Reading at MCC: Home

"For the past century, what's left of mankind has hidden in a giant, three-walled city, trapped in fear of the bizarre, giant humanoids known as the Titans. Little is known about where they came from or why they are bent on consuming humankind, but the sudden appearance of an enormous Titan is about to change everything..."

"In the summer of 1988 , the mutilated bodies of several of several missing girls begin to turn up in a small Maryland town. The grisly evidence leads police to the terrifying assumption that a serial killer is on the loose in the quiet suburb, and soon a rumor begins to spread that the evil stalking local teens is not entirely human. But law enforcement and members of the FBI are certain the killer is a living, breathing madman - and that he's playing games with them. For a once peaceful community trapped in the depths of paranoia and suspicion, it feels like a nightmare that will never end. Recent college graduate Richard Chizmar returns to his hometown just as a curfew is enacted and a neighborhood watch group is formed. In the midst of preparing for his wedding and embarking on a writing career, he soon finds himself thrust into a real-life horror story. Inspired by the terrifying events, Chizmar writes a personal account of the serial killer's reign of terror, unaware that his time back home will continue to haunt him for years to come."

"H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) was a reclusive scribbler of horror stories for the American pulp magazines that specialized in Gothic and science fiction in the interwar years. He often published in "Weird Tales" and has since become the key figure in the slippery genre of 'weird fiction'. Lovecraft developed an extraordinary vision of feeble men driven to the edge of sanity by glimpses of malign beings that have survived from human prehistory or by malevolent extra-terrestrial visitations. The ornate language of his stories builds towards grotesque moments of revelation, quite unlike any other writer. This new selection brings together nine of his classic tales, focusing on the 'Cthulhu Mythos', a cycle of stories that develops the mythology of the Old Ones, the monstrous creatures who predate human life on earth. It includes a vital extract from Lovecraft's critical essay, 'Supernatural Horror in Literature', in which he gave his own important definition of 'weird fiction'. In a fascinating contextual introduction, Roger Luckhurst gives Lovecraft the attention he deserves as a writer who used pulp fiction to explore a remarkable philosophy that shockingly dethrones the mastery of man."

"The place is Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692, an enclave of rigid piety huddled on the edge of a wilderness. Its inhabitants believe unquestioningly in their own sanctity. But in Arthur Miller's edgy masterpiece, that very belief will have poisonous consequences when a vengeful teenager accuses a rival of witchcraft - and then when those accusations multiply to consume the entire village. First produced in 1953, at a time when America was convulsed by a new epidemic of witchhunting, 'The Crucible' brilliantly explores the threshold between individual guilt and mass hysteria, personal spite and collective evil. It is a play that is not only relentlessly suspenseful and vastly moving but that compels readers to fathom their hearts and consciences in ways that only the greatest theater ever can."

"'Dracula' (1897) begins with a young solicitor, Jonathan Harker, on his way to Transylvania to meet Count Dracula, who is buying property in London. Harker endures a nightmarish stay at Dracula's castle, which foreshadows some bizarre events in England. First, a huge wolf-like creature is seen to leap from the deck of a Russian ship which has run aground on the shores of Whitby, its captain dead at the helm and its crew mysteriously absent; and then Lucy - a friend of Harker's fiancee, Mina - develops a strange wasting disease and red marks on her throat. Vampire expert Professor Van Helsing convinces Harker and his friends that if Mina is not to share the same fate as poor 'undead' Lucy, Dracula must be caught and ritually killed."

"'Frankenstein' is the most famous novel by Mary Shelley: a dark Faustian parable of science misused that was an immediate success on its publication in 1818. Purporting to be the record of an explorer, it tells of Victor Frankenstein, a brilliant but wayward student of science, who builds a human from dead flesh. Horrified at what he has done, he abandons his creation. The creature, an outcast for his horrific appearance, learns language and becomes civilized. In time, he attempts to join society but is rejected because he is assumed to have murderous intentions. Spurned, he seeks vengeance on his creator. So begins a cycle of destruction, with Frankenstein and his 'monster' pursuing each other to the extremes of nature until all vestiges of their humanity are lost in monomaniacal hatred. In 1831, Mary Shelley succumbed to conservative pressures and toned down the more radical elements of the work. The novel is here presented in its original, unexpurgated form."

