Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

New Jersey

How a Leading New York City Health System Mobilized to Battle the Greatest Health Crisis of Our Era

Relentless is the compelling story of how one of America's leading health care systems -- the Mount Sinai Health System in New York City -- mobilized to confront the defining health crisis of our time: the coronavirus pandemic.



This book is based on unprecedented access to internal hospital documents and more than 100 candid interviews with the chief executives of Mount Sinai's hospitals and its Icahn School of Medicine; with physicians and nurses on the front lines throughout the system who pushed themselves to the brink to save lives; with renowned research scientists who urgently worked to decipher the virus and find ways to counter it as quickly and safely as possible; and with brave patients, staff members, and medical students who summoned up their reserves of energy, compassion, dedication, and courage to fight the disease. Relentless closes with an exploration and explanation of lessons learned -- and of what needs to be done, and what is being done, to prepare for future pandemics and other health crises.



Author Deborah Schupack, an acclaimed novelist and journalist, tells this story with the velocity and intensity of a gripping thriller and with the care and detail of great reporting. Her masterful writing is accompanied by unforgettable photographs, many here seen for the first time.



If you read one book about the heroism and fears, the triumphs large and small, the strength and improvisation and daring that the fight against COVID has entailed and required, make it Relentless.



Relentless

eec26e52-e8a3-42ad-947f-d554173b59d0-1

Leana Wen

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Idaho

A Doctor's Journey on the Frontlines of Medicine and Social Justice

From medical expert Leana Wen, MD, Lifelines is an insider's account of public health and its crucial role—from opioid addiction to global pandemic—and an inspiring story of her journey from struggling immigrant to being one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People. “Public health saved your life today—you just don’t know it,” is a phrase that Dr. Leana Wen likes to use. You don’t know it because good public health is invisible. It becomes visible only in its absence, when it is underfunded and ignored, a bitter truth laid bare as never before by the devastation of COVID-19. Leana Wen—emergency physician, former Baltimore health commissioner, CNN medical analyst, and Washington Post contributing columnist—has lived on the front lines of public health, leading the fight against the opioid epidemic, outbreaks of infectious disease, maternal and infant mortality, and COVID-19 disinformation. Here, in gripping detail, Wen lays bare the lifesaving work of public health and its innovative approach to social ills, treating gun violence as a contagious disease, for example, and racism as a threat to health. Wen also tells her own uniquely American story: an immigrant from China, she and her family received food stamps and were at times homeless despite her parents working multiple jobs. That child went on to attend college at thirteen, become a Rhodes scholar, and turn to public health as the way to make a difference in the country that had offered her such possibilities. Ultimately, she insists, it is public health that ensures citizens are not robbed of decades of life, and that where children live does not determine whether they live.

Public Health Saved Your Life Today

886bfeff-a5ed-4172-833b-bdb81c10c5b2

Texas

How Science and Public Health Gave Children a Future

Only one hundred years ago, even in the world's wealthiest nations, children died in great numbers?of diarrhea, diphtheria, and measles, of scarlet fever and meningitis. Culture was shaped by these deaths; diaries and letters recorded them, poets and writers from Louisa May Alcott to Eugene O'Neill wrote about and lamented them. Not even the high and mighty could escape: presidents and titans of industry lost their children, the poor and powerless lost theirs even more frequently.

The near-conquest of infant and child mortality is one of our greatest human achievements, and Perri Klass pulls the story together for the first time, paying tribute to scientists, public health advocates, and groundbreaking women doctors like Sara Josephine Baker and Mary Putnam Jacobi, who brought new scientific ideas about sanitation and vaccination to families. Thanks to their work, early death is now the exception, bringing about a massive transformation in society and freeing parents to worry a lot more about a lot less.

