In 2017, Dr Suzanne Koven published an essay describing the challenges faced by women doctors, including her own personal struggle with "imposter syndrome"-a long-held, secret belief that she was not clever enough or good enough to be a "real" doctor. Accessed nearly 300,000 times by readers around the world, Koven's Letter to a Young Female Physician has evolved into a work that reflects on her career in medicine, in which women still encounter sexism, pay inequity and harassment. Koven tells engaging stories about her pregnancy during a gruelling residency in the AIDS era; the illnesses of her son and parents during which her roles as a doctor, mother and daughter converged; and the twilight of her career during the COVID-19 pandemic. Letter to a Young Female Physician offers an indelible eyewitness account from a doctor, mother, wife, daughter, teacher and writer that will encourage readers to embrace their own imperfect selves.

Winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1965, Richard Feynman was also a man who fell, often jumped, into adventure - as artist, safe-cracker, practical joker and storyteller. This self-portrait has been compiled from taped conversations with his friend Ralph Leighton.

In 1857 Henry David Thoreau moved to a small cabin in the woods near Walden Pond where he lived as a recluse from society for just over two years. In his time of self-prescribed isolation, Thoreau recorded his daily routine and reflections in an effort to get away from the noise brought about by a mainstream society. His work became one of the most influential American literary works of all time. Thoreau's daily journal entries became the foundation for one of the most well-known works of Transcendental philosophy to this day. Published as one title, Walden is a quasi-memoir and naturalist manifesto that has withstood the test of time. The work continues to inspire generations to switch it up, unplug, and revert to the higher calling of nature.

On their 100th anniversary, the story of the extraordinary scientific expeditions that ushered in the era of relativity In 1919, British scientists led extraordinary expeditions to Brazil and Africa to test Albert Einstein's revolutionary new theory of general relativity in what became the century's most celebrated scientific experiment. The result ushered in a new era and made Einstein a global celebrity by confirming his dramatic prediction that the path of light rays would be bent by gravity. Today, Einstein's theory is scientific fact. Yet the effort to "weigh light" by measuring the gravitational deflection of starlight during the May 29, 1919, solar eclipse has become clouded by myth and skepticism. Could Arthur Eddington and Frank Dyson have gotten the results they claimed? Did the pacifist Eddington falsify evidence to foster peace after a horrific war by validating the theory of a German antiwar campaigner? In No Shadow of a Doubt, Daniel Kennefick provides definitive answers by offering the most comprehensive and authoritative account of how expedition scientists overcame war, bad weather, and equipment problems to make the experiment a triumphant success. The reader follows Eddington on his voyage to Africa through his letters home, and delves with Dyson into how the complex experiment was accomplished, through his notes. Other characters include Howard Grubb, the brilliant Irishman who made the instruments; William Campbell, the American astronomer who confirmed the result; and Erwin Findlay-Freundlich, the German whose attempts to perform the test in Crimea were foiled by clouds and his arrest. By chronicling the expeditions and their enormous impact in greater detail than ever before, No Shadow of a Doubt reveals a story that is even richer and more exciting than previously known.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - "A meditation on sense-making when there's no sense to be made, on letting go when we can't hold on, and on being unafraid even when we're terrified."--Lucy Kalanithi

Kate Bowler is a professor at Duke Divinity School with a modest Christian upbringing, but she specializes in the study of the prosperity gospel, a creed that sees fortune as a blessing from God and misfortune as a mark of God's disapproval. At thirty-five, everything in her life seems to point toward "blessing." She is thriving in her job, married to her high school sweetheart, and loves life with her newborn son.

Then she is diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer.

The prospect of her own mortality forces Kate to realize that she has been tacitly subscribing to the prosperity gospel, living with the conviction that she can control the shape of her life with "a surge of determination." Even as this type of Christianity celebrates the American can-do spirit, it implies that if you "can't do" and succumb to illness or misfortune, you are a failure. Kate is very sick, and no amount of positive thinking will shrink her tumors. What does it mean to die, she wonders, in a society that insists everything happens for a reason? Kate is stripped of this certainty only to discover that without it, life is hard but beautiful in a way it never has been before.

Frank and funny, dark and wise, Kate Bowler pulls the reader deeply into her life in an account she populates affectionately with a colorful, often hilarious retinue of friends, mega-church preachers, relatives, and doctors. Everything Happens for a Reason tells her story, offering up her irreverent, hard-won observations on dying and the ways it has taught her to live.

Bestselling author-illustrator Marissa Moss tells the gripping story of Lise Meitner, the physicist who discovered nuclear fissionAs a female Jewish physicist in Berlin during the early 20th century, Lise Meitner had to fight for an education, a job, and equal treatment in her field, like having her name listed on her own research papers.Meitner made groundbreaking strides in the study of radiation, but when Hitler came to power in Germany, she suddenly had to face not only sexism, but also life-threatening anti-Semitism as well. Nevertheless, she persevered and one day made a discovery that rocked the world: the splitting of the atom. While her male lab partner was awarded a Nobel Prize for the achievement, the committee refused to give her any credit.Suddenly, the race to build the atomic bomb was on-although Meitner was horrified to be associated with such a weapon. "A physicist who never lost her humanity," Meitner wanted only to figure out how the world works, and advocated for pacifism while others called for war.The book includes an afterword, author's note, timeline, select terms of physics, glossary of scientists mentioned, endnotes, select bibliography, index, and Marissa Moss' celebrated drawings throughout. The Woman Who Split the Atom is a fascinating look at Meitner's fierce passion, integrity, and her life-long struggle to have her contributions to physics recognized.

