Medics Book List

The following list might give you some inspiration for books to read around the subject of medicine, health, illness and
medical science to inspire you and give a wider context to your studies and experiences.

All books can be bought or ordered at bookshops or on Amazon, Amazon will also allow you to buy ‘used’ books which are a
lot cheaper. The UEA library will also have many of these books or can order for you. If all else fails ask to borrow a book from
a member of staff, many of us will be willing to lend books.

Thanks to members of the Bio tutor network, colleagues at Hills Road, Cambridge, the Norwich Medical School GY team and
Amazon, for recommendations and descriptions.

Title Author Mini-summary

Life at the Extremes: Ashcroft Frances How do people survive the extremes of heat, cold, depth, speed and altitude? In survival
the ‘logic of life’ is crucial – explore answers to many of the problems affecting humans at
The Science of Survival the extremes.
The Immortal Life of Skloot Rebecca The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is the extraordinary story of the authors search of the
soul and story of a real woman, whose cells live on today in all four corners of the world. It
Henrietta Lacks raises ethical and moral questions on the rights we have as individuals over our own cells as
well as shining a light on some very dark days for medical research.
Bad Science Goldacre Ben In this eye-opening book he takes on the MMR hoax and misleading cosmetics ads,
acupuncture and homeopathy, vitamins and mankind’s vexed relationship with all manner
of ‘toxins’. Along the way, the self-confessed ‘Johnny Ball cum Witchfinder General’
performs a successful detox on a Barbie doll, sees his dead cat become a certified
nutritionist and probes the supposed medical qualifications of ‘Dr’ Gillian McKeith. Full
spleen and satire, Ben Goldacre takes us on a hilarious, invigorating and ultimately alarming
journey through the bad science we are fed daily by hacks and quacks.
Deadly Companions Crawford Dorothey H Ever since we started huddling together in communities, the story of human history has
been inextricably entwined with the story of microbes. They have evolved and spread
amongst us, shaping our culture through infection, disease, and pandemic. At the same
time, our changing human culture has itself influenced the evolutionary path of microbes.
One cannot be truly understood without the other.
Blood & Guts Porter Roy Mankind's battle to stay alive is the greatest of all subjects. This brief, witty and unusual
book by Britain's greatest medical historian compresses into a tiny span a lifetime spent
thinking about millennia of human ingenuity in the quest to cheat death. Each chapter sums
up one of these battlefields (surgery, doctors, disease, hospitals, laboratories and the
human body) in a way that is both frightening and elating.
The Man who Mistook Sacks Oliver These are case studies of people who have lost their memories and with them the greater
part of their pasts; who are no longer able to recognize people or common objects; whose
his Wife for a Hat limbs have become alien; who are afflicted and yet are gifted with uncanny artistic or
mathematical talents. In Dr Sacks’s splendid and sympathetic telling, each tale is a unique
and deeply human study of life struggling against incredible adversity.
Gulp – Adventures on Roach Mary Gulp is an enlightenig look at the questions you might not have thought to ask about your
gut. This wide ranging book will take you to a pet-food taste-test lab, a fecal transplant, and
the Alimentary Canal into a live stomach to observe the fate of a meal. You will meet murderers, mad scientists,
Eskimos, exorcists, rabbis and terrorists.
The Seven Daughters of Sykes Brian In this remarkable scientific adventure story we learn exactly how our origins can be traced,
how and where our ancient genetic ancestors lived, what their live were like and how we
Eve are each living proof of the almost miraculous strength of our DNA which has survived and
prospered over so many thousands of years to reach us today. It is a book that not only
presents the story of our evolution in a wholly new light, but also strikes right at the heart
of ourselves as individuals and of our sense of identity.
The Spark of Life Ashcroft Frances From before birth to the last breath we draw, from consciousness to sexual attraction,
fighting infection to the beating of our hearts, electricity is essential to everything we think
and do. In The Spark of Life award-winning physiologist Frances Ashcroft reveals the secrets
of ion channels, which produce the electrical signals in our cells. Can someone really die of
fright? How do cocaine, LSD and morphine work? Why do chilli peppers taste hot? Ashcroft
explains all this and more with wit and clarity. Anyone who has ever wondered about what
makes us human will find this book a revelation.
The Machinary of Life Goodsell David The book explores the ways in which molecules work in concert to perform the processes of
living, and how vitamins, viruses, poisons, and drugs each have their effects on the
molecules in our bodies.
The Selfish Gene Dawkins Richard Professor Dawkins articulates a gene's eye view of evolution - a view giving centre stage to
these persistent units of information, and in which organisms can be seen as vehicles for
their replication. This imaginative, powerful, and stylistically brilliant work not only brought
the insights of Neo-Darwinism to a wide audience, but galvanized the biology community,
generating much debate and stimulating whole new areas of research. Forty years later, its
insights remain as relevant today as on the day it was published.
