Here are 13 books that The Song of the Cell fans have personally recommended if you like
The Song of the Cell.
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As a medical herbalist for over 25 years, I have long been treating people for chronic fatigue, post-viral fatigue, and, more recently, Long Covid. These days, there is so much stress to consider too, and I have recognized that stress has a major effect on the health of our bodies and also our life experience. One of my great interests in life is the wisdom of Nature, spirituality, and metaphysics. I love to combine medical science with spirituality, metaphysics, and Nature to contribute to helping people to feel their best through the wisdom of nature.
Biologist Bruce Lipton is one of my favorite scientists. This book is built on a moment when he was in his laboratory growing stem cells in petri dishes, when one day, he made a fascinating discovery. It is not the genes that determine the outcome of the cells but the environment.
Extrapolating that to the whole human being, the book clearly outlines that our thoughts create our health outcomes. The environment in which our cells are bathed, as explained by Dr Lipton, is our blood, the chemistry of which is determined by our emotional state, which, in turn, is controlled by our thoughts.
His overriding message is that we can use our minds to change the environment of our bodies, our health, and thus our entire life experience. I love Bruce Lipton because of his cheerful and encouraging message that we are empowered to change our lives for the better.
This 10th-anniversary edition of Bruce Lipton's best-selling book
The Biology of Belief has been updated to bolster the book's central premise with the latest scientific discoveries-and there have been a lot in the last decade.
The Biology of Belief is a groundbreaking work in the field of new biology. Former medical school professor and research scientist Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D., presents his experiments, and those of other leading-edge scientists, which examine in great detail the mechanisms by which cells receive and process information.
The implications of this research radically change our understanding of life, showing that genes and DNA do…
For most of my life no one guessed I could fall for a dog, much less write a book about one. I associated dogs with drool on the floor and fur all over everything. One of those “just a dog” people, I thought the marriage bed should be strictly for humans. It crossed my mind that an eager dog would keep me from working into the night at the office where I ran Chatelaine, Canada’s premier magazine for women, but I chose a treadmill at the Y over rambles with a dog. At 65 I discovered my inner dog person. A ragged-eared mutt is now my joy and my muse.
When Rick Bragg shuffles home to his mother’s place in rural Alabama, spent from chemotherapy, depression, and years of hard living, he figures it’ll take a sweet old dog to lick the crankiness out of him.
There’s nothing sweet about the stray who shows up at the side of the road, “seventy-six pounds of wet hair and bad decisions.” In a willful Australian shepherd with a ruined eye and a lust for carrion, Bragg recognizes himself—his wounds, his tenacity, his devotion to family. Speck “would rather die than be clean” but he stands by his people when they need him, and Bragg is his number one human.
I loved the humor, pathos, and Southern character that elevate this story of redemption by a dog over more predictable versions.
NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • From the best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of All Over but the Shoutin', the warmhearted and hilarious story of how his life was transformed by his love for a poorly behaved, half-blind stray dog.
Speck is not a good boy. He is a terrible boy, a defiant, self-destructive, often malodorous boy, a grave robber and screen door moocher who spends his days playing chicken with the Fed Ex man, picking fights with thousand-pound livestock, and rolling in donkey manure, and his nights howling at the moon. He has been that way since the moment he…
Officially, I’m an award-winning author and specialist in the fields of psychology, trauma, and spirituality. I’m also a professionally trained therapist, clinical ethicist, and researcher. Ultimately, I’m an ardent believer that the same life that brings us joy also (sometimes) brings us pain. More importantly, that every aspect of life has a role to play in making us who we are today and who we’ll be tomorrow. We don’t always have control over the events in life, but the script we live by is ours to write—and write it we must, as only we can. I’m also a three-time heart attack survivor.
Joan Didion’s book is heralded for its bravery, clarity, and confessional witness about grief and loss. Indeed, it’s all these things, but for me, more importantly, this book paints a masterful depiction of the loss of innocence that comes when you lose something meaningful—like a loved one.
Particularly, it shows, with exhilarating force, the fragmented sense of time of such an experience, moving from Didion’s darkest moments of despair at the loss of her husband in the present to treasured memories of her life before his passing and musings about what comes now—in the future.