This book is the result of extensive archival research conducted on the Collection "Silvano Arieti Papers" held in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. It offers readers the first scientific biography of the renowned Italian-born psychiatrist Silvano Arieti, who in 1939 emigrated to the United States, where he gained fame and recognition for his work on schizophrenia. In 1975, the second edition of his book, Interpretation of Schizophrenia, received the National Book Award in Science. The book has been cast as a twofold journey: an exploration of the life of a psychiatrist and scientist and an overview of twentieth century psychiatry and its significant issues, debates, and transformations. Readers will find useful insights for a better understanding of psychiatry as a discipline capable of portraying the complexity of human nature.

The life of the paradoxical seventeenth-century philosopher and mathematician is examined here along three axes--psychological, theological, and linguistic--to present the first rounded portrayal of the querulous, intense, ever-committed Pascal. In drawing this portrait, the author restores Pascal to the general reader after twenty years of scholarship that has embroiled this historic thinker in academic quarrels.

Robert Nelson confronts the contradictions in Pascal's life and personality: intensely religious according to the demands of his time, yet simultaneously committed to rigorous scientific inquiry, no matter where it led; fascinated by rebellion, yet deeply dependent on the authority of father, spiritual adviser, church, and science. Mr. Nelson sees the resolution of these personal dilemmas in Pascal's growing interest in language--the essential relation between word and object, signifier and signified, which form a style of "Pascalian linguistics" different from those of Descartes or Port Royal.

Through the scrutiny of Pascal's biography and analysis of the entire body of his writing, Nelson reveals Pascal the man, the scientist, the theologian, and the literary genius.

Killed in action at Gallipoli in the Dardanelles Campaign of 1915, aged just twenty-seven, Henry Gwyn Jeffreys Moseley was widely regarded as the most promising British physicist of his generation. His pioneering measurements of X-ray spectra provided a firm basis for the concept of atomic number and re-cast the periodic table of the elements into its modern form. Had he survived, he seemed destined to win a Nobel Prize. This book is a commemoration of Moseley's life, work, and legacy. Inspired by the exhibition 'Dear Harry... Henry Moseley: A Scientist Lost to War', at the Museum of the History of Science, Oxford, in 2015-2016, and revisiting earlier accounts, thirteen historians and scientists chart his experience of Manchester and Oxford; his military service; the reception of his work by the scientific community; and the impact of his work upon X-ray spectroscopy in physics, chemistry, and materials science. For Science, King & Country speaks to those with an interest in history, science, and the First World War, and draws upon a wealth of archives, artefacts, and recent research on the reward systems of science. Overall, it presents a comprehensive account of a young scientist whose brief but mercurial career paved the way to a new understanding of nature, and to shaping the future of physical science.

At twelve, Howard Dully was guilty of the same crimes as other boys his age: he was moody and messy, rambunctious with his brothers, contrary just to prove a point, and perpetually at odds with his parents. Yet somehow, this normal boy became one of the youngest people on whom Dr. Walter Freeman performed his barbaric transorbital--or ice pick--lobotomy.
Abandoned by his family within a year of the surgery, Howard spent his teen years in mental institutions, his twenties in jail, and his thirties in a bottle. It wasn't until he was in his forties that Howard began to pull his life together. But even as he began to live the "normal" life he had been denied, Howard struggled with one question: Why?
"October 8, 1960. I gather that Mrs. Dully is perpetually talking, admonishing, correcting, and getting worked up into a spasm, whereas her husband is impatient, explosive, rather brutal, won't let the boy speak for himself, and calls him numbskull, dimwit, and other uncomplimentary names."
There were only three people who would know the truth: Freeman, the man who performed the procedure; Lou, his cold and demanding stepmother who brought Howard to the doctor's attention; and his father, Rodney. Of the three, only Rodney, the man who hadn't intervened on his son's behalf, was still living. Time was running out. Stable and happy for the first time in decades, Howard began to search for answers.
"December 3, 1960. Mr. and Mrs. Dully have apparently decided to have Howard operated on. I suggested they] not tell Howard anything about it."
Through his research, Howard met other lobotomy patients and their families, talked with one of Freeman's sons about his father's controversial life's work, and confronted Rodney about his complicity. And, in the archive where the doctor's files are stored, he finally came face to face with the truth.
Revealing what happened to a child no one--not his father, not the medical community, not the state--was willing to protect, " My Lobotomy" exposes a shameful chapter in the history of the treatment of mental illness. Yet, ultimately, this is a powerful and moving chronicle of the life of one man. Without reticence, Howard Dully shares the story of a painfully dysfunctional childhood, a misspent youth, his struggle to claim the life that was taken from him, and his redemption.

