Denis Nkala was a young management trainee, fresh out of graduate school and newly returned to his home country of Zimbabwe, when he met Fidelia aboard a staff bus on his way to the hospital to visit his mother. Her kindness and genuine concern for the plight of a stranger touched him, and their friendship blossomed quickly. Before long, her easy smile and air of dignity carved their way deep into his heart. When they joined their lives together in marriage, they had no idea of the difficult trials they would be called upon to face. Fidelia, with her husband always by her side, battled various cancers in an effort to live long enough to see their children grow. Now Denis writes to communicate the courage, love, and faith that she held throughout her struggle. This touching true story details the life of a wife and mother as she battles an aggressive, mutative cancer. Told from the perspective of her husband, who was her diligent caregiver throughout her twelve-year battle, this narrative encompasses the gravity and pain of a long fight with cancer as well as the suffering and dedication of those who supported the fight.

Nikola Tesla was one of the 20th century's great pioneers; his role in advancing electrical energy through the use of alternating current, and his stupendous engineering finesse, make this biography by journalist John J. O'Neill a fine read. Born in a Serbian village to a religious family, Nikola demonstrated an early interest in physics. The nascent science behind electricity - in the 1870s a mysterious, unharnessed force - became his passion. Though the young man's engineering aspirations were almost derailed when he contracted cholera, and later by Austro-Hungarian conscription, Tesla managed to enrol to study in Graz, Austria. A top-class student, tutors admiration for Tesla's gifts and boundless curiosity was tempered by concerns over his tendency to overwork. These attributes marked Tesla's professional life; an obsessively driven man, Tesla's gifts for invention were amply demonstrated and rewarded in the United States. As his ambitions grew in size and scope, Tesla was hailed as a visionary.

"Whoever Saves a Life, It Is Considered as If He Saved an Entire World"

Dr. Rick Hodes arrived in Africa more than two decades ago to help the victims of a famine, but he never expected to call this extremely poor continent his home. Twenty-eight years later, he is still there.

This Is a Soul tells the remarkable story of Rick Hodes's journey from suburban America to Mother Teresa's clinic in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. As a boy, Rick was devoted to helping those in need, and eventually he determined that becoming a doctor would allow him to do the most good. When he heard about famine in Africa, that's where he went, and when genocide convulsed Rwanda, he went into the refugee camps to minister to the victims. When he was told that Ethiopia was allowing its Jews to emigrate to Israel, he went to help. While there, he was drawn to Mother Teresa's mission in Addis Ababa. It was there that Rick found his calling when he began caring for the sickest children in one of the world's poorest countries. But he did more than that--he began taking them into his home and officially adopted five of them.

This Is a Soul is also a book filled with great joy and triumph. When Rick's kids return from surgery or life-saving treatments, he is exultant. "Seeing these people after surgery is like going to heaven," he says.

Marilyn Berger went to Africa to write about Dr. Hodes, but while there, she became involved with the story. When she came upon a small, deformed, and malnourished boy begging on the street, she recognized immediately that he had the exact disease Rick could cure. She took him to Rick, who eventually arranged for the boy to have a complicated and risky surgery, which turned out to be incredibly successful. The boy's story--intertwined with Rick's, and Marilyn's as well--is unforgettable in its pathos and subtle humor.

This Is a Soul is not just a story of the savior and the saved, it is a celebration of love and wisdom, and an exploration of how charity and devotion can actually change lives in an overcrowded, unjust, and often harsh world.

The pioneering and creative brain surgeon recounts the course of his eventful life and career, detailing the drama and tensions of his endeavors, discoveries, and breakthroughs in neurology, neurophysiology, and neurosurgery

Gene Kranz was present at the creation of America's manned space program and was a key player in it for three decades. As a flight director in NASA's Mission Control, Kranz witnessed firsthand the making of history. He participated in the space program from the early days of the Mercury program to the last Apollo mission, and beyond. He endured the disastrous first years when rockets blew up and the United States seemed to fall further behind the Soviet Union in the space race. He helped to launch Alan Shepard and John Glenn, then assumed the flight director's role in the Gemini program, which he guided to fruition. With his teammates, he accepted the challenge to carry out President John F. Kennedy's commitment to land a man on the Moon before the end of the 1960s.

Kranz was flight director for both Apollo 11, the mission in which Neil Armstrong fulfilled President Kennedy's pledge, and Apollo 13. He headed the Tiger Team that had to figure out how to bring the three Apollo 13 astronauts safely back to Earth. (In the film "Apollo 13, " Kranz was played by the actor Ed Harris, who earned an Academy Award nomination for his performance.)

In "Failure Is Not an Option, " Gene Kranz recounts these thrilling historic events and offers new information about the famous flights. What appeared as nearly flawless missions to the Moon were, in fact, a series of hair-raising near misses. When the space technology failed, as it sometimes did, the controllers' only recourse was to rely on their skills and those of their teammates. Kranz takes us inside Mission Control and introduces us to some of the whiz kids -- still in their twenties, only a few years out of college -- who had to figure it all out as they went along, creating a great and daring enterprise. He reveals behind-the-scenes details to demonstrate the leadership, discipline, trust, and teamwork that made the space program a success.

