Useful/Suggested Reading List
Here is a list of some new books that are out and might be worth looking into for some of you depending on where you are along the journey, and where you are within your own heart and head. These are in no particular order.
- Broyard, Anatole. Intoxicated by my Illness. New York, Ballantine Books, 1992. This book presents a personal account of a life threatening illness.
- Bursztajn, Harold; Feinbloom, Richard; Hamm, Robert; and Brodsky, Archie. Medical Choices, Medical Chances. How, Patients, Families, and Physicians Can Cope with Uncertainty. New York, Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence, 1981. The authors describe how physicians, patients, and families deal with uncertainty, and how mayhem may occur when one doesn't acknowledge uncertainty.
- Coles, Robert. The Call of Stories. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1989. Dr. Coles, a psychiatrist, teaches Harvard undergraduates, medical students, and other graduate students the lessons we learn from listening to patients' - and each other's stories.
- Colgrove, Melba; Bloomfield, Harold; and McWilliams, Peter. How to Survive the Loss of Love. Los Angeles, Prelude Press, 1976. A physician, a psychologist, and a poet present insights into loss for patients and those involved in their care.
- Kleinman, Arthur. The Illness Narratives. New, York, Basic Books, Inc. 1988. A physician presents stories of illness and their meaning to patients and families and describes different ways in which physicians deal with patients and with change.
- Remen, Rachel Naomi. Kitchen Table Wisdom. New, York, Riverhead Books, 1996. Using stories from her own practice, a physician who specializes in caring for patients with serious or chronic illness reflects on what she has learned and how one can use those lessons in the therapeutic relationship.
- Verghese, Abraham. My Own Country. New York, Simon and Schuster, 1994. A physician specializing in infectious diseases writes of his experience in caring for patients with AIDS in eastern Tennessee and its impact on his personal life.
- Loudon, Irvine. Western Medicine: An Illustrated History. Oxford Press, 1997. In a scientific world where yesterday's news is already old hat, it might be useful for premedical and medical students to understand the long road traveled to arrive at our modern understanding of illness and health.
This list was originally compiled by:
David A. Egloff, Professor of Biology, Oberlin College, Oberlin Ohio.
READ MORE!
It does not matter what you read as long as you continue to hone your reading and comprehension skills. As your reading improves, you will find it easier to cope with your college coursework. Success on the DAT, MCAT, OAT and other admissions tests depend upon good reading skills. In most professional school studies, you will be expected to read and comprehend as much as, if not more than, you do now as an undergraduate. Also, you will be busy. You will not have the time to re-read material. After graduation from professional school, you may not need to read as many textbooks as before, but you will need to keep current on many aspects of medicine, drugs, and governmental regulations as well as those of insurance or health care maintenance organizations. If you hope to become a health professional who has a life outside of your practice, you should practice, now, reading with the intent to improve....
-from Words to the Wise; Pre-Health Professional Student; HPAP
TRAINING
- Kenneth Ludmerer, Time to Heal
- Rosemary Jones, Educational and Career Opportunities in Alternative Medicine (Pima Publishing, 1998)
- Dianne Boulerice Lyons, Planning Your Career In Alternative Medicine: A Guide to Degree and Certificate Programs in Alternative Healthcare
- Ellen Lerner Rothman, White Coat: Becoming a Doctor at Harvard Medical, 1999
- Perri Klass, A Not Entirely Benign Procedure, 1988
- Perri Klass, Baby Doctor,1993
- Charles LeBaron, Gentle Vengeance
- David Ewing Duncan, Residents: The Perils and Promise of Educating Young Doctors
- Ruth B. Purtilo & Amy Haddad, Health Professional and Patient Interaction,5th Edition
- Edited by Mike Magee, M.D.,The 50 Most Positive Doctors in America, An illustrated, coffee table size book published by Spencer Books, Ltd., Canada
- Charles Lebaron, Gentle Vengenance
- Melvin Konner, M.D., Becoming a Doctor: A Journey of Initiation in Medical School
- Geri-Ann Galanti, Caring for Patients from Different Cultures: Case Studies from American Hospitals
- Albert Schweitzer, Out of My Life and Thought
- Marie L. Lassey, William R. Lassey, and Martin Jinks, Health Care Systems Around the World: Characteristics, Issues, Reforms
- Howard S. Becker et al. Boys in White: Student Culture in Medical School, 1991
- Robert Marion Learning to Play God: The Coming of Age of a Young Doctor, 1991
- Robert Marion The Intern Blues
- 270 Ways to Put Your Talent to Work in the Health Field: Extensive guide to health careers; includes career descriptions, plus information on work setting, education, and salary for more than 270 careers. Also lists contact information for more than 120 organizations offering additional information. (October 1998).