"From the Hardcover edition."

When John McPhee met Bill Bradley, both were at the beginning of their careers. A Sense of Where You Are, McPhee’s first book, is about Bradley when he was the best basketball player Princeton had ever seen. McPhee delineates for the reader the training and techniques that made Bradley the extraordinary athlete he was, and this part of the book is a blueprint of superlative basketball. But athletic prowess alone would not explain Bradley’s magnetism, which is in the quality of the man himself—his self-discipline, his rationality, and his sense of responsibility. Here is a portrait of Bradley as he was in college, before his time with the New York Knicks and his election to the U.S. Senate—a story that suggests the abundant beginnings of his professional careers in sport and politics.

Dr Sparrow is back, coping with more bizarre, macabre and hilarious situations. Following his successful debut with Country Doctor, he once more guides us through the daily rounds of the weird and wonderful in his practice on the Devon/Cornwall border. What would you do if faced with the unsuccessful resuscitation of the wrong patient, being held at gunpoint as a suspected terrorist or confronting a blind man who refuses to stop driving? And what about the little old lady who presents you with a supermarket bag stuffed with GBP20 notes? Add to this, jets crashing on the runway, fleeting glimpses of the Royal Genitalia and the haunting tale of the suicidal stranger and an abducted child - and you will start to have some idea of the unpredictable life of Dr Sparrow.

William Stimpson was at the forefront of the American natural history community in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Stimpson displayed an early affinity for the sea and natural history, and after completing an apprenticeship with famed naturalist Louis Agassiz, he became one of the first professionally trained naturalists in the United States. In 1852, twenty-year-old Stimpson was appointed naturalist of the United States North Pacific Exploring Expedition, where he collected and classified hundreds of marine animals. Upon his return, he joined renowned naturalist Spencer F. Baird at the Smithsonian Institution to create its department of invertebrate zoology. He also founded and led the irreverent and fun-loving Megatherium Club, which included many notable naturalists. In 1865, Stimpson focused on turning the Chicago Academy of Sciences into one of the largest and most important museums in the country. Tragically, the museum was destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, and Stimpson died of tuberculosis soon after, before he could restore his scientific legacy. This first-ever biography of William Stimpson situates his work in the context of his time. As one of few to collaborate with both Agassiz and Baird, Stimpson's life provides insight into the men who shaped a generation of naturalists--the last before intense specialization caused naturalists to give way to biologists. Historians of science and general readers interested in biographies, science, and history will enjoy this compelling biography.

Moving, honest and inspiring - this is a nurse's true story of life in a busy A&E department during the Covid-19 crisis. Working in A&E is a challenging job but nurse Louise Curtis loves it. She was newly qualified as an advanced clinical practitioner, responsible for life or death decisions about the patients she saw, when the unthinkable happened and the country was hit by the Covid-19 pandemic. The stress on the NHS was huge and for the first time in her life, the job was going to take a toll on Louise herself. In A Nurse's Story she describes what happened next, as the trickle of Covid patients became a flood. And just as tragically, staff in A&E were faced with the effects of lockdown on society. They worried about their regulars, now missing, and saw an increase in domestic abuse victims and suicide attempts as loneliness hit people hard. By turns heartbreaking and heartwarming, this book shines a light on the compassion and dedication of hospital staff during such dark times. 'An important memoir that we all need to read right now.' - Closer

'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*** ***SHORTLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD*** In 1958, amongst the children born with spina bifida is Riva Lehrer. At the time, most such children are not expected to survive. Her parents and doctors are determined to 'fix' her, sending the message over and over again that she is broken. That she will never have a job, a romantic relationship, or an independent life. Enduring countless medical interventions, Riva tries her best to be a good girl and a good patient in the quest to be cured. 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-it rejects tropes that define disabled people as pathetic, frightening, or worthless. They insist that disability is an opportunity for creativity and resistance. Emboldened, Riva asks if she can paint their portraits-inventing an intimate and collaborative process that will transform the way she sees herself, others, and the world. Each portrait story begins to transform the myths she's been told her whole life about her body, her sexuality, and other measures of normal. Written with the vivid, cinematic prose of a visual artist, and the love and playfulness that defines all of Riva's work, Golem Girl is an extraordinary story of tenacity and creativity. With the author's magnificent portraits featured throughout, this memoir invites us to stretch ourselves toward a world where bodies flow between all possible forms of what it is to be human. 'Riva Lehrer is a great artist and a great storyteller. This is a brilliant book, full of strangeness, beauty, and wonder' AUDREY NIFFENEGGER 'This astonishing, heart soaring and often shocking memoir of a Jewish woman with spina Bifida born in the 50's is bright and dark, terrifying and wonderful. An ode to art and the beauty of disability' CERRIE BURNELL

Did you know the first recorded chemist in history was a woman? Tapputi-Belatekallim lived about 1200 BCE and was the head perfumer for the King of Babylon - a big deal in ancient times when perfume was used in medicine and important ceremonies. This informative book offers an overview of the amazing, and often hidden or forgotten achievements of women in science, who developed vaccines and cancer treatments, and unlocked the secrets of nuclear power and DNA - the building blocks of life.