"'We need a new way of reading Poe, a way just as informed as the new readings of Mark Twain and Herman Melville, which in the last few decades have saved their works from consignment to the adolescent's bookshelf. We must divorce ourselves from the traditional Gothicist view of Poe... Almost everything that Poe wrote is qualified by, indeed controlled by, a prevailing 'irony' in which the artist presents us with slyly insinuated mockery of both ourselves as readers and himself as writer. The view of art (and life) informing both the tales and the poems, and to an extent the criticism... ambivalently and ironically explored the fads of the Romantic Age. All of Poe's fiction, and the poems as well, can be seen as one coherent piece-as the work of one of the greatest ironists of world literature... The present anthology includes works which represent the range of Poe's imagination, form the best of his comic and satiric works to the best of his Gothic works... The fundamental ironic and skeptical consistency informing the seemingly diverse performance collected here is a remarkable literary achievement-perhaps one of the most remarkable of the nineteenth century.' - G.R. Thompson, form the Introduction"

"Four seekers have arrived at the rambling old pike known as Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of psychic phenomena; Theodora, his lovely and lighthearted assistant; Luke, the adventurous future inheritor of the estate; and Eleanor, a friendless, fragile young woman with a dark past. As they begin to cope with chilling, even horrifying occurrences beyond their control or understanding, they cannot possibly know what lies ahead. For Hill House is gathering its powers-and soon it will choose one of them to make its own."

"To the children, the town was their whole world. To the adults, knowing better, Derry, Maine, was just their home town: familiar, well-ordered, a good place to live. It was the children who saw-and felt-what made Derry so horribly different. In the storm drains, in the sewers, It lurked, taking on the shape of every nightmare, each person's deepest dread. Sometimes It reached up, seizing, tearing, killing... The adults, knowing better, knew nothing. Time passed and the children grew up, moved away. The horror of It was deep-buried, wrapped in forgetfulness. Until the grown-up children were called back, once more to confront It as It stirred and coiled in the sullen depths of their memories, reaching up again to make their past nightmares a terrible present reality."

"After receiving a frantic letter from her newlywed cousin, Noemi Taboada heads to High Place, a distant house in the Mexican countryside, unsure what she will find. Noemi is an unlikely rescuer: She's a glamorous debutante, more suited to cocktail parties than amateur sleuthing. But she's also tough, smart, and not afraid: not of her cousin's new English husband, a stranger who is both menacing and alluring; not of his father, the ancient patriarch who seems fascinated by Noemi; and not even of the house itself, which begins to invade Noemi's dreams with visions of blood and doom. Noemi's only ally in this inhospitable place is the family's youngest son. But he too may be hiding something dark. For there are many secrets behind the walls of High Place, as Noemi discovers when she begins to unearth stories of violence and madness. Mesmerized by this terrifying yet seductive world, Noemi may soon find it impossible to save her cousin - or even escape this enigmatic house."

"A mysterious island. An abandoned orphanage. A strange collection of very peculiar photographs. It all waits to be discovered in 'Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children', an unforgettable novel that mixes fiction and photography in a thrilling reading experience. As our story opens, a horrific family tragedy sets sixteen-year-old Jacob journeying to a remote island off the coast of Wales, where he discovers the crumbling ruins of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. As Jacob explores its abandoned bedrooms and hallways, it becomes clear that Miss Peregrine's children were more than just peculiar. They may have been dangerous. They may have been quarantined on a deserted island for a good reason. And somehow-impossible though it seems-they may still be alive."

"In the shadow of Mount hood, sixteen-year-old Tennant is checking rabbit traps with her eight-year-old sister, Sophie, when the girls are suddenly overcome by a strange vibration rising out of the forest, building in intensity until it sounds like a deafening crescendo of screams. From out of nowhere, their father sweeps them up and drops them through a trapdoor into a storm cellar. But the sound only gets worse..."