Y: The Descent of Man Jones Steve This book is about science not society; about maleness not manhood. The condition is, in
the end, a matter of biology, whatever limits that science may have in explaining the human
condition. Today's advances in medicine and in genetics mean at last we understand why
men exist and why they are so frequent. We understand from hormones to hydraulics how
man's machinery works, why he dies so young and how his brain differs from that of the
rest of mankind.
Genome Ridley Matt Genome, a book of about 100,000 words, is divided into 23 chapters, a chapter for each
chromosome. By looking at our genes we can see the story of our evolution, what makes us
individual,how our sexuality is determined, how we acquire language, why we are
vulnerable to certain diseases, how mind has arisen.
Bad Pharma Goldacre Ben Ben Goldacre shows that the true scale of this murderous disaster in the unregulated
pharmaceutical industry fully reveals itself only when the details are untangled. He believes
we should all be able to understand precisely how data manipulation works and how
research misconduct in the medical industry affects us on a global scale. With Goldacre's
characteristic flair and a forensic attention to detail, Bad Pharma reveals a shockingly
broken system and calls for regulation. This is the pharmaceutical industry as it has never
been seen before.
The Diet Myth: The real Spector Tim Why do most diets fail? Why does one person eat a certain meal and gain weight, while
another eating the same meal loses pounds? Why, despite all the advice about what to eat,
science behind what are we all still getting fatter? The answers are much more surprising - and fascinating - than
we eat we've been led to believe. The key to health and weight loss lies not in the latest fad diet,
nor even in the simple mantra of 'eat less, exercise more', but in the microbes already inside
us.
The Song of the Cell Mukherjee Siddhartha In the late 1600s, a distinguished English polymath, Robert Hooke, and an Eeccentric Dutch
cloth-merchant, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, look down their hand-made microscopes and
for the first time saw the little compartments Hooke called 'cells'.
In modern medicine hip fractures, a cardiac arrests, Alzheimer's, AIDS, lung cancer can all
be thought of as the results of cells, or a cellular ecosystem, functioning abnormally. And all
could be treated by therapeutic manipulations of cells. Mukherjee explains how this
revolution in cell biology is still in progress and how it represents one of the most
significant advances in science and medicine.
The Emperor of All Mukherjee Siddhartha Siddhartha Murkherjee recounts the history and developmen of cancer research and
treatment. From some of the first known cases of cancer where knowledge of the disease
Maladies: A Biography was extremely limited right up to the present day. It follows the advances in oncology and
of Cancer goes on to describe how those advances went on to influence treatment methods and drug
design. Both successful and failed hypotheses and experiments are discussed to give a full
picture of the struggle to overcome the threat of cancer.
The Vaccine Race: How Wadham Meredith Until the late 1960s, tens of thousands of children suffered crippling birth defects if their
mothers had been exposed to Rubella (German measles), while pregnant. There was no
Scientists Used Human vaccine and little understanding of how the disease devastated foetuses. In June 1962, a
Cells to Combat Killer young biologist in Philadelphia produced the first safe, clean cells that made possible the
Viruses mass-production of vaccines against many common childhood diseases. Two years later, in
the midst of a German measles epidemic, his colleague developed the vaccine that would
one day effectively wipe out rubella for good. This vaccine - and others made with those
cells - have since protected hundreds of millions of people worldwide, the vast majority of
them preschool children. Meredith Wadman’s account of this great leap forward in
medicine is a fascinating and revelatory read.
Do No Harm Marsh Henry How does it feel to hold someone's life in your hands, to cut through the stuff that creates
thought, feeling and reason? How do you live with the consequences when it all goes
wrong? DO NO HARM offers an unforgettable insight into the highs and lows of a life
dedicated to operating on the human brain, in all its exquisite complexity. With astonishing
candour and compassion, Henry Marsh reveals the exhilarating drama of surgery, the chaos
and confusion of a busy modern hospital, and above all the need for hope when faced with
life's most agonising decisions.
This Is Going to Hurt: Kay
Secret Diaries of a
Junior Doctor
Spillover: the powerful, Quammen
prescient book that
predicted the Covid-19
coronavirus pandemic.
Gut: The Inside Story of Enders
Our Body's Most
Underrated Organ
Unnatural Causes Shepherd
Adam Welcome to the life of a junior doctor: 97-hour weeks, life-and-death decisions, a constant
tsunami of bodily fluids and the hospital parking meter earns more than you. Scribbled in
secret after endless days, sleepless nights and missed weekends, Adam Kay's This Is Going
to Hurt provides a no-holds-barred account of his time on the NHS front line. Hilarious,
horrifying and heartbreaking, this diary is everything you wanted to know - and more than a
few things you didn't - about life on and off the hospital ward.
David As globalization spreads and as we destroy the ancient ecosystems, we encounter strange
and dangerous infections that originate in animals but that can be transmitted to humans.
Diseases that were contained are being set free and the results are potentially catastrophic.
In a journey that takes him from southern China to the Congo, from Bangladesh to
