100 books like Descriptions and Prescriptions

I found this book when I was at the end of my rope with anxiety, and the book was uplifting, to say the least! Though it didn’t address all my concerns as someone with an anxiety disorder, it did walk through Scripture and show me how God had an encouraging, fatherly response to our anxieties. It also reminded me that God is the only place of true rest for restless minds. If you’re looking for a biblically rooted resource for common anxieties, this book was just that.

Like most people, I’ve had to weather some tough experiences (the early death of my father, an anxiety disorder, crippling self-doubt). What am I supposed to do with them, and with other tough experiences to come? Just survive, try to make it to the next day? This book helped me find a resounding “No” to that question. While it wasn’t explicitly about anxiety, it focused on something that anxiety sufferers always deal with: interpreting their anxiety and suffering in light of hope.  Miller showed me how each of my little daily challenges were really just opportunities to “die with Christ and rise again.” In short, he showed me how to find new life through my anxiety, not merely to see anxiety as a constant, losing battle. If you want to learn from your anxiety, and from every other hard experience in your life, you need to interpret it in a… show more.

I constantly struggle with negative thoughts and anxieties and what-ifs. They trap me. And it’s ridiculously difficult to find a way out. Jennie Allen seems to be a natural-born encourager, and she draws on her own faith crisis to teach us how to replace negative thoughts with God-given positive ones. She shows that approaching anxiety is often a matter of consistent mental work, and I can attest to that! Having a strategy in place goes a long way, and that’s what I found in this book.

There’s always a lot going on in my mind that I’m probably unaware of. My thoughts or “conclusions” about how things are going or how things will go are often based on false assumptions or beliefs I have about myself and God. Those false beliefs break me in certain ways, wreaking havoc on my nerves. When I picked up Groeschel’s book, I was happy to find him focusing on some simple concepts from brain science that help us see how we can develop new helpful "thought paths" to direct us to the truth, hope, and peace of who God is and what he's done for us. The war that’s going on in our minds demands participation, even though I end up being an observer much of the time. This book gave me some concrete resources to break some of my destructive thought patterns and replace them with new ones, provided… show more.

The COVID-19 virus swept across the world like a hurricane, and 20 survivors of the storm gathered to share the lessons they had learned.

I love how this book centers on the experiences of people living with Long Covid who not only point out the inequities of our health systems but also give practical advice about getting a diagnosis, navigating care, asking for help, and contributing to research.

You don’t have to have Long Covid to benefit. Their wise advice applies to everyone.

I am always fascinated by gender history and women’s experiences in the past. Churchill’s book puts women front and center and considers how medical practitioners understood women’s bodies and health and what women experienced as patients. The book covers traditionally feminine conditions – gynecological and obstetrical issues – but also looks at disorders that affected both men and women, including smallpox, and mental health – hysteria and hypochondria. I like the way this book thinks through all aspects of women’s experiences, how their disorders were understood, who they sought treatment from, and how those treatments were adapted to the specifics of the female body (menstruation and lactation).

This is one of the first books I recommend to Lyme patients who email me for advice about getting better. It’s a sad fact that most people with chronic Lyme disease don’t have “just” Lyme disease. Their condition is complicated by toxic mold exposure, environmental chemicals, other infectious bacteria and viruses, and/or a highly sensitized nervous system.

Whether they’ve been diagnosed with Lyme disease or not, I think anyone with complex health problems that they just can’t resolve could benefit from reading this book.

This book is comprehensive and divided into different disease categories. It is written in a way that is accessible to most goat owners and covers initial assessment, causes, signs, diagnosis, and treatment for each disease.

The last chapter addresses surgical techniques, which I haven’t had to refer to much but could be very helpful to goat farmers without access to a veterinarian.

If you had 16 nails sticking in the bottom of your foot, removing only one of them wouldn't fix your problem, would it? That's the question posed by Dr. Richard Horowitz, one of the top Lyme-treating doctors in the world.

In his “16-Point Differential Diagnostic Map” for evaluating chronically ill patients, he looks at many different factors that can prevent you from getting well. Lyme is a complex illness and you might not even realize there is a connection between different things you are experiencing. His book is a good reference manual for many symptoms and physical disorders.

This book explores how AI is transforming healthcare and the potential benefits it can bring to patients and doctors.

The author, Eric, is a cardiologist with working knowledge of technology of AI. I love how he describes with clarity, the present and potential to make people healthier with AI First thinking. That is, how AI can make the business of health care human.

I love the premise and basis of Eric’ thinking that we can make healthcare personalized, proactive, anticipatory, helping people live healthier lives and reducing the cost of healthcare. 

At the same time he is mindful that AI could be used to dehumanize healthcare and exacerbate existing inequalities.