This book is not for the faint of heart, but it is for the savoring soul who, like Didion, possesses an inherent human desire for a sense of coherence and wholeness after life has torn it asunder.
From one of America's iconic writers, a portrait of a marriage and a life - in good times and bad - that will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child. A stunning book of electric honesty and passion.
Several days before Christmas 2003, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughter, Quintana, fall ill. At first they thought it was flu, then pneumonia, then complete sceptic shock. She was put into an induced coma and placed on life support. Days later - the night before New Year's Eve -the Dunnes were just…
I am a Harvard- and MIT-trained physician-scientist, and I am drawn to research problems that bridge the basic and the practical – how a better understanding of cells and tissues can inform new therapies for cancer and other diseases. As children, we are all scientists – mini-hypothesis generators trying to make sense of the world. I suppose I never outgrew that curiosity. My list of best science books credits writers who bring to life the excitement that comes from looking at the natural world in a new way, a spirit that I try to emulate in my own writing. I hope you enjoy these books as much as I have!
Everybody knows that all animals—bats, bears, sharks, ponies, and people—start out as a single cell: the fertilized egg. But how does something no bigger than the period at the end of this sentence give rise to the remarkable complexity of each of these creatures?
FROM ONE CELL is a dive inside the cell and its evolutionary prerogatives to explain how these "endless forms most beautiful," as Charles Darwin called them, come about. Along the way, we learn about the scientific process, filled as it is with serendipity, as the story is told through the eyes of the scientists who informed…
From One Cell: A Journey into Life's Origins and the Future of Medicine
Every animal on Earth begins life as a single cell. From this humble origin, the nascent creature embarks on a risky journey fraught with opportunities for disaster-yet with astounding regularity, it reaches its destination intact. From One Cell illuminates this epic transformation-still one of nature's most mysterious feats-to show where we all come from and where we're going.
Through the eyes of the scientists unraveling the secrets of development, we see how all the information needed to build a human fits into a fertilised egg, and how the trillions of cells that emerge know what to become and where to…
As a romance, romantic comedy, and cozy mystery writer, I not only have a passion for the swoon-worthy moments when I’m creating them but crave them as a reader. There are so many great books out there but chemistry, particularly between a main character and her love interest, is what really makes me want more of a series. It’s not always easy to create that sigh-worthy-make-you-smile element of romance and love in a book that is geared toward solving a murder so I really appreciate when it’s done well. It’s not only enjoyable for me as a reader but a great example for me as a writer.
In this first of the Pancake House series, we meet Marley, who comes to town to help out with her cousin’s restaurant. Immediately, Fox draws us in with relatable characters, a charming town, and that wonderful blend of new and old. For Marley, this isn’t her hometown so she has an outsider’s perspective but it is a place she spent many summers so she also has those memories that make the place more meaningful. The love interest is Brett, who she knows from those long ago summer days and as fun as the sleuthing is, the connection between these two kept me coming back for more.
USA TODAY BESTSELLER • In the debut of a delightful cozy mystery series, Sarah Fox introduces a charming new heroine who finds herself in a sticky situation: stacking pancakes, pouring coffee, and investigating murder.
Bonus content: includes original recipes inspired by the Flip Side Pancake House menu!
When Marley McKinney’s aging cousin, Jimmy, is hospitalized with pneumonia, she agrees to help run his pancake house while he recovers. With its rustic interior and syrupy scent, the Flip Side Pancake House is just as she pictured it—and the surly chef is a wizard with crêpes. Marley expects to spend a leisurely…
In The Ministry of Truth, I wanted to bring together two longstanding interests: dystopian fiction and the history of totalitarianism. Nineteen Eighty-Four is of course a landmark work in both categories. In trying to explain how and why Orwell came to write his masterpiece, and its subsequent influence on fiction and political thought, I read a huge range of books that wrestled with the horrors of Nazism and Stalinism and asked how they were able to hold sway, physically and mentally, over tens of millions of people. Many of them are gripping and valuable but these five in particular make for great companions to 1984.