PRACTICE
- Ben Carson, Gifted Hands, the Ben Carson Story. 1990
- Bruce Dan, A Piece of My Mind: A Collection of Essays from JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association), 1988
- Edited by Charlene Breedlove, Uncharted Lines: Poems from the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA)
- David Hilfiker, Healing the Wounds: A Physician Looks at his Work, 1988
- Richard Selzer, Letters to a Young Doctor, 1982
- Howard Spiro et al. (eds.): Empathy and the Practice of Medicine, Beyond the Pill and Scapel, 1993
- John Stone, In the Country of Hearts: Journeys in the Art of Medicine, 1992
- William Carlos Williams, The Doctor Stories, 1984
- John McPhee, Heirs of General Practice, 1988
- Philip Zazove, When the Phone Rings, My Bed Shakes: Memoirs of a Deaf Doctor, 1993
- Edited by Richard Reynolds, M.D. & John Stone, M.D. On Doctoring: Stories, Poems, Essays
- Sherwin B. Nuland, The Biography of Medicine
- Sherwin B. Nuland, How We Die
- Sherwin B. Nuland, Doctors
- Leonard Laster, M.D. Life After Medical School, Thirty-two Doctors Describe How They Shaped Their Medical Careers
- Dominique Lapierre, Beyond Love
- Patch Adams with Maureen Mylander, Gesundheit (out of print check your libraries)
- Patch Adams and Pamela Jacobs Housecalls How We Can All Heal The World One Visit at a Time
- Melba Colgrove, Harold Bloomfield, & Peter McWilliams How to Survive the Loss of a Love
- Mehmet Oz, et al Healing from the Heart, The Power of Complementary Medicine, 1998
- John Stone, In the Country of Hearts: Journeys in the Art of Medicine, 1992
- Lane Gerber Married to their Careers: Career and Family Dilemmas in Doctors' Lives, 1983
- David Hartman & B. Asbell White Coat, White Cane: The Extraordinary Odyssey of a Blind Physician, 1978
- Janet Bickel, Women in Medicine: Getting in, Growing, and Advancing
PATIENTS
- Alan Lightman, The Diagnosis, 2000
- Arthur Frank, At the Will of the Body: Reflections on Illness, 1992
- Susanna Kaysen, Girl Interrupted, 1993
- Audre Lorde, The Cancer Journals, 1980
- Gilda Radner, It's Always Something, 1990
- Jody Heymann, Equal Partners, 1995
- Edward Rosenbaum, A Taste of My Own Medicine (=The Doctor), 1988
- Oliver Sacks, A Leg to Stand On, 1984
- William Stryon, Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness, 1990
- Anatole Broyard, Intoxicated by My Illness
- Edited by Jon Mukan, Articulations
- Edited by Michael A. Lacombe, On Being a Doctor (poems and essays)
- Edited by Angela Belli and Jack Coulehan, Blood and Bone
- Harold Bursztajn, Medical Choices, Medical Chances. How Patients, Families and Physicians Can Cope with Uncertainity (out of print check your libraries)
- Abraham Verghese, My Own Country
- Hilfiker David, Not all of us are Saints, Hill and Wang 1994
- George Eliot, Middlemarch
- Anne Fadiman, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
- Arthur Kleinman, The Illness Narratives
- Rachel Naomi Remen, Kitchen Table Wisdom
- Robert McCrum My Year Off, Recovering Life After a Stroke, 1998
- Reynolds Price A Whole New Life, 1994
HOSPITALS
- Michael Crichton, Five Patients: The Hospital Explained, 1989
- Anton Chekhov, Ward Six and Other Stories
- Harlan Gibbs, MD and Alan Duncan Ross, The Medicine of ER, or How We Almost Die, Basic Books, 1996
- Howard Brody, Stories of Sickness
- Peter E. Dans, MD, Doctors in the Movies: Boil the Water and Just Say Aah
- Stephen Sawicki, Animal Hospital, 1997
