Health History

In 2015 Manoush Zomorodi, host of WNYC's popular podcast and radio show Note to Self, led tens of thousands of listeners through an experiment to help them unplug from their devices, get bored, jump-start their creativity, and change their lives. Bored and Brilliant builds on that experiment to show us how to rethink our gadget use to live better and smarter in this new digital ecosystem. In this fascinating new audiobook, Manoush explains the connection between boredom and original thinking.

The deep and enduring friendship between Vincent and Theo Van Gogh defined both brothers' lives. As a confidant, champion, sympathizer, and friend, Theo financially and emotionally supported his older brother as the artistic but troubled Vincent struggled to find his path in life as both a painter and a man. Throughout that struggle, the brothers shared everything - swapping stories of lovers and friends, successes and disappointments, dreams and ambitions.

In We Are What We Eat, Alice Waters urges us to take up the mantle of slow food culture, the philosophy at the core of her life’s work. When Waters first opened Chez Panisse in 1971, she did so with the intention of feeding people good food during a time of political turmoil. Customers responded to the locally sourced organic ingredients, to the dishes made by hand, and to the welcoming hospitality that infused the small space - human qualities that were disappearing from a country increasingly seduced by takeout, frozen dinners, and prepackaged ingredients.

Many people today are so dazzled by the long-term potential for artificial intelligence that they overlook the much clearer and more immediate potential for a new form of "collective intelligence": the intelligence of groups of people and computers working together. In Superminds, Thomas Malone explains what we need to do to take advantage of this potential. Groundbreaking and utterly fascinating, Superminds will change the way you work - both with others and with computers - for the better.

Told with the same intimate style, brutal honesty, and uproarious wisdom that placed Wishful Drinking on the New York Times bestseller list for months, Shockaholic is the juicy account of Carrie Fisher’s life, focusing more on the Star Wars years and dishing about the various Hollywood relationships she’s formed since she was chosen to play Princess Leia at only 19 years old.

For more than two hundred years, disturbances of the mind—the sorts of things that were once called "madness"—have been studied and treated by the medical profession. Mental illness, some insist, is a disease like any other, whose origins can be identified and from which one can be cured. But is this true? In this masterful account of America's quest to understand and treat everything from anxiety to psychosis, one of the most provocative thinkers writing about psychiatry today sheds light on its tumultuous past.

Karen Abbott's colorful, nuanced portrait of the iconic Everleigh sisters; their world-famous brothel, the Everleigh Club; and the perennial clash between our nation's hedonistic impulses and Puritanical roots culminates in a dramatic last stand between brothel keepers and crusading reformers. Sin in the Second City offers a vivid snapshot of America's journey from Victorian-era propriety to 20th-century modernity.

From the Sunday Times top ten bestselling author of The Psychopath Test, a captivating and brilliant exploration of one of our world's most underappreciated forces: shame. 'It's about the terror, isn't it? ''The terror of what?' I said.' The terror of being found out. 'For the past three years, Jon Ronson has travelled the world meeting recipients of high-profile public shamings. The shamed are people like us - people who, say, made a joke on social media that came out badly, or made a mistake at work.

Adam Frankel’s maternal grandparents survived the Holocaust and built new lives, with new names, in Connecticut. Though they tried to leave the horrors of their past behind, the pain they suffered crossed generational lines - a fact most apparent in the mental health of Adam’s mother. When Adam sat down with her to examine their family history in detail, he learned another shocking secret, this time one that unraveled Adam’s entire understanding of who he is.

For more than a century, Dr. J. Marion Sims was hailed as the “father of modern gynecology.” He founded a hospital in New York City and had a profitable career treating gentry and royalty in Europe, becoming one of the world’s first celebrity surgeons. Statues were built in his honor, but he wasn’t the hero he had made himself appear to be. Sims’s greatest medical claim was the result of several years of experimental surgeries—without anesthesia—on a young enslaved woman known as Anarcha; his so-called cure for obstetric fistula forever altered the path of women’s health.

A chronicle of Vienna's Golden Age and the influence of Sigmund Freud on the modern world by a clinical psychologist whose mystery novels form the basis of PBS's Vienna Blood series.

With rapid technological innovation leading the charge, today's world is transforming itself at an extraordinary and unprecedented pace. As jobs become more multifaceted, as information streams multiply, and as myriad devices place increasing demands on our attention, we are confronted every day with a plethora of new challenges. Fortunately, as Leonard Mlodinow shows, the human brain is uniquely engineered to adapt.

Smart Phone Dumb Phone rewires our relationship to technology. By unravelling the brainwashing process behind our addictive behaviour, we are freed from dependence and can reassert control over our time and productivity. Including 20 practical steps to help you along your way, this wonderful guide will release you from the clutches of your smartphone and allow you to live in the moment. It truly is the easyway.

K.M. Grant pens an exciting tale of historical fiction set in the 12th century. Will is permitted to chose his own warhorse now that he has turned 13. Much to everyone's amusement, he selects a rather small chestnut. But Will sees something magical in this horse. As they accompany King Richard on a crusade to the Holy Land, the noble stallion galvanizes young Will with his displays of strength, courage, and loyalty.

In 1944, 16-year-old Edith Eger was sent to Auschwitz. There she endured unimaginable experiences, including being made to dance for the infamous Josef Mengele. Over the coming months, Edith's bravery helped her sister to survive and led to her bunkmates rescuing her during a death march. When their camp was finally liberated, Edith was pulled from a pile of bodies, barely alive. In The Choice, Dr Edith Eger shares her experience of the Holocaust and the remarkable stories of those she has helped since.

This book covers the history of 12 important diseases and addresses public health responses and societal upheavals.

The Zodiac and the Salts of Salvation is a two-part work first published in 1932 by frequent collaborators Dr. George Washington Carey (1845-1924) and Inez Eudora Perry (1871-1961). This book explores the use of certain minerals called “cell-salts” to cure disease and how one's Zodiac sign impacts their cell-salt deficiencies.

As a leading political and intellectual historian and a certified fitness instructor, Natalia Mehlman Petrzela is uniquely qualified to confront the complex and far-reaching implications of how our contemporary exercise culture took shape. She explores the work of working out not just as consumers have experienced it, but as it was created by performers, physical educators, trainers, instructors, and many others. For Petrzela, fitness is a social justice issue. She argues that the fight for a more equitable exercise culture will be won only by revolutionizing fitness culture at its core.

The prior record for vaccine development and distribution was approximately four-and-a-half years. Operation Warp Speed got the COVID-19 vaccine to the American people in less than ten months. Operation Warp Speed did not happen by accident. It was the result of exceptional leadership, explicit strategy, and unprecedented teamwork. Author Paul Mango, one of the key leaders of Operation Warp Speed and the former deputy chief of US Health and Human Services, chronicles the challenges of developing the vaccine.

Ever since the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic, scientists have dreamed of preventing 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. From the Spanish flu to the 1924 outbreak of pneumonic plague in Los Angeles to the 1930 "parrot fever" pandemic, through the more recent SARS, Ebola, and Zika epidemics, the last one hundred years have been marked by a succession of unanticipated pandemic alarms.