Čapek was a kind of Czech Orwell. Best known for his satirical science fiction — RUR gave us the word “robot”; War with the Newts is mindbogglingly inventive — he was also a prolific journalist who decried the rise of totalitarianism while celebrating ordinary lives. This anthology is the perfect introduction to his abundant wit, insight and compassion, with subjects ranging from the dishonesty of political language to the joy of gardening. A courageous anti-fascist, Čapek died of pneumonia in 1939, shortly before the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia and arrived at his door to arrest him.
Playful and provocative, irreverent and inspiring, Capek is perhaps the best-loved Czech writer of all time. Novelist and playwright, famed for inventing the word 'robot' in his play RUR, Capek was a vital part of the burgeoning artistic scene of Czechoslovakia of the 1920s and 30s. But it is in his journalism - his brief, sparky and delightful columns - that Capek can be found at his most succinct, direct and appealing.
This selection of Capek's writing, translated into English for the first time, contains his essential ideas. The pieces are animated by his passion for the ordinary and the…
I began working in prisons 50 years ago. I was just out of grad school and I accepted the challenge of starting a literacy program in the Philadelphia Prison System. The shock of cellblock life was eye-opening, but the most unexpected revelation was the sight of scores of inmates wrapped in bandages and medical tape. Unknown to the general public, the three city prisons had become a lucrative appendage of the University of Pennsylvania’s Medical School. As I would discover years later, thousands of imprisoned Philadelphians had been used in a cross-section of unethical and dangerous scientific studies running the gamut from simple hair dye and athlete’s foot trials to radioactive isotope, dioxin, and US Army chemical warfare studies. My account of the prison experiments, Acres of Skin, helped instill in me an abiding faith in well-researched journalism as an antidote to societal indiscretions and crimes.
Rothman was one of the first to examine the culture of research medicine and its relationship to science and American culture at large. Doctors on the cutting edge of new procedures, much desired medical elixirs, and scientific advancement used a utilitarian calculus to determine what was ethical and what the public was willing to accept. Scientific breakthroughs were celebrated with few - certainly no one of renown - taking notice that the breakthroughs were coming at the expense of vulnerable, powerless populations.
David Rothman gives us a brilliant, finely etched study of medical practice today. Beginning in the mid-1960s, the practice of medicine in the United States underwent a most remarkable--and thoroughly controversial--transformation. The discretion that the profession once enjoyed has been increasingly circumscribed, and now an almost bewildering number of parties and procedures participate in medical decision making.
Well into the post-World War II period, decisions at the bedside were the almost exclusive concern of the individual physician, even when they raised fundamental ethical and social issues. It was mainly doctors who wrote and read about the morality of withholding a…
I’m an Irish writer and historian. I always enjoyed history, even in school, and I went on to study it at Maynooth University, receiving a BA. I became a history teacher and eventually head of the history department in Méanscoil Iognáid Rís. I began writing local history articles for the Dunlavin arts festival and the parish magazine. I went back to university and got a first-class honours MA from Maynooth, before being awarded a PhD from DCU. I’ve won the Lord Walter Fitzgerald prize and the Irish Chiefs’ Prize, and my students were winners in the Decade of Centenaries competition. Now retired, I continue to write and lecture about history!
The ‘decade of centenaries’ from 2013-2023 has seen a plethora of books published about events during the Irish Revolution of a hundred years ago or so. Most of them have a glaring omission in that they do not mention, or only barely mention, the great influenza pandemic (the Spanish Flu) of 1918-1919, despite the fact that infection rates and mortality rates were extremely high. Milne’s book tackles the subject head-on, and fills a gap in the narrative of the pivotal decade 1913-23 in Irish history. The high quality of the research is evident in the enormous level of detail throughout the book, and Milne has given a human voice to many of the victims’ families by including survivor memories passed down through the generations. A sombre, thought-provoking read!