- Susan Garrett, Taking Care of Our Own: A Year in the Life of a Small Hospital, 1995
TOUGH DECISIONS
- Lisa Belkin, First Do No Harm, 1993
- Dr. Lori Arviso Alvord , The Scalpel and the Silver Bear
- Joycelyn Elders, Joycelyn Elders, Elders, MD: From Sharecropper's Daughter to Surgeon General of the USA
AGING
- Andrew Malcolm, Someday: the Story of a Mother and her Son, 1992
- Phillip Roth, Patrimony: A True Story, 1991
OTHER PERSPECTIVES
- Howard Brody, Stories of Sickness, 1988
- Robert Coles, The Call of Stories, Teaching and the Moral Imagination1990
- Robert Coles, The Call of Service: A Witness to Idealism Reprint 1994
- Robert Coles, A Robert Coles Omnibus,1993
- Kathryn Hunter, Doctor as Stories: The Narrative Structure of Medical Knowledge, 1991
- Emily Martin, Flexible Bodies: Tracking Immunity in American Culture from the Days of Polio to the Age of AIDS, 1994
- Andrew Weil, Health and Healing, 1988
- Susan Sontag, Illness As Metaphor and AIDS and its Metaphors, 1991
- Anne Hawkins, Reconstructing Illness: Studies in Pathography, 1993
- Randollph M. Nesse & George C. Williams, Why We Get Sick: The New Science of Darwinian Medicine,1996
- Emily Martin, The Woman in the Body: A Cultural Analysis of Reproduction, 1987
MEDICAL ETHICS
- Samuel Gorovitz, Doctors' Dilemmas
- Samuel Gorovitz, Drawing The Line, Life, Death, and Ethical Choices in an American Hospital,1991
- Eileen Nechas and Denise Foley,Unequal Treatment, What You Don't Know About How Women are Treated by the Medical Community
- Charles L. Bosk, Forgive and Remember: Managing Medical Failure
- Gregory E. Pence, Classic Cases in Medical Ethics: Accounts of Cases that Have Shaped Medical Ethics with Philosophical, Legal, and Historical Background
- Paul Starr, The Social Transformation of American Medicine
- J. Warren Salmon, editor, The Corporate Transformation of Health Care: Perspectives and Implications
MEDICAL SCIENCE
- Lewis Thomas, The Youngest Science: Notes of a Medicine-Watcher
Other science books authored by Lewis Thomas are:
- The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher
- The Medusa and the Snail : More Notes of a Biology Watcher
- Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony
- The Fragile Species
HISTORY
- James Harvey, Young American Health Quackery: Collected Essays
- Stuart Moore, Chiropractic in American: The History of a Medical Alternative, 1993
- Norman Gevitz, The D.O. as Osteopathic Medicine in America, 1982
- Sheil Rothman, Living in the Shadow of Death: Tuberculosis and the Social Experience of Illness in American History, 1994
- Harvey Young, The Medical Messiahs, A Social History of Health Quackery in Twentieth-Century America, 1967
- Norman Gevitz, Other Healers: Unorthodox Medicine in America, 1988
- Jeffrey Fister, The Plaque Makers, 1994
- Paul Starr, The Social Transformation of American Medicine
- Irvine Loudon, Editor, Western Medicine, An Illustrated History, 1997
IN ADDITION, KEEP CURRENT BY REGULARLY READING THE FOLLOWING:
- The New York Times, particularly the Tuesday and Sunday Edition
- The Wall Street Journal
- Discover
- American Medical News
- The New Physician (published by medical students)
- Scientific American
- The New England Journal of Medicine
- the Journal of the American Medical Association
- U.S. News and World Report
- Time
- Newsweek
- the Professional Journals of your proposed discipline.
Last Updated 1/25/03