New Books In Medicine

In 99 Ways to Die: And How To Avoid Them (St. Martins Press, 2026) emergency medicine doctor Ashley Alker presents an illuminating, hilarious, and practical guide to 99 of the most terrifying ways to die and how to avoid them. Dr. Alker is a self-described death escapologist—or, in more familiar terms, an emergency medicine doctor. She has seen it all, from flesh-eating bacteria to the work of a serial killer to the more mundane but no less deadly, and her work outwitting the end has uniquely prepared her to write this book. Dr. Alker manages to shock readers while making them laugh, educating them on how to outsmart a wide range of deadly situations and conditions. Many of the chapters include stories from her experiences in life and medicine, at times heartwarming, others heartbreaking. Sections include explorations of sex, poison, drugs, biological warfare, disease, animals, crime, the elements, and much more. An Anthony Bourdain-style greatest hits tour of death, 99 Ways to Die is entertaining while it in

Why is cows' milk, which few nonwhite people can digest, promoted as a science-backed dietary necessity in countries where the majority of the population is lactose-intolerant? Why are gigantic new dairy farms permitted to deplete the sparse water resources of desert ecosystems? Why do thousands of U.S. dairy farmers every year give up after struggling to recoup production costs against plummeting wholesale prices? Exploring these questions and many more, Spoiled: The Myth of Milk as Superfood (Columbia UP, 2023) is an unflinching and meticulous critique of the glorification of fluid milk and its alleged universal benefits. Anne Mendelson's groundbreaking book chronicles the story of milk from the Stone Age peoples who first domesticated cows, goats, and sheep to today's troubled dairy industry. Spoiled shows that drinking fresh milk was rare until Western scientific experts who were unaware of genetic differences in the ability to digest lactose deemed it superior to traditional fermented dairy products. The

Answers to the question 'what is medical progress?' have always been contested, and any one response is always bound up with contextual ideas of personhood, society, and health. However, the widely held enthusiasm for medical progress escapes more general critiques of progress as a conceptual category. From the intersection of intellectual history, philosophy, and the medical humanities, in Making Medical Progress: History of a Contested Idea (Cambridge UP, 2025) Dr. Vanessa Rampton sheds light on the politics of medical progress and how they have downplayed the tensions between individual and social goods. She examines how a shared consensus about its value gives medical progress vast political and economic capital, revealing who benefits, who is left out, and who is harmed by this narrative. From ancient Greece to artificial intelligence, exploring the origins and ethics of different visions of progress offers valuable insight into how we can make them more meaningful in future. This title is also availabl

What if the tools that shaped your life’s work were rooted in unimaginable evil? In this haunting episode, Rabbi Marc Katz sits down with Dr. Howard Alan Israel to discuss Nazi Anatomy Lessons: A Dissection of Evil, a book born from a single, shattering moment in an operating room. For over twenty years, Dr. Israel had prepared for surgeries using the same anatomy atlas—methodically studying each illustration, planning for every variation, and building a career marked by innovation, research, and the training of future surgeons. Then a colleague changed everything with one sentence: the atlas had been created by Nazi doctors. That revelation launched a thirty-year journey into the moral abyss—an investigation into who these anatomists were, who their “subjects” had been, and how healers became murderers. Dr. Israel began to confront terrifying questions: Was his career built, in part, on the suffering of victims? How could such knowledge remain hidden in plain sight for decades? And how does a profession de

In this eye-opening chronicle of scientific research on the brain in the early Cold War era, the acclaimed historian Andreas Killen traces the complex circumstances surrounding the genesis of our present-day fascination with this organ. The 1950s were a transformative, even revolutionary decade in the history of brain science. Using new techniques for probing brain activity and function, researchers in neurosurgery, psychiatry, and psychology achieved dramatic breakthroughs in the treatment of illnesses like epilepsy and schizophrenia, as well as the understanding of such faculties as memory and perception. Memory was the site of particularly startling discoveries. As one researcher wrote to another in the middle of that decade, “Memory was the sleeping beauty of the brain—and now she is awake.” Collectively, these advances prefigured the emergence of the field of neuroscience at the end of the twentieth century. But the 1950s also marked the beginning of the Cold War and a period of transformative social cha