A Good Time to Be Born

18d0f98d-515e-4aa1-be82-490136d8730b-1

Maryn McKenna

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Minnesota

The universal human instinct is to run from an outbreak of disease like Ebola. These doctors run toward it. Their job is to stop epidemics from happening. They are the disease detective corps of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the federal agency that tracks and tries to prevent disease outbreaks and bioterrorist attacks around the world. They are formally called the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS)—a group founded more than fifty years ago out of fear that the Korean War might bring the use of biological weapons—and, like intelligence operatives in the traditional sense, they perform their work largely in anonymity. They are not household names, but over the years they were first to confront the outbreaks that became known as hantavirus, Ebola, and AIDS. Every day they work to protect us by hunting down the deadly threats that we forget until they dominate our headlines, West Nile virus, anthrax, and SARS among others. In this riveting narrative, Maryn McKenna—the only journalist ever given full access to the EIS in its fifty-three-year history—follows the first class of disease detectives to come to the CDC after September 11, the first to confront not just naturally occurring outbreaks but the man-made threat of bioterrorism. They are talented researchers—many with young families—who trade two years of low pay and extremely long hours for the chance to be part of the group that are on the frontlines, in the yellow suits and masks, that has helped eradicate smallpox, push back polio, and solve the first major outbreaks of Legionnaires’ disease, toxic shock syndrome, and E. coli O157 and works to battle every new disease before it becomes an epidemic. Urgent, exhilarating, and compelling, Beating Back the Devil takes you inside the world of these medical detectives who are trying to stop the next epidemic—before the epidemics stop us.

Beating Back the Devil

38b5144b-8dc6-4e8f-bcb0-26ee80d89afa-1

Sudhir Venkatesh

A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets

Recounts the story of a young sociologist whose infiltration of a Chicago drug gang was originally introduced in the work "Freakonomics," describing the author's idealism, his friendship with gang leader JT, and his witness to the organization's crack-selling trade.

Gang Leader for a Day

25f22859-0585-4291-aab3-a1213525c611-1

Maureen Cavanagh

The dust cover of this book has some creasing (see pictures 2 & 3 for details), but is otherwise in very good condition.

Massachusetts

A Mother's Journey Through Her Daughter's Opioid Addiction

If You Love Me

cc49769b-6136-458d-87d0-80cd42830e6c-1

#hardcover #politicalscience #nonfiction #pandemic #MichaelLewis #skeptics #thriller #medicalvisionaries #Wolverines #publichealth 

For those who could read between the lines, the censored news out of China was terrifying. But the president insisted there was nothing to worry about.

Fortunately, we are still a nation of skeptics. Fortunately, there are those among us who study pandemics and are willing to look unflinchingly at worst-case scenarios. Michael Lewis’s taut and brilliant nonfiction thriller pits a band of medical visionaries against the wall of ignorance that was the official response of the Trump administration to the outbreak of COVID-19.

The characters you will meet in these pages are as fascinating as they are unexpected. A thirteen-year-old girl’s science project on transmission of an airborne pathogen develops into a very grown-up model of disease control. A local public-health officer uses her worm’s-eye view to see what the CDC misses, and reveals great truths about American society. A secret team of dissenting doctors, nicknamed the Wolverines, has everything necessary to fight the pandemic: brilliant backgrounds, world-class labs, prior experience with the pandemic scares of bird flu and swine flu…everything, that is, except official permission to implement their work.

Michael Lewis is not shy about calling these people heroes for their refusal to follow directives that they know to be based on misinformation and bad science. Even the internet, as crucial as it is to their exchange of ideas, poses a risk to them. They never know for sure who else might be listening in.


Arkansas

A Pandemic Story

For those who could read between the lines, the censored news out of China was terrifying. But the president insisted there was nothing to worry about.

The Premonition

b64cc8e0-51e4-4e22-b586-3b782ef07a1a-1

Timothy C. Winegard

A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator

**The instant New York Times bestseller.**
*An international bestseller.*

"Hugely impressive, a major work."--NPR

A pioneering and groundbreaking work of narrative nonfiction that offers a dramatic new perspective on the history of humankind, showing how through millennia, the mosquito has been the single most powerful force in determining humanity's fate
 
Why was gin and tonic the cocktail of choice for British colonists in India and Africa? What does Starbucks have to thank for its global domination? What has protected the lives of popes for millennia? Why did Scotland surrender its sovereignty to England? What was George Washington's secret weapon during the American Revolution?

The answer to all these questions, and many more, is the mosquito.
 
Across our planet since the dawn of humankind, this nefarious pest, roughly the size and weight of a grape seed, has been at the frontlines of history as the grim reaper, the harvester of human populations, and the ultimate agent of historical change. As the mosquito transformed the landscapes of civilization, humans were unwittingly required to respond to its piercing impact and universal projection of power.
 
