How a coalition of Black health professions schools made health equity a national issue. Racism in the US health care system has been deliberately undermining Black health care professionals and exacerbating health disparities among Black Americans for centuries. These health disparities only became a mainstream issue on the agenda of US health leaders and policy makers because a group of health professions schools at Historically Black Colleges and Universities banded together to fight for health equity. We'll Fight It Out Here tells the story of how the Association of Minority Health Professions Schools (AMHPS) was founded by this coalition and the hard-won influence it built in American politics and health care. David Chanoff and Louis W. Sullivan, former secretary of health & human services, detail how the struggle for equity has been fought in the field of health care, where bias and disparities continue to be volatile national issues. Chanoff and Sullivan outline the history of Black health care, from pre-Emancipation to today, centering on the work of AMHPS, which brought to light health care inequities in 1983 and precipitated virtually all minority health care legislation since then. Based on extensive research in the literature, as well as more than seventy interviews with the people central to this fight for legislative and policy change, We'll Fight It Out Here is the important story of a vital coalition movement, virtually unknown until now, that changed the national understanding of health inequities. The work of this coalition of Black health schools continues, both in supporting the training of more doctors and health professionals from minority backgrounds and in advancing issues related to health equity. By highlighting these endeavors, We'll Fight It Out Here brings attention to a pivotal group in the history of the health equity movement and provides a road map of practical mechanisms that can be used to advance it.

"A powerful and extraordinarily important book." -James P. Comer, MD "A marvelous personal journey that illuminates what it means to care for people of all races, religions, and cultures. The story of this man becomes the aspiration of all those who seek to minister not only to the body but also to the soul." -Jerome Groopman, MD, author of How Doctors Think Growing up in Jim Crow-era Tennessee and training and teaching in overwhelmingly white medical institutions, Gus White witnessed firsthand how prejudice works in the world of medicine. While race relations have changed dramatically since then, old ways of thinking die hard. In this blend of memoir and manifesto, Dr. White draws on his experience as a resident at Stanford Medical School, a combat surgeon in Vietnam, and head orthopedic surgeon at one of Harvard's top teaching hospitals to make sense of the unconscious bias that riddles medical care, and to explore how we can do better in a diverse twenty-first-century America. "Gus White is many things-trailblazing physician, gifted surgeon, and freedom fighter. Seeing Patients demonstrates to the world what many of us already knew-that he is also a compelling storyteller. This powerful memoir weaves personal experience and scientific research to reveal how the enduring legacy of social inequality shapes America's medical field. For medical practitioners and patients alike, Dr. White offers both diagnosis and prescription." -Jonathan L. Walton, Plummer Professor of Christian Morals, Harvard University "A tour de force-a compelling story about race, health, and conquering inequality in medical care...Dr. White has a uniquely perceptive lens with which to see and understand unconscious bias in health care...His journey is so absorbing that you will not be able to put this book down." -Charles J. Ogletree, Jr., author of All Deliberate Speed

Vic Damone is one of the enduring legends of American pop music. His early days were spent as an usher who longed to take the stage at New York City's legendary Paramount Theater. On August 30, 1947, he got his wish when his first hit "I Have But One Heart" reached #7 on the Billboard Chart. Befriended by Frank Sinatra and encouraged by legends like Perry Como and Tommy Dorsey, Damone had one of the greatest voices ever recorded covering such Lerner and Loewe classics as "On the Street Where You Live" and "Gigi" while making other numbers, like "You Do," his own.

In "Singing Was the Easy Part," Damone tells the whole story of his life - and what a life it's been A mob boss tried to throw him out the window of the Edison Hotel in New York City when he broke off an engagement to the boss's daughter. He was married to a string of glamorous women including the beautiful Anna Pierangeli and the tempestuous Diahann Carroll. When he got to Hollywood, Judy Garland gave him his first screen test, he got drunk for the first time with Ava Gardner at Chasens and he went golfing regularly with George Burns and Jack Benny. Oh yeah, there's also the story about how he took a nude chorus girl into the steam room of the Sands Hotel where Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr. and Dean Martin were relaxing between shows. All that - and much more - makes "Singing Was the Easy Part" a rollicking star-studded memoir from the great Vic Damone.

Israel's newest prime minister as of February 6, 2001, Ariel Sharon is a dynamic and controversial leader. A hero in Israel's wars, perhaps the most daring and successful commander in Israel's extraordinary military history, Sharon has always been a warrior, whether the enemies were hostile Arab nations, terrorists, Time magazine, or rival politicians. The public man is well known -- aggressive in battle, hard-line in politics -- but the private man has always been obscured by Sharon's dazzling career and powerful personality. In this compelling and dramatic auto-biography, the real Sharon appears for the first time: a complex man, a loving father, a figure of courage and compassion. He is a warrior who commands the respect and love of his troops, a visionary, and an uncompromising, ruthless pragmatist.

Sharon tells his story with frankness, power, intelligence, and a brilliant gift for detail. Always controversial, he is as outspoken as his friends -- and enemies -- would expect him to be.