How healthy you are is dependent on where you live. Americans suffer more cancers, heart disease, mental illness, and other chronic diseases than those who live in other wealthy nations, despite having the most expensive healthcare system in the world. Why? Embark on a journey to unravel the profound impact of public policies on American health from before birth in Born Sick in the USA: Improving the Health of a Nation (Cambridge UP, 2026). Delve into the intricate web where economic inequality weaves a tapestry of sickness stemming from a highly stressed society. This compelling read illuminates the need for transformative change in social safety nets and public policies to uplift national health and well-being. Through vivid storytelling, the book unveils the symptoms, diagnosis, and 'medicine' required to steer the nation toward a healthier future. Join the movement for a healthier America by embracing the insightful revelations and empowering calls to action presented within the pages of this eye-opening

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, venereal disease, or the 'pox,' was a dreaded diagnosis throughout Europe. Its ghastly marks, along with their inexorable link to sex, were so stigmatizing that it was commonly called 'the secret disease.' How do we capture everyday experiences of a disease that so few people admitted having? In The Dreaded Pox: Sex and Disease in Early Modern London (Cambridge UP, 2026), Dr. Olivia Weisser presents a remarkable history that invites readers into the teeming, vibrant pox-riddled streets of early modern London. She uncovers the lives of the poxed elite as well as of the maidservants and prostitutes who left few words behind, showing how marks of the disease offered a language for expressing acts that were otherwise unutterable. This new history of sex, stigma, and daily urban life takes readers down alleys where healers peddled their tinctures, enters kitchens and gardens where ordinary sufferers made cures, and listens in on intimate exchanges between patients and h

Jonathan Gleason spent ten years writing the ten essays in his debut collection, Field Guide to Falling Ill (Yale UP, 2026). In them, Gleason braids together strands from a variety of sources – from his experience with a potentially-lethal blood clot, to his imprisoned uncle, to his journey to access medication to prevent HIV – to analyze America’s healthcare system and the humiliating, confusing, and depersonalizing effects it can often have. The essays approach medicine from a variety of viewpoints, from Jonathan’s perspective as a gay man analyzing the development of HIV medications like AZT and Truvada, to his experience as a Spanish language medical interpreter at a free clinic in Iowa City. But each essay also reminds readers of the importance of understanding the history of our healthcare institutions, and the necessity of feeling less alone when confronted by their myriad failures. Lyrical, poignant, and deeply human, Field Guide to Falling Ill is a poetic approach to understanding medicine in America

Using the narratives of women who use(d) drugs, this account challenges popular understandings of Appalachia spread by such pundits as JD Vance by documenting how women, families, and communities cope with generational systems of oppression. Prescription opioids are associated with rising rates of overdose deaths and hepatitis C and HIV infection in the US, including in rural Central Appalachia. Yet there is a dearth of studies examining rural opioid use. RX Appalachia: Stories of Treatment and Survival in Rural Kentucky (Haymarket, 2020) explores the gendered inequalities that situate women’s encounters with substance abuse treatment as well as additional state interventions targeted at women who use drugs in one of the most impoverished regions in the US. Lesly-Marie Buer is a harm reductionist and medical anthropologist in Knoxville, TN. Claire Clark is a medical educator, historian of medicine, and associate professor in the University of Kentucky’s College of Medicine. She teaches and writes about health

Mark Parrino has been involved with the delivery of health care and treatment for opioid use disorder (OUD) since 1974. As the president of the American Association for the Treatment of Opioid Dependence, Inc. (AATOD), he works with treatment providers across the country to develop and improve treatment protocols. In December 2022, AATOD worked with the National Association of State Alcohol and Drug Abuse Directors (NASADAD) to initiate a first-of-its-kind census of all patients currently receiving treatment from government-certified opioid treatment programs (OTPs). Their findings, based on responses from over 1,500 OTPs nationwide, show the breadth and distribution of addiction treatment in America, and are the product of almost fifty years of medication-assisted treatment (MAT) in the United States. I spoke with Mark about his census results, as well as the history of MAT, and specifically methadone, treatment in America. You can see the full report here. Emily Dufton is the author of Grass Roots: The Rise