The mosquito has determined the fates of empires and nations, razed and crippled economies, and decided the outcome of pivotal wars, killing nearly half of humanity along the way. She (only females bite) has dispatched an estimated 52 billion people from a total of 108 billion throughout our relatively brief existence. As the greatest purveyor of extermination we have ever known, she has played a greater role in shaping our human story than any other living thing with which we share our global village.
 
Imagine for a moment a world without deadly mosquitoes, or any mosquitoes, for that matter? Our history and the world we know, or think we know, would be completely unrecognizable.
 
Driven by surprising insights and fast-paced storytelling, The Mosquito is the extraordinary untold story of the mosquito's reign through human history and her indelible impact on our modern world order.

The Mosquito

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One Hundred Years of Panic, Hysteria, and Hubris

How can we understand the COVID-19 pandemic? Ever since the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic, scientists have dreamed of preventing such catastrophic outbreaks of infectious disease. Yet despite a century of medical progress, viral and bacterial disasters continue to take us by surprise, inciting panic and dominating news cycles. In The Pandemic Century, a lively account of scares both infamous and less known, medical historian Mark Honigsbaum combines reportage with the history of science and medical sociology to artfully reconstruct epidemiological mysteries and the ecology of infectious diseases. We meet dedicated disease detectives, obstructive or incompetent public health officials, and brilliant scientists often blinded by their own knowledge of bacteria and viruses--and see how fear of disease often exacerbates racial, religious, and ethnic tensions. Now updated with a new chapter and epilogue.

The Pandemic Century

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Tracy Kidder

Georgia

The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World

A portrait of infectious disease expert Dr. Paul Farmer follows the efforts of this unconventional Harvard genius to understand the world's great health, economic, and social problems and to bring healing to humankind.

Mountains Beyond Mountains

734f872f-3334-4aa4-8f94-41893f767b97

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

New York

#paperback #socialinjustice #publichealth #inequity

This second edition of Social Injustice and Public Health is a comprehensive, up-to-date, evidence-based resource on the relationship of social injustice to many aspects of public health. With contributions from leading experts in public health, medicine, health, social sciences, and otherfields, this integrated book documents the adverse effects of social injustice on health and makes recommendations on what needs to be done to reduce social injustice and thereby improve the public's health.Social Injustice and Public Health is divided into four parts:* The nature of social injustice and its impact on public health* How the health of specific population groups is affected by social injustice* How social injustice adversely affects medical care, infectious and chronic non-communicable disease, nutrition, mental health, violence, environmental and occupational health, oral health, and aspects of international health* What needs to be done, such as addressing social injustice in a human rights context, promoting social justice through public health policies and programs, strengthening communities, and promoting equitable and sustainable human developmentWith 78 contributors who are experts in their respective subject areas, this textbook is ideal for students and practitioners in public health, medicine, nursing, and other health sciences. It is the definitive resource for anyone seeking to better understand the social determinants of health andhow to address them to reduce social injustice and improve the public's health.

Social Injustice and Public Health

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A Doctor’s Journey in the Fight for Public Health

Lifelines

David von Drehle

Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

Pennsylvania

The Fire That Changed America


"Sure to become the definitive account of the fire. . . . Triangle is social history at its best, a magnificent portrayal not only of the catastrophe but also of the time and the turbulent city in which it took place." --The New York Times Book Review

Triangle is a poignantly detailed account of the 1911 disaster that horrified the country and changed the course of twentieth-century politics and labor relations. On March 25, 1911, as workers were getting ready to leave for the day, a fire broke out in the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in New York's Greenwich Village. Within minutes it spread to consume the building's upper three stories. Firemen who arrived at the scene were unable to rescue those trapped inside: their ladders simply weren't tall enough. People on the street watched in horror as desperate workers jumped to their deaths. The final toll was 146 people--123 of them women. It was the worst disaster in New York City history. Triangle is a vibrant and immensely moving account that Bob Woodward calls, "A riveting history written with flare and precision."

Triangle

ee74f5f7-ddfe-40ce-872d-e40dd5e66835-1

Utah

Michael Marmot

The Challenge of an Unequal World

In this groundbreaking book, Michael Marmot, president of the World Medical Association, reveals social injustice to be the greatest threat to global health

In Baltimore's inner-city neighborhood of Upton/Druid Heights, a man's life expectancy is sixty-three; not far away, in the Greater Roland Park/Poplar neighborhood, life expectancy is eighty-three. The same twenty-year avoidable disparity exists in the Calton and Lenzie neighborhoods of Glasgow, and in other cities around the world.