The 1918-19 influenza epidemic killed more than 50 million people, and infected between one fifth and half of the world's population. It is the world's greatest killing influenza pandemic, and is used as a worst case scenario for emerging infectious disease epidemics like the corona virus COVID-19. It decimated families, silenced cities and towns as it passed through, stilled commerce, closed schools and public buildings and put normal life on hold. Sometimes it killed several members of the same family. Like COVID-19 there was no preventative vaccine for the virus, and many died from secondary bacterial pneumonia in this pre-antibiotic…
I’ve loved horses for as long as I can remember and have been blessed to have them woven into the fabric of my life. They’ve taught me a great deal about myself, and the time I’ve spent with them has often included the company of humans. I’ve seen teens whispering heartaches into a horse’s ear, special needs people lighting up like the sun at the touch of a horse, others simply standing quietly near them, soaking in their presence, and much more. I’ve witnessed the benefits of equine-assisted therapy, both physical and emotional, and hope horses and humans long continue to thrive in the kinship of our relationship.
I found this memoir about rescuing a starved and abused mare an honest and touching account of a healing journey for both horse and human. Richards’ experience of the non-judgmental, forgiving nature of the mare she takes in brings her profound insight. She says, “In a crazy way, it felt like Lay Me Down (the rescue horse) had been taking care of me since I got her… By her gentle affection, I felt restored to the status of someone who mattered, someone who was needed.” These sentiments are at the heart of the book and have been felt by many who have experienced the healing presence of horses.
When she agrees to take on one of the abused horses just rescued by the local SPCA, a new chapter opens in Susan Richards's difficult life.
She lost her mother at the age of five and was raised by uncaring relatives; she married unhappily and divorced; and she'd been an alcoholic. Now, at the age of forty-three, she lives with three horses who keep her company: the diva-like Georgia, boyish Tempo and hopelessly romantic Hotshot.
While trying to capture another horse assigned to her, Lay Me Down, a skeletal mare, walks into Susan's horse trailer of her own volition. When…
A banker by day and a cynical cartoonist-cum-blogger by night, I have traveled the world, have met many interesting people with compelling backgrounds, and have experienced many peculiar and beautiful things.
I love getting inspiration from my experiences and spinning stories out of that. As an author, I always look out for the unconventional ending fueled by my fervid imagination.
I prefer the medium of the short story as it keeps the author honest and sharp—no meandering into unrelated tangents.
William Sydney Porter, better known by his pen name, O. Henry, was an American writer known primarily for his short stories. He also wrote poetry and nonfiction. He is most famous for his short story "The Gift of the Magi", from which many modern romantic novels and books have been derived.
I, however, like The Last Leaf more for its poignant climax and the delicate depiction of empathy. His other stories in the collection are sepia-tinted portrayals of a different world in a more genteel times with a cast from all stratas of American society. All the other stories are equally entertaining and engrossing.
The Trimmed Lamp (1907) is a collection of twenty-five short stories by American writer O. Henry. Inspired by his experiences as a fugitive and prisoner, these stories address themes of poverty and city life with humor and abundant empathy. Its focus on the regular, working class people of New York City makes The Trimmed Lamp a sequel of sorts to Henry’s The Four Million (1906), perhaps his most important collection. In “The Trimmed Lamp,” two friends discuss work, love, and money while standing on a city street-corner. They both came to New York in search of work, and though Nancy…
As a middle grade horror writer, I attribute my love of everything spooky to my early obsession with reading. Of course, my little brain was twisted already, but I found a perfect home in the monsters and ghouls of the library. These are the five books that inspired me to become a writer who scares children in the best possible way.
Another Newberry Medal winner, this book is unlike the rest because the terror doesn’t come from the supernatural. It’s from the cruelty of mankind and scientific testing on animals.
What I love about this book, and the movie made in the “nineteen hundreds”, is it respected the readers. It told us a frightening story and trusted us to be able to process it. Like all the books on this list, the authors didn’t treat us like kids. They treated us like readers, and that’s the best thing a writer can do for their fans.
Some extraordinary rats come to the aid of a mouse family in this Newbery Medal Award–winning classic by notable children’s author Robert C. O’Brien.
Mrs. Frisby, a widowed mouse with four small children, is faced with a terrible problem. She must move her family to their summer quarters immediately, or face almost certain death. But her youngest son, Timothy, lies ill with pneumonia and must not be moved. Fortunately, she encounters the rats of NIMH, an extraordinary breed of highly intelligent creatures, who come up with a brilliant solution to her dilemma. And Mrs. Frisby in turn renders them a…
