The New York Times Book Review

"Entertaining . . . Davidson treats the] nuances of Sagan's complex life with understanding and sympathy."-The Christian Science Monitor

"Excellent . . . Davidson acts as a keen critic to Sagan's works and their vast uncertainties."-Scientific American

"A fascinating book about an extraordinary man."-Johnny Carson

"Davidson, an award-winning science writer, has written an absorbing portrait of this Pied Piper of planetary science. Davidson thoroughly explores Sagan's science, wrestles with his politics, and plumbs his personal passions with a telling instinct for the revealing underside of a life lived so publicly."-Los Angeles Times

Carl Sagan was one of the most celebrated scientists of this century the handsome and alluring visionary who inspired a generation to look to the heavens and beyond. His life was both an intellectual feast and an emotional rollercoaster. Based on interviews with Sagan's family and friends, including his widow, Ann Druyan; his first wife, acclaimed scientist Lynn Margulis; and his three sons, as well as exclusive access to many personal papers, this highly acclaimed life story offers remarkable insight into one of the most influential, provocative, and beloved figures of our time a complex, contradictory prophet of the Space Age."

White Coat is Dr. Ellen Lerner Rothman's vivid account of her four years at Harvard Medical School. Describing the grueling hours and emotional hurdles she underwent to earn the degree of M.D., Dr. Rothman tells the story of one woman's transformation from a terrified first-year medical studen into a confident, competent doctor.

Touching on the most relevant issues in medicine today--such as HMOs, aIDS, and assisted suicide--Dr. Rothman recounts her despair and exhilaration as a medical student, from the stress of exams to th hard-won rewards that came from treating patients.

The anecdotes in White Coat are funny, heartbreaking, and at times horrifying. Each chapter taes us deeper into Dr. Rothman's medical school experience, illuminating her struggle to walk the line between too much and not enough intimacy with her patients. For readers of Perri Klass and Richard Selzer, Dr. Rothman looks candidly at medicine and presents an unvarnished perspective on a subject that matters to us all. White Coat opens the infamously closed door between patient and doctor in a book that will change the way we look at our medical establishment.

With a thoughtful, candid voice, Rothman writes about a wide range of experiences -- from a dream about holding the hand of a cadaver she had dissected to the acute embarrassment she felt when asking patients about their sexual histories. She shares her horror at treating a patient with a flesh-eating skin infection, the anxiety of being "pimped" by doctors for information (when doctors quiz students on anatomy and medicine), as well as the ultimate reward of making the transformation and of earning a doctor's white coat.

For readers of Perri Klass, Richard Selzer, and the millions of fans of ER, White Coat is a fascinating account of one woman's journey through school and into the high-stakes drama of the medical world.

In White Coat, Ellen Rothman offers a vivid account of her four years at one of the best medical schools in the country, and opens the infamously closed door between patient and doctor. Touching on today's most important medical issues -- such as HMOs, AIDS, and assisted suicide -- the author navigates her way through despair, exhilaration, and a lot of exhaustion in Harvard's classrooms and Boston's hospitals to earn the indisputable title to which we entrust our lives.

With a thoughtful, candid voice, Rothman writes about a wide range of experiences -- from a dream about holding the hand of a cadaver she had dissected to the acute embarrassment she felt when asking patients about their sexual histories. She shares her horror at treating a patient with a flesh-eating skin infection, the anxiety of being "pimped" by doctors for information (when doctors quiz students on anatomy and medicine), as well as the ultimate reward of making the transformation and of earning a doctor's white coat.

For readers of Perri Klass, Richard Selzer, and the millions of fans of ER, White Coat is a fascinating account of one woman's journey through school and into the high-stakes drama of the medical world.

In The Surprising Lives of Small-Town Doctors, physicians put down their stethoscopes and pick up their pens to share some of the most frightening and pivotal moments of their careers. From making igloo house calls to bandaging animal bites to performing surgeries they may have only read about in textbooks, these young doctors speak of the many rewards of practising medicine in small communities. They also detail the fears, failures, and challenges of providing health care in the farthest reaches of our country--where the need for doctors is the greatest. Collectively, these stories capture the spirit, innovation, and resilience of these rural doctors and the communities they serve.