"First published in 1983, PET SEMATARY has since been regarded as one of Stephen King's most frightening and controversial novels. Daring to cross the boundaries of conventional fiction, King has woven a tale so fundamentally startling that he himself was hesitant for it to see the light of day upon its completion. A multilayered examination into the nature of untimely death, shattering loss, and utter desperation, PET SEMATARY tears asunder the very fabric connecting our seemingly normal world and the afterlife... leaving readers with an awful truth too haunting to ever forget."

"Since its original publication fifty-five years ago, Daphne du Maurier's 'Rebecca' has been a perennial favorite - a classic - throughout the world. Set at the great Cornwall estate of Manderley, one of the most famous country houses in England, the story has an immediate urgency, a brilliantly created atmosphere of suspense. As the novel opens, Manderley's glamorous mistress, Rebecca, has been dead for eight months - drowned in a tragic sailing accident. But her legacy lives on, especially in the mind of Maxim de Winter's young and frightened second wife. Through her eyes we come to know Rebecca, from the tall and sloping 'R' with which she signed her name, to the way she so meticulously organized the magnificent annual costume ball that was attended by the whole countryside."

"This is the place. It breathes. It eats. And, at night, beneath a crawling ground fog with the luster of vaporized pearl, it dreams; dreams while tiny predators stage a nightmare ballet in sharp black grass. It is a living thing. It has a soul. It has a face. At night you can almost see it. At night you can almost imagine what it might look like if the swamp were boiled down to its essence, and distilled into corporeal form; if all the much, the forgotten muskrat bones, and all the luscious decay would rise up and wade on two legs through the shallows; if the swamp had a spirit and that spirit walked like a man... At night, you can almost imagine. You can stare into those places where the evening has pooled beneath the distant trees, and glimpse an ambiguous shifting of the darkness: something large, large and slow, its movements solemn and inevitable, heavy with clotted, sodden weed that forms its flesh. Its skeleton of tortured root creaks with each funereal pace, protesting at the damp and sullen weight. Within their sockets its eyes float like blood-poppies in puddles of ink. You can inhale through flared nostrils, drinking in its musk, green and pungent. There is the delicate scent of mosses and lichens adorning its flanks. There is the dry and acrid aftertaste of the pinmold that spreads across its shoulders, fanning out in a dull gray rash. You can stand alone in the blind darkness and know that were you to raise your arm, reaching out to its full extremity, your fingernails would brush with something wet, something supple and resilient. Something moving."

"The Overlook Hotel claimed the most beautiful physical setting of any resort in the world; but Jack Torrance, the new winter caretaker, his wife Wendy, and their five-year-old son Danny saw much more than its splendor. Jack saw the Overlook as an opportunity, a desperate way back from failure and despair; Wendy saw this lonely sanctuary as a frail chance to preserve their family; and Danny?...Danny, who was blessed or cursed with a shining, precognitive gift, saw visions hideously beyond the comprehension of a small boy. He sensed the evil coiled within the Overlook's one hundred and ten empty rooms; an evil that was waiting just for them."

"The carnival rolls in sometime after the midnight hour of a chill Midwestern October eve. Ushering in Halloween a week before its time, a calliope's shrill siren song beckons to all with a seductive promise of dreams and youth regained. Young boyhood companions James Nightshade and Will Halloway are the first to heed its call. From a place of safety, they watch a midway come to spectral life, their emotions a riot of eagerness, trepidation, bravado, and uncertainty. For they can sense the change that's in the air; that this is the Autumn in which innocence must vanish in the harsh, acrid smoke of disillusionment...and horror. In this season of dying; Cooger & Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show has come to Green Town, Illinois, to destroy every life touched by its strange and sinister mystery. And two inquisitive boys standing precariously on the brink of adulthood will soon discover the secret of the satanic raree-show's mazes and mirrors, as they learn all too well the heavy cost of wishes and the stuff of nightmares. All those who still dream and remember-and those who have heard the whispering but have yet to experience its dark, poetic power-you are welcome. Step inside and take a seat. A shadow show like none other is about to begin...again."