In Sierra Leone, one in 21 fifteen-year-old women will die in her fertile years of a maternal-related cause; in Italy, the figure is one in 17,100; but in the United States, which spends more on healthcare than any other country in the world, it is one in 1,800 (and now, with the new administration chipping away at Obamacare, the statistics stand to grow even more devastating). Why?

Dramatic differences in health are not a simple matter of rich and poor; poverty alone doesn't drive ill health, but inequality does. Indeed, suicide, heart disease, lung disease, obesity, and diabetes, for example, are all linked to social disadvantage. In every country, people at relative social disadvantage suffer health disadvantage and shorter lives. Within countries, the higher the social status of individuals, the better their health. These health inequalities defy the usual explanations. Conventional approaches to improving health have emphasized access to technical solutions and changes in the behavior of individuals, but these methods only go so far. What really makes a difference is creating the conditions for people to have control over their lives, to have the power to live as they want. Empowerment is the key to reducing health inequality and thereby improving the health of everyone. Marmot emphasizes that the rate of illness of a society as a whole determines how well it functions; the greater the health inequity, the greater the dysfunction.

Marmot underscores that we have the tools and resources materially to improve levels of health for individuals and societies around the world, and that to not do so would be a form of injustice. Citing powerful examples and startling statistics ("young men in the U.S. have less chance of surviving to sixty than young men in forty-nine other countries"), The Health Gap presents compelling evidence for a radical change in the way we think about health and indeed society, and inspires us to address the societal imbalances in power, money, and resources that work against health equity.

The Health Gap

a22bb4dd-9c34-4b36-b33d-33fac1d25c76-1

Missouri

Michigan

"[A] masterpiece . . . an astonishing book that will leave you questioning your own life and political views . . . Kidder opens a window into Farmer's soul, letting the reader peek in and see what truly makes the good doctor tick."--Nicholas Thomas, USA Today

In medical school, Paul Farmer found his life's calling: to cure infectious diseases and to bring the lifesaving tools of modern medicine to those who need them most. Tracy Kidder's magnificent account shows how one person can make a difference in solving global health problems through a clear-eyed understanding of the interaction of politics, wealth, social systems, and disease. Profound and powerful, Mountains Beyond Mountains takes us from Harvard to Haiti, Peru, Cuba, and Russia as Farmer changes people's minds through his dedication to the philosophy that "the only real nation is humanity."

Praise for Mountains Beyond Mountains

"A true-to-life fairy tale, one that inspires you to believe in happy endings . . . Its stark sense of reality comes as much from the grit between the pages as from the pure gold those pages spin."--Laura Claridge, Boston Sunday Globe

"Stunning . . . Mountains Beyond Mountains will move you, restore your faith in the ability of one person to make a difference in these increasingly maddening, dispiriting times."--John Wilkens, The San Diego Union-Tribune

"Easily the most fascinating, most entertaining and, yes, most inspiring work of nonfiction I've read this year."--Charles Matthews, San Jose Mercury News

"It'll fill you equally with wonder and hope."--Cathy Burke, People

"In this excellent work, Pulitzer Prize-winner Kidder immerses himself in and beautifully explores the rich drama that exists in the life of Dr. Paul Farmer. . . . Throughout, Kidder captures the almost saintly effect Farmer has on those whom he treats."--Publisher's Weekly (starred review)

"[A] skilled and graceful exploration of the soul of an astonishing human being."--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Some pencil underlining but great condition! Good for public health, sociology, and medical anthropology studies. #health #College #anthropology #publichealth #pandemics #globalhealth

Connecticut

Social Studies

Global Health in a Time of Emergency

Recent years have witnessed an upsurge in global health emergencies--from SARS to pandemic influenza to Ebola to Zika. Each of these occurrences has sparked calls for improved health preparedness. In Unprepared, Andrew Lakoff follows the history of health preparedness from its beginnings in 1950s Cold War civil defense to the early twenty-first century, when international health authorities carved out a global space for governing potential outbreaks. Alert systems and trigger devices now link health authorities, government officials, and vaccine manufacturers, all of whom are concerned with the possibility of a global pandemic. Funds have been devoted to cutting-edge research on pathogenic organisms, and a system of post hoc diagnosis analyzes sites of failed preparedness to find new targets for improvement. Yet, despite all these developments, the project of global health security continues to be unsettled by the prospect of surprise.

