I am a primary care doctor who is fascinated by my patient’s stories and what they reveal about their lives, their illnesses, and their pathways to recovery. I have always been a lover of literature related to the human condition and “the big questions,” having majored in Russian Language and Literature as an undergraduate. All the books I have chosen were written by physicians who were accomplished not only in the sciences but in the arts. I hope you enjoy this hybridization of disciplines as much as I have!
I wrote...
Telltale Hearts: A Public Health Doctor, His Patients, and the Power of Story
I was simply stunned by this book. Dr. Sacks, a neurologist, drew me into the inner mysteries of the brain by describing the amazing lives and characters of some his most bizarrely afflicted patients. I was delighted to see how some of them overcame or coped with their afflictions, and I finished the book with an indescribable feeling of the magical alchemy of science and story to reveal our deepest truths.
If a man has lost a leg or an eye, he knows he has lost a leg or an eye; but if he has lost a self - himself - he cannot know it, because he is no longer there to know it.
In this extraordinary book, Dr. Oliver Sacks recounts the stories of patients struggling to adapt to often bizarre worlds of neurological disorder. Here are people who can no longer recognize everyday objects or those they love; who are stricken with violent tics or shout involuntary obscenities, and yet are gifted with…
How could I not love a book about an Indian surgeon who finds himself living and working in Ethiopia, especially when the book has a plot that simply refused to allow me to put the book down?
I was deeply touched by the struggles of a surgeon trying to apply his craft in circumstances that seemed nearly impossible. I was equally affected by the fulfillment he experienced by being welcomed and so deeply appreciated by a community. I was hooked when his trust and resilience were put to the ultimate test.
My brother, Shiva, and I came into the world in the late afternoon of the twentieth of September in the year of grace 1954. We took our first breaths in the thick air of Addis Ababa, capital city of Ethiopia. Bound by birth, we were driven apart by bitter betrayal. No surgeon can heal the would that divides two brothers. Where silk and steel fail, story must succeed. To begin at the beginning...
While this book is characterized as fiction, what captivated me most was the authenticity of the vignettes he tells. I was drawn to the creative renditions of the so-called “mundane” work of this general practitioner from Patterson, New Jersey. But these stories are anything but mundane.
I have never been so on the edge of my seat as I was during his family saga of attending to a sick girl during a house call. “The Use of Force,” as the story is called, made me understand what a tour de force meant.
The Doctor Stories collects thirteen of Williams's stories (direct accounts of his experiences as a doctor), six related poems, and a chapter from his autobiography that connects the world of medicine and writing, as well as a new preface by Atul Gawande, an introduction by Robert Coles (who put the book together), and a final note by Williams's son (also a doctor), about his famous father. The writings are remarkably direct and freshly true. As Atul Gawande notes, "Reading these tales,you find yourself in a conversation with Williams about who people really are-who you really are. Williams recognized that, caring…
In these stories, I felt how Chekhov was both an astute clinician as well as an observant and empathic student of the human condition. His story, “Gooseberries,” elicited in me the palpable and infectious sense of unadulterated joy that one can experience when swimming naked in a country pond, including in the rain!
The stories carried me to a different time and place, yet somehow connected me to their characters as if they were present in my life now, alive even.
Anton Chekhov, widely hailed as the supreme master of the short story, also wrote five works long enough to be called short novels-here brought together in one volume for the first time, in a masterly new translation by the award-winning translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.
The Steppe-the most lyrical of the five-is an account of a nine-year-old boy's frightening journey by wagon train across the steppe of southern Russia. The Duel sets two decadent figures-a fanatical rationalist and a man of literary sensibility-on a collision course that ends in a series of surprising reversals. In The Story of an…
I love how this unique work of fiction brings together Viennese-age psychoanalysis, a love story, a profound friendship, and the treatment of the soul, all in one neat package. I enjoyed how the plot takes advantage of historical truths to provide context.
The most entertaining piece of historical fiction I have ever read.
From the acclaimed author of Love's Executioner and Schopenhauer’s Couch, comes a “fascinating…shrewd intellectual thriller” (Los Angeles Times Book Review) about pioneering Viennese psychoanalyst Josef Breuer and his intriguing patient—Friedrich Nietzsche
In nineteenth-century Vienna, a drama of love, fate, and will is played out amid the intellectual ferment that defined the era. Josef Breuer, one of the founding fathers of psychoanalysis, is at the height of his career. Friedrich Nietzsche, Europe's greatest philosopher, is on the brink of suicidal despair, unable to find a cure for the headaches and other ailments that plague him.
A riveting exploration into a hidden realm of medicine—taking readers on a transformative journey that centers human connection and discovery to reveal what is lost when patients’ stories are overlooked and how much is gained when these stories are actively elicited.
Dr. Schillinger recounts his various experiences with patients by delving deep into their complicated lives and uncovering the numerous factors that influence their medical outcomes. The stories themselves, at times shocking but always revelatory, disclose secrets, prompt awe, forge unexpected connections, and even catalyze public health action. They also tell a larger story of how social and environmental conditions shape health, disease, and recovery. Each story reveals the profound humanity that emerges when listening is prioritized, demonstrating the powerful alchemy that results when the best of science is blended with authentic narrative.
When I was writing this book, several of my friends jokingly called it the Nazi baby book, with one insisting it would make a great title. Nazi Babies – admittedly, that is a catchy title, but that’s not exactly what my book is about. SS babies would be slightly more on topic, but it would be more accurate to say that I wrote a book about SS men as husbands and fathers.
From 1931 to 1945, leaders of the SS, a paramilitary group under the Nazi party, sought to transform their organization into a racially-elite family community that would serve…
From 1931 to 1945, leaders of the SS, a paramilitary group under the Nazi party, sought to transform their organization into a racially-elite family community that would serve as the Third Reich's new aristocracy. They utilized the science of eugenics to convince SS men to marry suitable wives and have many children.
Marriage and Fatherhood in the Nazi SS by Amy Carney is the first work to significantly assess the role of SS men as husbands and fathers during the Third Reich. The family community, and the place of men in this community, started with one simple order issued by…