In their book, Gen Z: The Superhero Generation, Regina Luttrell and Karen McGrath explain who this generation is, how they came to be, and the impact they will have on society.

"Thomas Jefferson asserted that if there was any leader of the Revolution, "Samuel Adams was the man." With high-minded ideals and bare-knuckle tactics, Adams led what could be called the greatest campaign of civil resistance in American history. Stacy Schiff returns Adams to his seat of glory, introducing us to the shrewd and eloquent man who supplied the moral backbone of the American Revolution. He employed every tool available to rally a town, a colony, and eventually a band of colonies behind him, creating the cause that created a country. For his efforts he became the most wanted man in America: When Paul Revere rode to Lexington in 1775, it was to warn Samuel Adams that he was about to be arrested for treason. In The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams, Schiff brings her masterful skills to Adams's improbable life, illuminating his transformation from aimless son of a well-off family to tireless, beguiling radical who mobilized the colonies"

"It was one of the most searing images of the twentieth century: two young boys, two princes, walking behind their mother's coffin as the world watched in sorrow--and horror. As Diana, Princess of Wales, was laid to rest, billions wondered what the princes must be thinking and feeling--and how their lives would play out from that point on. For Harry, this is that story at last. With its raw, unflinching honesty, Spare is a landmark publication full of insight, revelation, self-examination, and hard-won wisdom about the eternal power of love over grief."

"Already Toast is a memoir and feminist cultural critique of how unpaid family caregiving affects women in America"

"Written by a medical expert trained as an anesthesiologist, An Anatomy of Pain is the first book to clearly explain the current issues and complexities surrounding the treatment of pain and how society deals with those in pain, as well as how our bodies relate to pain. Common conception still equates pain with tissue damage but that is only a very small part of the story--the organ which produces pain is the brain. Case studies show that a woman who has undergone a c-section reports dramatically less pain than a patient who has had kidney stones removed in a similarly invasive operation. The soldier who drags himself or herself to safety after being shot deals with pain in a remarkably different way from someone suffering a similar injury on a street. The truth is that pain is a complex mix of nerve endings, psychological state, social preconceptions, and situational awareness." -- Amazon.com.
"An illuminating, authoritative, and in-depth examination of the fascinating science behind pain and the complexities of its treatment--from one of the internationally leading doctors in pain management.

"An intelligent and compelling examination of the science of immunity, the public policy implications of vaccine denial, and the real-world outcomes of failing to vaccinate. If you have a child in school, you may have heard stories of long-dormant diseases suddenly reappearing--cases of measles, mumps, rubella, and whooping cough cropping up everywhere from elementary schools to Ivy League universities. How does a small group of people's failure to vaccinate have the potential to affect future generations? Are we at a turning point in medical history, where deadly diseases, once dormant, flourish anew? Will our children face summers of abandoned swimming pools due to polio outbreaks just like our great-grandparents did? Pioneering medical researcher Michael Kinch tells the remarkable story of vaccine-preventable infectious diseases in [this book], which explains how the science of immunity actually works and places immunology within the context of its social and political implications. While detailing the history of vaccine invention, from the steppes of Mongolia to the serendipitous connection between cowpox and smallpox, Kinch reveals the ominous reality that our victories against vaccine-preventable diseases are not permanent--and could easily be undone. ... Between Hope and Fear illuminates the fascinating intersection of science, technology, and disease that has helped eradicate many of the deadliest plagues known to man."

"In 2017, author Shanna Swan and her team of researchers completed a major study. They found that over the past four decades, sperm levels among men in Western countries have dropped by more than 50 percent. They came to this conclusion after examining 185 studies involving close to 45,000 healthy men. The result sent shockwaves around the globe-but the story didn't end there. It turns out our sexual development is changing in broader ways, for both men and women and even other species, and that the modern world is on pace to become an infertile one. How and why could this happen? What is hijacking our fertility and our health? Count Down unpacks these questions, revealing what Swan and other researchers have learned about how both lifestyle and chemical exposures are affecting our fertility, sexual development-potentially including the increase in gender fluidity-and general health as a species. Engagingly explaining the science and repercussions of these worldwide threats and providing simple and practical guidelines for effectively avoiding chemical goods (from water bottles to shaving cream) both as individuals and societies, Count Down is at once an urgent wake-up call, an illuminating read, and a vital tool for the protection of our future"