The Mask: A History of Breathing Bad Air (Yale UP, 2025) by Dr. Bruno J. Strasser and Dr. Thomas Schlich presents a history of masks protecting against bad air—in cities, factories, hospitals, and war trenches—exploring how our identities and beliefs shape the decision to wear a mask. For centuries, humans have sought to protect themselves from harmful air, whether from smoke, dust, vapors, or germs. This book offers the first history of respiratory masks—ranging from simple pieces of cloth to elaborate gas masks—and explores why they have sparked both hope and fear. Dr. Strasser and Dr. Schlich captivate readers with stories of individuals—from renowned doctors and political leaders to forgotten inventors and anonymous factory workers—who passionately debated the value of masks. In Renaissance Italy and Meiji Japan, in Victorian Britain and Cold War America, the way societies have engaged with face coverings reveals their deepest cultural and political fractures. The Mask challenges us to reconsider how we

Cervical cancer kills almost 350,000 women each year. What's more horrifying, is that millions have died of this disease that's nearly 100% preventable. It's no secret that healthcare is full of inequities, with a severe lack of accessible screening programs. But women's health care is also impeded by cultural, gender, and political barriers, issues that have combined to create devastating consequences.  In Enough: Because We Can Stop Cervical Cancer (Cambridge UP, 2024), Dr Linda Eckert takes her years of experience and weaves it together with the voices of the courageous women who use their own experience of cervical cancer to advocate for change. This heart-breaking, yet hopeful, book takes you through the world of cervical cancer with evidence-based information, personal stories and actionable outcomes. Society flourishes when women have access to safe and affordable healthcare. Together we can make this need a reality and eliminate the world's most preventable cancer. Learn more about your ad choices. Vi

Clare Griffin's book Mixing Medicines: The Global Drug Trade and Early Modern Russia (McGill-Queen's UP, 2022) introduces the reader to the dynamic and complex world of early modern Russian medical drugs, from the enthusiasm for newly imported American botanicals to the disgust at Western European medicines made from human corpses. Based on a unique set of previously unused sources, this book is the first study of how the Russian Empire took part in the early modern global trade in medical drugs. The extensive and detailed records kept by the Moscow court show how ingredients produced elsewhere and passed through the massive, long-distance trade network of the early modern world were finally consumed. Looking at medicine as materia medica gives us a different perspective than when looking at practitioners, texts, and ideas. Erika Monahan is the author of The Merchants of Siberia: Trade in Early Modern Eurasia (Cornell UP, 2016) and a 2023-2024 Alexander von Humboldt Fellow Learn more about your ad choices. Vi

Why did Isaac Newton read books on chiromancy, the occult science of hand reading that revealed the secrets of the soul? Why did Charles Darwin claim that the hand gave humans dominion over all other species? Why did psychoanalyst Charlotte Wolff climb into the primate cages of the London Zoo, taking hundreds of delicate palm prints? Why did Francis Galton, the father of fingerprinting, take palm prints too? And why did world-leading geneticists study the geometry of palm lines in their search for the secrets of chromosomal syndromes? Decoding the Hand: A History of Science, Medicine, and Magic (University of Chicago, 2025) is an astounding history of magic, medicine, and science, of an enduring search for how our bodily surfaces might reveal an inner self—a soul, a character, an identity. From sixteenth-century occult physicians influenced by the Kabbalah to twentieth-century geneticists, and from criminologists to eugenicists, award-winning historian Dr. Alison Bashford takes us on a remarkable journey int

Mike Jay's Psychonauts: Drugs and the Making of the Modern Mind (Yale UP, 2023) is a provocative and original history of the scientists and writers, artists and philosophers who took drugs to explore the hidden regions of the mind. Until the twentieth century, scientists investigating the effects of drugs on the mind did so by experimenting on themselves. Vivid descriptions of drug experiences sparked insights across the mind sciences, pharmacology, medicine, and philosophy. Accounts in journals and literary fiction inspired a fascinated public to make their own experiments--in scientific demonstrations, on exotic travels, at literary salons, and in occult rituals. But after 1900 drugs were increasingly viewed as a social problem, and the long tradition of self-experimentation began to disappear. From Sigmund Freud's experiments with cocaine to William James's epiphany on nitrous oxide, Mike Jay brilliantly recovers a lost intellectual tradition of drug-taking that fed the birth of psychology, the discovery o

