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.

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.

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has attracted one of the world's largest online followings with his fascinating, widely accessible insights into science and our universe. Now, Tyson invites us to go behind the scenes of his public fame by revealing his correspondence with people across the globe who have sought him out in search of answers. In this hand-picked collection of 101 letters, Tyson draws upon cosmic perspectives to address a vast array of questions about science, faith, philosophy, life, and of course, Pluto. His succinct, opinionated, passionate, and often funny responses reflect his popularity and standing as a leading educator. Tyson's 2017 bestseller Astrophysics for People in a Hurry offered more than one million readers an insightful and accessible understanding of the universe. Tyson's most candid and heartfelt writing yet, Letters from an Astrophysicist introduces us to a newly personal dimension of Tyson's quest to explore our place in the cosmos.

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.

Silas Burroughs arrived in London from America in 1878 and proved himself an exceptional entrepreneur, taking the pharmaceutical business by storm. He was the brains and energy behind Burroughs Wellcome & Co. With his business partner Henry Wellcome he created an internationally successful firm, the legacy of which can be found in the charity the Wellcome Trust, yet few now remember him and the impact he made in his short lifetime. A consummate salesman, Burroughs was also an astute businessman, with new ideas for marketing, advertising and manufacturing: his writings describe sales trips around the world and the people he met. He was also a visionary employer who supported the eight-hour working day, profit-sharing, and numerous social and radical political movements, including the single tax movement, free travel, Irish Home Rule and world peace. In this first biography of Burroughs, Julia Sheppard explores his American origins, his religion and marriage, and his philanthropic work, as well as re-evaluating the dramatic deterioration of his relationship with his partner Wellcome.

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.

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.

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.

John Joseph Mathews (1894-1979) is one of Oklahoma's most revered twentieth-century authors. An Osage Indian, he was also one of the first Indigenous authors to gain national renown. Yet fame did not come easily to Mathews, and his personality was full of contradictions. In this captivating biography, Michael Snyder provides the first book-length account of this fascinating figure. Known as ""Jo"" to all his friends, Mathews had a multifaceted identity. A novelist, naturalist, biographer, historian, and tribal preservationist, he was a true ""man of letters."" Snyder draws on a wealth of sources, many of them previously untapped, to narrate Mathews's story. Much of the writer's family life - especially his two marriages and his relationships with his two children and two stepchildren - is explored here for the first time. Born in the town of Pawhuska in Indian Territory, Mathews attended the University of Oklahoma before venturing abroad and earning a second degree from Oxford. He served as a flight instructor during World War I, traveled across Europe and northern Africa, and bought and sold land in California. A proud Osage who devoted himself to preserving Osage culture, Mathews also served as tribal councilman and cultural historian for the Osage Nation. Like many gifted artists, Mathews was not without flaws. And perhaps in the eyes of some critics, he occupies a nebulous space in literary history. Through insightful analysis of his major works, especially his semiautobiographical novel Sundown and his meditative Talking to the Moon, Snyder revises this impression. The story he tells, of one remarkable individual, is also the story of the Osage Nation, the state of Oklahoma, and Native America in the twentieth century.

In 1987, Dr. Benjamin Carson gained worldwide recognition for his part in the first successful separation of Siamese twins joined at the back of the head. Carson pioneered again in a rare procedure known as a hemispherectomy, giving children without hope a second chance at life through a daring operation in which he literally removes one half of their brain. Such breakthroughs aren t unusual for Ben Carson. He s been beating the odds since he was a child. Raised in inner-city Detroit by a mother with a third grade education, Ben lacked motivation. He had terrible grades. And a pathological temper threatened to put him in jail. But Sonya Carson convinced her son he could make something of his life, even though everything around him said otherwise. Trust in God, a relentless belief in his own capabilities, and sheer determination catapulted Ben from failing grades to the directorship of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. Gifted Hands takes you into the operating room to witness surgeries that made headlines around the world---and into the private mind of a compassionate, God-fearing physician who lives to help others."

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.

An unforgettable, illuminating story of how men live and how they survive, from the acclaimed "New York Times" bestselling author of "Cutting for Stone"

When Abraham Verghese, a physician whose marriage is unraveling, relocates to El Paso, Texas, he hopes to make a fresh start as a staff member at the county hospital. There he meets David Smith, a medical student recovering from drug addiction, and the two men begin a tennis ritual that allows them to shed their inhibitions and find security in the sport they love and with each other. This friendship between doctor and intern grows increasingly rich and complex, more intimate than two men usually allow. Just when it seems nothing can go wrong, the dark beast from David's past emerges once again--and almost everything Verghese has come to trust and believe in is threatened as David spirals out of control.

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

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."

