Industrial History

When Jesus sent 70 disciples on ahead of him, part of their mission was to heal the sick. In fact, they were supposed to heal the sick before they preached the Gospel. Best-selling author Mike Aquilina calls this command the healing imperative. And it's an imperative that ushered in the world of modern medicine. In The Healing Imperative: The Early Church and the Invention of Medicine as We Know It, Aquilina reconstructs the fascinating history of a uniquely Christian institution: the hospital.

Johns Hopkins University, one of the preeminent medical schools in the nation today, has played a unique role in the history of medicine. When it first opened its doors in 1893, medicine was a rough-and-ready trade. It would soon evolve into a rigorous science. In recent years, medical science has mapped the human genome, deployed robotic tools to perform delicate surgeries, and developed effective vaccines against a host of deadly pathogens. But this transformation could not have happened without the game-changing vision, talent, and dedication of a small cadre of individuals.

The Right to Pain Relief and Other Deep Roots of the Opioid Epidemic offers a new lens through which to view the opioid epidemic as a consequence of serious misunderstandings of both opioids and pain. Based on their extensive research and experience with chronic pain care, science, ethics, and policy, the authors look beyond the usual villains—pharmaceutical companies and pharmacotherapy distributors—to examine the ethical and scientific concepts about pain that made the opioid epidemic possible.

A narrative that originates in the garment industry of mid-century New York, which produced over 80 percent of the nation's dresses at the time, Murder in the Garment District quickly moves to a national stage, where congressional anti-corruption hearings gripped the nation and forever tainted the reputation of American unions. Replete with elements of a true-crime thriller, Murder in the Garment District includes a riveting cast of characters, from wheeling and dealing union president David Dubinsky to the notorious gangster Abe Chait and the crusading Robert F. Kennedy.

In a wide-ranging narrative that takes us from a downsized marketing executive in Massachusetts, to a father of three in Appalachia finding purpose and meaning working in a convenience-store chain, to an unemployed autoworker retraining in "advanced manufacturing", Shell reveals how work is essential to our flourishing and pyschological well-being - and how so many of the avenues to well-paid and meaningful work will be challenged in the years ahead.

"Shadows of the Rising Sun" delves into the enigmatic Black Dragon Society, a secretive ultranationalist group in early 20th-century Japan. As Western imperialism spread across Asia, the Society proclaimed Japan as the defender and leader of Asian unity against Western dominance. Their ideology of "Greater Asianism" influenced Japan's aggressive expansion and contributed to the regional conflicts of World War II. This book explores the Society's origins, philosophy, and significant impact on Japan's foreign policy. It also examines their strategic support for Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat-...

Opposites and borders are never as clear as we think. With a novelist's eye for the unexpected, author Hari Kunzru takes listeners into the gray zone between life and death, public and private, black and white, and more. Along the way he meets philosophers and punk musicians, New Age gurus and space explorers, and together they investigate liminal spaces around the world. Into the Zone: Audio Essays includes a new foreword and afterword providing bookends to a series of brilliantly crafted intersections on history and the evolution of identity.

"The Rock Trenches: Journal of a Music Industry Executive" by Phillip Rauls is the memoir of a Memphis-born music promoter who worked with some of the top rock 'n' roll recording artists of the 1960s-1990s, including the Gentrys, Robert Palmer, Yes, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, the Eagles, and Led Zeppelin, to name a few. The Rock Trenches begins with Phillip as he gains entry into the music business by becoming the road manager for a local band just out of high school, the Gentrys. The Memphis band scored a million selling record in 1965 titled "Keep On Dancing" and Rauls...

Dr. Mackowiak, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, offers a gripping and authoritative account of 13 patients who took center stage in world history. The result is a new understanding of how the past unfolded, as well as a sweeping survey of the history of medicine. What was the ailment that drove Caligula mad? Why did Stonewall Jackson die after having an arm amputated, when so many other Civil War soldiers survived such operations?