Unprepared

48c992e3-8f07-4c31-9f13-22c61ce44c1f-1

Gregory Kaebnick

Philosophy

Taking Sides volumes present current controversial issues in a debate-style format designed to stimulate student interest and develop critical thinking skills. Each issue is thoughtfully framed with Learning Outcomes, an Issue Summary, an Introduction, and an Exploring the Issue section featuring Critical Thinking and Reflection, Is There Common Ground?, and Additional Resources. Taking Sides readers also offer a Topic Guide and an annotated listing of Internet References for further consideration of the issues. An online Instructor’s Resource Guide with testing material is available for each volume. Using Taking Sides in the Classroom is also an excellent instructor resource. Visit www.mhhe.com/takingsides for more details.

Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Bioethical Issues, 15/e

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David M. Oshinsky

Indiana

An American Story

A history of the 1950s polio epidemic that caused panic in the United States examines the competition between Salk and Sabin to find the first vaccine and its implications for such issues as government testing of new drugs and manufacturers' liability.

Polio

0425ca1f-eea0-4497-a099-c353ce0d5bdf-1

Elizabeth Blackburn

Elissa Epel

A Revolutionary Approach to Living Younger, Healthier, Longer

The New York Times bestselling book coauthored by the Nobel Prize winner who discovered telomerase and telomeres' role in the aging process and the health psychologist who has done original research into how specific lifestyle and psychological habits can protect telomeres, slowing disease and improving life.

Have you wondered why some sixty-year-olds look and feel like forty-year-olds and why some forty-year-olds look and feel like sixty-year-olds? While many factors contribute to aging and illness, Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn discovered a biological indicator called telomerase, the enzyme that replenishes telomeres, which protect our genetic heritage. Dr. Blackburn and Dr. Elissa Epel's research shows that the length and health of one's telomeres are a biological underpinning of the long-hypothesized mind-body connection. They and other scientists have found that changes we can make to our daily habits can protect our telomeres and increase our health spans (the number of years we remain healthy, active, and disease-free).

The Telemere Effect reveals how Blackburn and Epel's findings, together with research from colleagues around the world, cumulatively show that sleep quality, exercise, aspects of diet, and even certain chemicals profoundly affect our telomeres, and that chronic stress, negative thoughts, strained relationships, and even the wrong neighborhoods can eat away at them.

Drawing from this scientific body of knowledge, they share lists of foods and suggest amounts and types of exercise that are healthy for our telomeres, mind tricks you can use to protect yourself from stress, and information about how to protect your children against developing shorter telomeres, from pregnancy through adolescence. And they describe how we can improve our health spans at the community level, with neighborhoods characterized by trust, green spaces, and safe streets.

The Telemere Effect will make you reassess how you live your life on a day-to-day basis. It is the first book to explain how we age at a cellular level and how we can make simple changes to keep our chromosomes and cells healthy, allowing us to stay disease-free longer and live more vital and meaningful lives.

Browse by categories

Save this search

Deborah Schupack

Relentless

Leana Wen

Public Health Saved Your Life Today

Perri Klass

A Good Time to Be Born

Maryn McKenna

Beating Back the Devil

Sudhir Venkatesh

Gang Leader for a Day

Maureen Cavanagh

If You Love Me

Michael Lewis

The Premonition

Sudhir Venkatesh

Gang Leader for a Day

Timothy C. Winegard

The Mosquito

Mark Honigsbaum

The Pandemic Century

Tracy Kidder

Mountains Beyond Mountains

Sudhir Venkatesh

Gang Leader for a Day

Barry S. Levy (Editor); Victor W. Sidel (Editor)

Social Injustice and Public Health

Leana Wen

Lifelines

David von Drehle

Triangle

Sudhir Venkatesh

Gang Leader for a Day

Sudhir Venkatesh

Gang Leader for a Day

Michael Marmot

The Health Gap

Sudhir Venkatesh

Gang Leader for a Day

Tracy Kidder

Mountains Beyond Mountains

Andrew Lakoff

Unprepared

Gregory Kaebnick

Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Bioethical Issues, 15/e

David M. Oshinsky

Polio

Elizabeth Blackburn; Elissa Epel

The Telomere Effect