Menstruation is something half the world does for a week at a time, for months and years on end, yet it remains largely misunderstood. Scientists once thought of an individual's period as useless, and some doctors still believe it's unsafe for a menstruating person to swim in the ocean wearing a tampon. Period: The Real Story of Menstruation (Princeton UP, 2023) counters the false theories that have long defined the study of the uterus, exposing the eugenic history of gynecology while providing an intersectional feminist perspective on menstruation science. Blending interviews and personal experience with engaging stories from her own pioneering research, Kate Clancy challenges a host of myths and false assumptions. There is no such a thing as a "normal" menstrual cycle. In fact, menstrual cycles are incredibly variable and highly responsive to environmental and psychological stressors. Clancy takes up a host of timely issues surrounding menstruation, from bodily autonomy, menstrual hygiene, and the COVID-19

A concise overview of fertility technology—its history, practical applications, and ethical and social implications around the world. In the late 1850s, a physician in New York City used a syringe and glass tube to inject half a drop of sperm into a woman’s uterus, marking the first recorded instance of artificial insemination. From that day forward, doctors and scientists have turned to technology in ever more innovative ways to facilitate conception. Fertility Technology (MIT Press, 2023) surveys this history in all its medical, practical, and ethical complexity, and offers a look at state-of-the-art fertility technology in various social and political contexts around the world. Donna J. Drucker’s concise and eminently readable account introduces the five principal types of fertility technologies used in human reproduction—artificial insemination; ovulation timing; sperm, egg, and embryo freezing; in vitro fertilization; and IVF in uterine transplants—discussing the development, manufacture, dispersion, and

Why Black People Die Sooner is a powerful and rigorous examination of the ways racism shapes health and disease. Joseph L. Graves Jr. demonstrates that the medical profession still fails to grasp basic facts about race, tracing how deep-rooted falsehoods have perpetuated the disparity between Black and white lifespans. He equips readers with the tools to dispel the fallacies and errors of racialized medicine, including an understanding of evolutionary biology and human biological variation. Graves also debunks common misconceptions about race and health on topics such as high blood pressure, sickle cell disease, the microbiome, infectious diseases, and cancer. Why Black People Die Sooner closes by offering a sweeping vision for dismantling medical racism, from professional training to clinical practice through biomedical research. Timely and bracing, this book reveals why medicine keeps misunderstanding race—and how we can make it change. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support

The media and creative industries thrive on passion, but that passion often comes at a cost. Behind the glamour of journalism, filmmaking, games, music, advertising, and online content creation lies a growing crisis-one of burnout, anxiety, substance abuse, and exhaustion. Why do so many creative professionals report feeling both deeply fulfilled and profoundly unwell? Mark Deuze investigates the systemic issues that make creative work both exhilarating and unsustainable. Drawing on extensive research and in-depth interviews with media professionals, he notes the hidden downsides of doing what you love and offers a candid analysis of how workplace structures, high workloads, and perceived injustices contribute to mental and physical distress. But this book is not just about what's broken; it's about what can be done. Deuze provides a roadmap for rethinking the culture of creative industries and offers strategies for balancing passion with sustainability. A practical resource for media scholars and those nav

The Nursing Clio Reader: Histories of Sex, Reproduction, and Justice (Rutgers UP, 2025) brings together essays that examine reproductive health through historical research and personal experience. Featuring both new and classic pieces from the Nursing Clio blog, leading historians of reproductive health, librarians, archivists, public health professionals and midwives provide insights that connect past struggles with today’s ongoing battles over bodies, reproductive rights, and health care. This collection offers intimate, urgent scholarship that speaks to the present moment. In this episode two representatives of the Nursing Clio Editorial Staff and one essay contributor discuss The Nursing Clio Reader. Sarah Handley-Cousins (University of Buffalo), Laura Ansley (American Historical Association), and Ayah Nuriddin (Yale School of Medicine) join Leah Cargin (University of Oklahoma and Journal of Women’s History) to talk about the recent publication, the origins of Nursing Clio, writing for public audiences