Rosemary Mahoney tells the story of Braille Without Borders, the first school for the blind in Tibet, and of Sabriye Tenberken, the remarkable blind woman who founded the school. Fascinated and impressed by what she learned from the blind children of Tibet, Mahoney was moved to investigate further the cultural history of blindness. As part of her research, she spent three months teaching at Tenberken's international training center for blind adults in Kerala, India, an experience that reveals both the shocking oppression endured by the world's blind, as well as their great resilience.

O século XIX trouxe avanços tecnológicos e industriais em diversas áreas. Uma, porém, ficou para trás: a Medicina. Ao redor do planeta, a mortalidade infantil alcançava taxas altíssimas e a expectativa de vida era baixa. Doenças diversas castigavam a população. Mas o cenário mudou ao longo do século XX. Este audiolivro narra, de forma deliciosa, como médicos e cientistas lançavam mão de criatividade, coragem e raciocínio lógico para tornar os progressos possíveis.

In this panoramic account, we learn how great epidemics have not only led to enormous suffering and mass death but also changed the course of history. Humanity has struck back at the microbes: antibiotics and new vaccines have saved millions of lives. But the battle is far from won. We face increasing threats from new and unavoidable pandemics, antibiotic resistance, and even potential extraterrestrial microbes. Duel Without End is a fascinating journey through the long history of infection, from the dawn of life to humanity's future exploration of deep space.

For over 40 years Barbara Seaman has been a leading women’s health advocate. Now she blows the lid off the estrogen industry in this fascinating book that holds the power to improve—possibly even save—women’s lives. In America 30 million women take estrogen. Seaman shows that this powerful hormone is hardly the cure-all some claim it is. In fact, estrogen treatments may increase the risk of cancer, heart disease, and osteoporosis.

this exciting story illuminates the captivating world of the late Renaissance - in this case its plagues, remedies, and alchemy - through the life of Leonardo Fioravanti, a brilliant, remarkably forward-thinking, and utterly unconventional doctor. Fioravanti's marvelous cures and talent for self-aggrandizement earned him the adoration of the people, the scorn of the medical establishment, and a reputation as one of the age's most colorful, combative figures.

Set against a backdrop of murder, intrigue, and industrial labor conflict in the early twentieth century pearl button industry, Shell Games graphically portrays one of the most important battles in the fight for safe and humane working conditions. Filtered through the thoughts and emotions of Pearl McGill, a woman who stood heroically against the injustices destroying the lives of so many around her in the shops and factories, this conflict vividly comes to life and underscores many of the concerns contemporary workers still encounter.

To paraphrase the great sci-fi writer Stephen King: Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your heart, kill your darlings. Translation: stay on point and mercilessly avoid side stories and anecdotes. With much respect for Mr. King, The History of Man Series is precisely that, a great deal about all those little darlings, a style of writing termed “jumping off.”

In 1999, Munjed Al Muderis was a surgical resident working in Baghdad when the military police marched into the operating theatre and ordered the team to mutilate army deserters. When the head of surgery refused, he was executed. Munjed's choices were stark - comply and breach the medical oath, refuse and face death or flee. That day, Munjed's life changed forever. He escaped to Indonesia and boarded a boat to Australia.

Thirty years ago, almost nobody talked about the white working class: in the House of Commons and the House of Lords the term had been used just three times in the previous two decades. Brexit helped to turn the group into a towering social and political force. But, in the aftermath, one-third of the population has been reduced to a cartoon. Veteran Economist journalist Joel Budd has spent years travelling around Britain, from Teesside to the Isle of Wight, south Wales to Lincolnshire. In Underdogs he offers a sharp corrective to the familiar stereotype of the white working class.

Seamus O'Mahony writes about the illusion of progress, the notion that more and more diseases can be "conquered" ad infinitum. He punctures the idiocy of consumerism, the idea that healthcare can be endlessly adapted to the wishes of individuals. He excoriates the claims of Big Science, the spending of vast sums on research follies like the Human Genome Project. And he highlights one of the most dangerous errors of industrialized medicine: an over-reliance on metrics, and a neglect of things that can't easily be measured, like compassion.

What did 19th-century cities smell like? And how did odors matter in the formation of a modern environmental consciousness? Smell Detectives follows the 19th-century Americans who used their noses to make sense of the sanitary challenges caused by rapid urban and industrial growth.