The author Lawrence Weschler began spending time with Oliver Sacks in the early 1980s, when he set out to profile the neurologist for his own new employer, The New Yorker. Almost a decade earlier, Dr. Sacks had published his masterpiece Awakenings - the account of his long-dormant patients miraculous but troubling return to life in a Bronx hospital ward. But the book had hardly been an immediate success, and the rumpled clinician was still largely unknown. Over the ensuing four years, the two men worked closely together until, for wracking personal reasons, Sacks asked Weschler to abandon the profile, a request to which Weschler acceded. The two remained close friends, however, across the next thirty years and then, just as Sacks was dying, he urged Weschler to take up the project once again. This book is the result of that entreaty. Weschler sets Sacks's brilliant table talk and extravagant personality in vivid relief, casting himself as a beanpole Sancho to Sacks's capacious Quixote. We see Sacks rowing and ranting and caring deeply; composing the essays that would form The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat; recalling his turbulent drug-fueled younger days; helping his patients and exhausting his friends; and waging intellectual war against a medical and scientific establishment that failed to address his greatest concern: the spontaneous specificity of the individual human soul. And all the while he is pouring out a stream of glorious, ribald, hilarious, and often profound conversation that establishes him as one of the great talkers of the age. Here is the definitive portrait of Sacks as our preeminent romantic scientist, a self-described "clinical ontologist" whose entire practice revolved around the single fundamental question he effectively asked each of his patients: How are you? Which is to say, How do you be? A question which Weschler, with this book, turns back on the good doctor himself.

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.

The dramatic stories of ten historic feuds: How they altered the course of discovery-and shaped the modern world
Hall Hellman tells the lively stories of ten of the most outrageous and intriguing disputes from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. Bringing the cataclysmic clash of ideas and personalities to colorful life, Hellman explores both the science and the spirit of the times. Along the way, he reveals that scientific feuds are fueled not only by the purest of intellectual disagreements, but also by intransigence, ambition, jealousy, politics, faith, and the irresistible human urge to be right.
Unusual insight into the development of science . . . I was excited by this book and enthusiastically recommend it to general as well as scientific audiences. -American Scientist
Hellman has assembled a series of entertaining tales. . . . many fine examples of heady invective without parallel in our time. -Nature
An entertaining and informative account of the unusual personalities and sometimes bitter rivalries of some of the world's greatest scientific minds. -Publishers Weekly
A fascinating new book which details some of the most famous disputes of the ages.-Courier Mail
Dry science history turns into entertaining reading without sacrificing historical accuracy. -The Christchurch Press
Great Feuds in Science is wonderful history, as the reader learns how scientists had to fight with religious leaders and other scientists to get their work recognized, accepted, and even get the credit for it -Bookviews

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 review of "One Doctor" noted its beautiful writing and compelling story, the riveting tension and suspense. "Remarkable with heart-pounding pace and drama" ("Publishers Weekly");" ""a gripping, moving memoir" (Abraham Verghese); "a terrific read" ("The Boston Globe");" ""an astonishingly moving and incredibly personal account of a modern doctor" ("The Lancet").
In compelling first-person prose, Dr. Brendan Reilly takes readers to the front lines of medicine today. Whipsawed by daily crises and frustra-tions, Reilly must deal with several daunting challenges simultaneously. As Reilly's patients and their families survive close calls, struggle with heartrending decisions, and confront the limits of medicine's power to cure, "One Doctor "lays bare a fragmented, depersonalized, business-driven health care system where real caring is hard to find. Every day, Reilly sees patients who fall through the cracks and suffer harm because they lack one doctor who knows them well and relentlessly advocates for their best interests. Filled with fascinating characters in New York City and rural New England--people with dark secrets, mysterious illnesses, impossible dreams, and limitless courage--"One Doctor" tells their stories with sensitivity and empathy, reminding us of professional values once held dear by all physicians.

One of New York Times' Twelve Books for Feminist Boys and Girls! This is the story of a woman who dared to dive, defy, discover, and inspire. This is the story of Shark Lady. One of the best science picture books for children, Shark Lady is a must for both teachers and parents alike! An Amazon Best Book of the Month Named a Best Children's Book of 2017 by Parents magazine Eugenie Clark fell in love with sharks from the first moment she saw them at the aquarium. She couldn't imagine anything more exciting than studying these graceful creatures. But Eugenie quickly discovered that many people believed sharks to be ugly and scary-and they didn't think women should be scientists. Determined to prove them wrong, Eugenie devoted her life to learning about sharks. After earning several college degrees and making countless discoveries, Eugenie wrote herself into the history of science, earning the nickname "Shark Lady." Through her accomplishments, she taught the world that sharks were to be admired rather than feared and that women can do anything they set their minds to. An inspiring story by critically acclaimed zoologist Jess Keating about finding the strength to discover truths that others aren't daring enough to see. Includes a timeline of Eugenie's life and many fin-tastic shark facts! The perfect choice for parents looking for: Books about sharks Inspiring nonfiction narrative books Role model books for girls and boys Kids STEM books

A beautifully written and compelling memoir of a largely unexplored area of medicine: transplant surgery. Leading transplant surgeon Dr Joshua Mezrich creates life from loss, moving organs from one body to another. In this intimate, profoundly moving work, he examines more than one hundred years of remarkable medical breakthroughs, connecting this fascinating history with the stories of his own patients. Gripping and evocative, How Death Becomes Life takes us inside the operating room and presents the stark dilemmas that transplant surgeons must face daily: How much risk should a healthy person be allowed to take to save someone she loves? Should a patient suffering from alcoholism receive a healthy liver? The human story behind the most exceptional medicine of our time, Mezrich's riveting book is a poignant reminder that a life lost can also offer the hope of a new beginning.