..". the ultimate insider's account of the war from the South Vietnameseside, including the appalling story of how the American intervention actuallyhappened." -- Washington Post

"This book gives Americans a rareopportunity -- the chance to see the Vietnam experience through Vietnamese eyes. FewVietnamese know their recent history as well as Bui Diem does. And none has told itbetter." -- Ambassador William Jorden

..". well-written and attimes illuminating... " -- Library Journal

In the Jaws of Historyis the most important book written on the Vietnam War from the viewpoint of theSouth, from an author who was a senior official of the South Vietnamese governmentand later ambassador to the U.S.

If you're going to have a heart attack, an organ transplant, or a joint replacement, here's the key to getting the very best medical care: be a white, straight, middle-class male. This book by a pioneering black surgeon takes on one of the few critically important topics that haven't figured in the heated debate over health care reform-the largely hidden yet massive injustice of bias in medical treatment. Growing up in Jim Crow-era Tennessee and training and teaching in overwhelmingly white medical institutions, Gus White witnessed firsthand how prejudice works in the world of medicine. And while race relations have changed dramatically, old ways of thinking die hard. In Seeing Patients White draws upon his experience in startlingly different worlds to make sense of the unconscious bias that riddles medical treatment, and to explore what it means for health care in a diverse twenty-first-century America. White and coauthor David Chanoff use extensive research and interviews with leading physicians to show how subconscious stereotyping influences doctor-patient interactions, diagnosis, and treatment. Their book brings together insights from the worlds of social psychology, neuroscience, and clinical practice to define the issues clearly and, most importantly, to outline a concrete approach to fixing this fundamental inequity in the delivery of health care.

While Louis W. Sullivan was a student at Morehouse College, Morehouse president Benjamin Mays said something to the student body that stuck with him for the rest of his life. The tragedy of life is not failing to reach our goals, Mays said It is not having goals to reach. In Breaking Ground Sullivan recounts his extraordinary life beginning with his childhood in Jim Crow south Georgia and continuing through his trailblazing endeavors training to become a physician in an almost entirely white environment in the Northeast, founding and then leading the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, and serving as secretary of Health and Human Services in President George H. W. Bush's administration. Throughout this extraordinary life Sullivan has passionately championed both improved health care and increased access to medical professions for the poor and people of color. At five years old, Louis Sullivan declared to his mother that he wanted to be a doctor. Given the harsh segregation in Blakely, Georgia, and its lack of adequate schools for African Americans at the time, his parents sent Louis and his brother, Walter, to Savannah and later Atlanta, where greater educational opportunities existed for blacks. After attending Booker T. Washington High School and Morehouse College, Sullivan went to medical school at Boston University he was the sole African American student in his class. He eventually became the chief of hematology there until Hugh Gloster, the president of Morehouse College, presented him with an opportunity he couldn't refuse: Would Sullivan be the founding dean of Morehouse's new medical school? He agreed and went on to create a state-of-the-art institution dedicated to helping poor and minority students become doctors. During this period he established long-lasting relationships with George H. W. and Barbara Bush that would eventually result in his becoming the secretary of Health and Human Services in 1989. Sullivan details his experiences in Washington dealing with the burgeoning AIDS crisis, PETA activists, and antismoking efforts, along with his efforts to push through comprehensive health care reform decades before the Affordable Care Act. Along the way his interactions with a cast of politicos, including Thurgood Marshall, Jack Kemp, Clarence Thomas, Jesse Helms, and the Bushes, capture vividly a particular moment in recent history. Sullivan's life - from Morehouse to the White House and his ongoing work with medical students in South Africa - is the embodiment of the hopes and progress that the civil rights movement fought to achieve. His story should inspire future generations - of all backgrounds - to aspire to great things.

The American experience during the Vietnam conflict is universally known: the brutalization of the US fighting men, the drug abuse and the trauma. Even today the very word 'Vietnam' is too often interpreted as referring to this conflict (and specifically the American perception of it) rather than to the country and its people. The view from the other side - the Vietcong and North Vietnamese - has been virtually ignored. In this remarkable piece of oral history the story emerges of the ordinary people of both North and South Vietnam, of the Vietcong guerrilla fighters and terrorists, North Vietnamese soldiers and cadres, monks, opposition leaders, propaganda chiefs and village secretaries. "Vietnam: A Portrait of its People at War" provides an account of dedication and heroism at all levels and also of the brutality and trauma faced by a people in the grip of revolution and war.

William Ungar's biography Destined to Live is a perilous yet triumphant account of a young Polish soldier who suffered tremendous personal losses during the Holocaust. Despite losing several of his loved ones, Ungar did not succumb to anguish and despair. His survival depended on his ability to be alert and courageous, but his atypical facial characteristics helped tremendously to conceal his Jewish identity. Ungar lost not only his entire family but his wife and son, under the German occupation. His faith in divine providence sustained him until he could arrive in America on May 20, 1946. Here, he renewed his life, remarried, raised a happy family, and started a very successful business.