In a gripping, accessible narrative, a veteran science journalist lays out the shocking story of how the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic happened and how to make sure this never happens again.
Over the last 30 years we learned nearly every lesson needed to stop this coronavirus outbreak in its tracks-- and we heeded almost none of them. The result is a pandemic on a scale never before seen in our lifetimes. MacKenzie lays out the full story of the previous viruses that should have prepared us, the shocking public health failures that paved the way, the failure to contain the outbreak, and most importantly, what we must do to prevent future pandemics. -- adapted from jacket

Infectious disease has the terrifying power to disrupt everyday life on a global scale, overwhelming public and private resources and bringing trade and transportation to a halt. In today's world, it's easier than ever to move people, animals, and materials around the planet, but the same advances that make modern infrastructure so efficient have made epidemics and even pandemics nearly inevitable. So what can -- and must -- we do in order to protect ourselves? Drawing on the latest medical science, case studies, and policy research, Deadliest enemy explores the resources and programs we need to develop if we are to keep ourselves safe from infectious disease.

"Minimalism is the art of knowing how much is just enough. Digital minimalism applies this idea to our personal technology. It's the key to living a focused life in an increasingly noisy world. Digital minimalists are all around us. They're the calm, happy people who can hold long conversations without furtive glances at their phones. They can get lost in a good book, a woodworking project, or a leisurely morning run. They can have fun with friends and family without the obsessive urge to document the experience. They stay informed about the news of the day, but don't feel overwhelmed by it. They don't experience "fear of missing out" because they already know which activities provide them meaning and satisfaction. Common sense tips, like turning off notifications, or occasional rituals like observing a digital sabbath, don't go far enough in helping us take back control of our technological lives, and attempts to unplug completely are complicated by the demands of family, friends and work. What we need instead is a thoughtful method to decide what tools to use, for what purposes, and under what conditions. Drawing on a diverse array of real-life examples, from Amish farmers to harried parents to Silicon Valley programmers, Cal Newport identifies the common practices of digital minimalists and the ideas that underpin them. He shows how digital minimalists are rethinking their relationship to social media, rediscovering the pleasures of the offline world, and reconnecting with their inner selves through regular periods of solitude. He then shares strategies for integrating these practices into your life, starting with a thirty-day "digital declutter" process that has already helped thousands feel less overwhelmed and more in control. Technology is intrinsically neither good nor bad. The key is using it to support your goals and values, rather than letting it use you."

"This highly engaging landmark work, a natural history of exercise--by the author of the best seller The Story of the Human Body--seeks to answer a fundamental question: were you born to run or rest The first three parts of Exercised roughly follow the evolutionary story of human physical activity and inactivity, even as each chapter shatters a particular myth about exercise. Because we cannot understand physical activity without understanding its absence, Part One begins with physical inactivity. What are our bodies doing when we take it easy, including when we sit or sleep? Part Two explores physical activities that require speed, strength, and power, such as sprinting, lifting, and fighting. Part Three surveys physical activities that involve endurance, such as walking, running, or dancing, as well as their effect on aging. Part Four considers how anthropological and evolutionary approaches can help us exercise better in the modern world. How can we more effectively manage to exercise, and in what ways? To what extent, how, and why do different types and durations of exercise help prevent or treat the major diseases that are likely to make us sick and kill us?

"When asked simple questions about global trends--what percentage of the world's population live in poverty; why the world's population is increasing; how many girls finish school -- we systematically get the answers wrong. So wrong that a chimpanzee choosing answers at random will consistently outguess teachers, journalists, Nobel laureates, and investment bankers. Professor and TED presenter Hans Rosling, together with his two long-time collaborators, Anna and Ola, offers a radical explanation of why this happens. They reveal the ten instincts that distort our perspective, from our tendency to divide the world into two camps (usually some version of us and them) to the way we consume media (where fear rules) to how we perceive progress (believing that most things are getting worse). Our problem is that we don't know what we don't know, and even our guesses are informed by unconscious and predictable biases. It turns out that the world, for all its imperfections, is in a much better state than we might think. That doesn't mean there aren't real concerns. But when we worry about everything all the time instead of embracing a worldview based on facts, we can lose our ability to focus on the things that threaten us most."