Finally, Kranz reflects on what has happened to the space program and offers his own bold suggestions about what we ought to be doing in space now.

This is a fascinating firsthand account written by a veteran mission controller of one of America's greatest achievements.

Paul Zoll MD is an engaging account of the life and work of Dr. Paul M. Zoll, the physician and medical researcher behind the treatments and techniques we use today to save victims of heart attacks and to prevent premature deaths from other forms of heart failure. The book tells how one man's compassion, insight, intelligence and perseverance solved medical mysteries that had plagued people through the ages. The biography also shows the human dimensions of Dr. Zoll, including his childhood, education, military service, family relationships, recreational interests and social associations throughout his life, from 1911 to 1999. But the book's primary topic is Dr. Zoll's contributions to medicine, especially his breakthroughs in cardiac care and his development of closed-chest pacemakers and defibrillators, implantable pacemakers and heart monitors. The biography positions Zoll as a leading pioneer in cardiac care, whose innovations and ideas changed the field. Through carefully documented historical analysis, the book shows how Dr. Zoll was the creator and the first physician to successfully employ devices that are the fore bearers of life-saving implements commonly used today. The author, Dr. Stafford I. Cohen, was a medical resident under Dr. Zoll and, later, a colleague at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston. His book is the first full-length biography of Dr. Zoll. It strives for historical accuracy and gives a fair and balanced assessment of Zoll's life and work. Paul Zoll MD firmly establish Paul M. Zoll as a first-in-the-world innovator whose treatments and inventions make him the father of modern electrocardiac therapy - a man to whom we owe a great deal today.

Soon to be a major motion picture, the story of one of the most improbable and productive collaborations ever chronicled, between a young unschooled Indian prodigy and a great English mathematician.

In 1913, a young unschooled Indian clerk wrote a letter to G H Hardy, begging the preeminent English mathematician's opinion on several ideas he had about numbers. Realizing the letter was the work of a genius, Hardy arranged for Srinivasa Ramanujan to come to England. Thus began one of the most improbable and productive collaborations ever chronicled. With a passion for rich and evocative detail, Robert Kanigel takes us from the temples and slums of Madras to the courts and chapels of Cambridge University, where the devout Hindu Ramanujan, "the Prince of Intuition," tested his brilliant theories alongside the sophisticated and eccentric Hardy, "the Apostle of Proof." In time, Ramanujan's creative intensity took its toll: he died at the age of thirty-two and left behind a magical and inspired legacy that is still being plumbed for its secrets today.

Uncle Tungsten radiates all the delight and wonder of a boy's adventures, and is an unforgettable portrait of an extraordinary young mind. Oliver Sacks evokes, with warmth and wit, his upbringing in wartime England. He tells of the large science-steeped family who fostered his early fascination with chemistry. There follow his years at boarding school where, though unhappy, he developed the intellectual curiosity that would shape his later life. And we hear of his return to London, an emotionally bereft ten-year-old who found solace in his passion for learning. 'If you did not think that gallium and iridium could move you, this superb book will change your mind' - The Times

How does it feel to confront a pandemic from the inside, one patient at a time? To bridge the gulf between a perilously unwell patient in quarantine and their distraught family outside? To be uncertain whether the protective equipment you wear fits the science or the size of the government stockpile? To strive your utmost to maintain your humanity even while barricaded behind visors and masks? Rachel is a palliative care doctor who looked after the most gravely unwell patients on the Covid-19 wards of her hospital. Amid the tensions, fatigue and rising death toll, she witnessed the courage of patients and NHS staff alike in conditions of unprecedented adversity. For all the bleakness and fear, she found that moments that could stop you in your tracks abounded. People who rose to their best, upon facing the worst, as a microbe laid waste to the population. Her new book, Breathtaking, is an unflinching insider's account of medicine in the time of coronavirus. Drawing on testimony from nursing, acute and intensive care colleagues - as well as, crucially, her patients - Clarke argue that this age of contagion has inspired a profound attentiveness to - and gratitude for - what matters most in life.

In response to the stifling socialism of the Canadian health care system and the intolerably long Canadian winters, Dr. Mel Genraich made a life-altering decision: leave Toronto for good, and seek his fortune in Houston, Texas. Little did he know that in the short space of eight years, he would be divorced from his wife and children, remarried to a native Texan (from a staunch Church of Christ family, no less), and would relocate his practice to the Texas Panhandle. "Take Two Aspirins, but Don't Call Me in the Morning" depicts the travels and struggles of a Canadian Jew living in an almost one-hundred percent Christian world. Genraich tells of his incredible swings of fortune and adaptation to events that change the course of his life. He chronicles his travels in America and abroad-in particular, his transformational journey through Europe as a senior medical student. Brutally honest and sprinkled with his personal observations, Genraich shows that he is not afraid to be honest and controversial, traits that most in his profession decry. This is a memoir that is frank and engaging, far removed from the private enclave of the medical world and yet also a story of that world.