"Finding Comfort is about providing emotional and spiritual care following a mass fatality incident like a mass shooting, terrorist act or catastrophic natural disaster. Through examples and practical suggestions, it explores the needs of those who are suffering and how those needs can be met

"Don and Mimi Galvin seemed to be living the American dream. After World War II, Don's work with the Air Force brought them to Colorado, where their twelve children perfectly spanned the baby boom: the oldest born in 1945, the youngest in 1965. In those years, there was an established script for a family like the Galvins--aspiration, hard work, upward mobility, domestic harmony--and they worked hard to play their parts. But behind the scenes was a different story: psychological breakdown, sudden shocking violence, hidden abuse. By the mid-1970s, six of the ten Galvin boys, one after the other, were diagnosed as schizophrenic. How could all this happen to one family? What took place inside the house on Hidden Valley Road was so extraordinary that the Galvins became one of the first families to be studied by the National Institutes of Mental Health. Their story offers a shadow history of the science of schizophrenia, from the era of institutionalization, lobotomy, and the schizophrenogenic mother, to the search for genetic markers for the disease, always amidst profound disagreements about the nature of the illness itself. And unbeknownst to the Galvins, samples of their DNA informed decades of genetic research that continues today, offering paths to treatment, prediction, and even eradication of the disease for future generations. With clarity and compassion, bestselling and award-winning author Robert Kolker uncovers one family's unforgettable legacy of suffering, love and hope"

"There is a lot of misinformation thrown around these days, especially online. Headlines tell us to do this, not that--all in the name of living longer, better, thinner, younger. In Hype, Dr. Nina Shapiro distinguishes between the falsehoods and the evidence-backed truth. In her work at Harvard and UCLA, with more than twenty years of experience in both clinical and academic medicine, she helps patients make important health decisions everyday. She's bringing those lessons to life here with a blend of science and personal stories to discuss her dramatic new definition of "a healthy life." Hype covers everything from exercise to supplements, diets to detoxes, alternative medicine to vaccines, and medical testing to media coverage. Shapiro tackles popular misconceptions such as toxic sugar and the importance of drinking eight glasses of water a day. She provides simple solutions anyone can implement, such as worrying less about buying products labeled organic or natural, and more about skipping vaccines, buying into weight-loss fads, and thinking you can treat cancer through diet alone. This book is as much for single individuals in the prime of their lives as it is for parents with young children and the elderly.

"The funny, defiant memoir of Sarah Ramey's years-long battle with a mysterious illness that doctors thought was all in her head--but wasn't. A revelation and an inspiration for millions of women whose legitimate health complaints are ignored. In her darkly funny and courageous memoir, Sarah Ramey recounts the decade-long saga of how a seemingly minor illness in her senior year of college turned into a prolonged and elusive condition that destroyed her health but that doctors couldn't diagnose or treat. Worse, as they failed to cure her, they hinted that her problems were all in her head. The Lady's Handbook for Her Mysterious Illness is a memoir with a mission: to help the millions of (mostly) women who suffer from unnamed or misunderstood conditions: autoimmune illnesses like fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome, chronic Lyme disease, chronic pain, and many more. Sarah's pursuit of a diagnosis and cure for her own mysterious illness becomes a page-turning medical mystery that reveals a newly emerging understanding of modern illnesses as ecological in nature. Her book will open eyes, change lives, and ultimately change medicine

"In this bold, fascinating book, Eula Biss addresses our fear of the government, the medical establishment, and what may be in our children's air, food, mattresses, medicines, and vaccines. Reflecting on her own experience as a new mother, she suggests that we cannot immunize our children, or ourselves, against the world. As she explores the metaphors surrounding immunity, Biss extends her conversations with other mothers to meditations on the myth of Achilles, Voltaire's Candide, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, Susan Sontag's AIDS and Its Metaphors, and beyond. On Immunity is an inoculation against our fear and a moving account of how we are all interconnected-our bodies and our fates."

"Over the past fifty years, more than three hundred infectious diseases have either emerged or reemerged, appearing in places where they've never before been seen. Years before the sudden arrival of COVID-19, ninety percent of epidemiologists predicted that one of them would cause a deadly pandemic sometime in the next two generations. It might be Ebola, avian flu, a drug-resistant superbug, or something completely new, like the novel virus the world is confronting today. While it was impossible to predict the emergence of SARS-CoV-2--and it remains impossible to predict which pathogen will cause the next global outbreak--by unraveling the stories of pandemics past we can begin to better understand our own future, and to prepare for what it holds in store. In Pandemic: Tracking Contagions, from Cholera to Coronaviruses and Beyond, Sonia Shah interweaves history, original reportage, and personal narrative to explore the origins of epidemics, drawing parallels between cholera--one of history's most deadly and disruptive pandemic-causing pathogens--and the new diseases that stalk humankind today. She tracks each stage of cholera's dramatic journey, from its emergence in the South Asian hinterlands as a harmless microbe to its rapid dispersal across the nineteenth-century world, all the way to its latest beachhead in Haiti. Along the way she reports on the pathogens now following in cholera's footsteps, from the MRSA bacterium that besieges her own family to the never-before-seen killers coming out of China's wet markets, the surgical wards of New Delhi, and the suburban backyards of the East Coast. Delving into the convoluted science, strange politics, and checkered history of one of the world's deadliest diseases, Pandemic is a work of epidemiological history like no other, with urgent lessons for our own time."

Chronicles the last century of scientific struggle against deadly contagious disease--from the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic to the recent SARS, Ebola and Zika epidemics--examining related epidemiological mysteries and the role of disease in exacerbating world conflicts.

Pharmaceutical breakthroughs such as antibiotics and vaccines rank among some of the greatest advancements in human history. Yet exorbitant prices for life-saving drugs, safety recalls affecting tens of millions of Americans, and soaring rates of addiction and overdose on prescription opioids have caused many to lose faith in drug companies. Now, Americans are demanding a national reckoning with a monolithic industry.

This history of mankind's battles against infectious diseases looks at how epidemics shaped empires and economies and how medical revolutions freed us from these cycles until new threats caused by changes in global trade and climate.

"With global cooperation and cohesion in decline, Hotez, a former member of the US Science Envoy Program, zeroes in on the factors that drive our most controversial and pressing global health concerns, including war and conflict, climate change, antivaxxers, and poverty. He proposes historically proven methods to soothe fraught international relations while preparing us for a safer, healthier future. The 2020 coronavirus crisis makes the book more timely than ever."-

The Harvard-trained neuroscientist presents an exploration of the intricacies of human memory that distinguishes between normal and concerning memory loss while explaining the profound roles of sleep, stress, and other contributing influences.

Stuck examines how the issues surrounding vaccine hesitancy are, more than anything, about people feeling left out of the conversation. A new dialogue is long overdue, one that addresses the many types of vaccine hesitancy and the social factors that perpetuate them. To do this, Stuck provides a clear-eyed examination of the social vectors that transmit vaccine rumors, their manifestations around the globe, and how these individual threads are all connected.

"In the early 1800s, women were dying in large numbers from treatable diseases because they avoided receiving medical care. Examinations performed by male doctors were often demeaning and even painful. In addition, women faced stigma from illness--a diagnosis could greatly limit their ability to find husbands, jobs or be received in polite society. Motivated by personal loss and frustration over inadequate medical care, Elizabeth Blackwell, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and Sophia Jex-Blake fought for a woman's place in the male-dominated medical field. For the first time ever, Women in White Coats tells the complete history of these three pioneering women who, despite countless obstacles, earned medical degrees and paved the way for other women to do the same. Though very different in personality and circumstance, together these women built women-run hospitals and teaching colleges--creating for the first time medical care for women by women."