Australia, David Quammen tracks these infections to their source, and asks what we can do
to prevent some new pandemic spreading across the face of the earth.
Giulia Medical doctor Giulia Enders explains the gut's magic, answering questions like: What's
really up with gluten and lactose intolerance? How does the gut affect obesity? What's the
connection between our microbiome and mental health? Why does acid reflux happen?
What is the connection between brain and gut? And what are pschobiotics? The gut has
long been ignored but it does more than dirty work; it's at the core of who we are,this
book will make you finally listen to those butterflies in your stomach!
Richard Richard Shepherd is a forensic pathologist, solving the mysteries of unexplained or sudden
death. He has performed over 23,000 autopsies, including some of the most high-profile
cases of recent times; the Hungerford Massacre, the Princess Diana inquiry, and 9/11. He
has faced serial killers, natural disaster, 'perfect murders' and freak accidents. His evidence
has put killers behind bars, freed the innocent, and turned open-and-shut cases on their
heads. Yet all this has come at a huge personal cost. Unnatural Causes tells the story of not
only the cases and bodies that have haunted him the most, but also how to live a life
steeped in death.
War Doctor: Surgery on Nott
the Front Line
Being Mortal: Illness, Gawande
Medicine and What
Matters in the End
Written in the Bone Black
David For more than 25 years, David Nott has taken unpaid leave from his job as a general and
vascular surgeon with the NHS to volunteer in some of the world’s most dangerous war
zones. From Sarajevo under siege in 1993 to clandestine hospitals in rebel-held eastern
Aleppo, he has carried out lifesaving operations and field surgery in the most challenging
conditions, and with none of the resources of a major London teaching hospital. He has also
volunteered in areas blighted by natural disasters, such as the earthquakes in Haiti and
Nepal. He is now widely acknowledged to be the most experienced trauma surgeon in the
world. But as time went on, David Nott began to realise that flying into a catastrophe -
whether war or natural disaster - was not enough, local doctors need to learn how to treat
these injuries too so since 2015, the foundation he set up with his wife, Elly, has
disseminated the knowledge he has gained, training doctors in the art of saving lives
threatened by bombs and bullets.
Atul For most of human history, death was a common, ever-present possibility. It didn't matter
whether you were five or fifty - every day was a roll of the dice. But now, as medical
advances push the boundaries of survival further each year, we have become increasingly
detached from the reality of being mortal. So here is a book about the modern experience
of mortality - about what it's like to get old and die, how medicine has changed this and
how it hasn't, where our ideas about death have gone wrong. With his trademark mix of
perceptiveness and sensitivity, Atul Gawande outlines a story that crosses the globe, as he
examines his experiences as a surgeon and those of his patients and family, and learns to
accept the limits of what he can do. Never before has aging been such an important topic.
The systems that we have put in place to manage our mortality are manifestly failing; but,
as Gawande reveals, it doesn't have to be this way. The ultimate goal, after all, is not a good
death, but a good life - all the way to the very end.
Sue Drawing upon her years of research and a wealth of remarkable experience, the world-
renowned forensic anthropologist Professor Dame Sue Black takes us on a journey of
revelation. From skull to feet, via the face, spine, chest, arms, hands, pelvis and legs, she
shows that each part of us has a tale to tell. What we eat, where we go, everything we do
leaves a trace, a message that waits patiently for months, years, sometimes centuries, until
a forensic anthropologist is called upon to decipher it. Some of this information is easily
understood, some holds its secrets tight and needs scientific cajoling to be released. But by
carefully piecing together the evidence, the facts of a life can be rebuilt.
Limb by limb, case by case - some criminal, some historical, some unaccountably bizarre -
Sue Black reconstructs with intimate sensitivity and compassion the hidden stories in what
we leave behind.
Behave Sapolsky Robert We are capable of savage acts of violence but also spectacular feats of kindness: is one side
of our nature destined to win out over the other?
Every act of human behaviour has multiple layers of causation, spiralling back seconds,
minutes, hours, days, months, years, even centuries, right back to the dawn of time and the
origins of our species.
In the epic sweep of history, how does our biology affect the arc of war and peace, justice
and persecution? How have our brains evolved alongside our cultures?
A Fortunate Man: The Berger John In 1966 John Berger spent three months in the Forest of Dean shadowing an English country
GP, John Sassall. Sassall is a fortunate man - his work occupies and fulfils him, he lives
Story of a Country amongst the patients he treats, the line between his life and his work is happily blurred. In A
Doctor Fortunate Man, Berger's text and the photography of Jean Mohr reveal with extraordinary
intensity the life of a remarkable man. It is a portrait of one selfless individual and the rural
community for which he became the hub. Drawing on psychology, biography and medicine
A Fortunate Man is a portrait of sacrifice. It is also a profound exploration of what it means
to be a doctor, to serve a community and to heal.
A Fortunate Woman: A Morland Polly A Fortunate Woman is a compelling, thoughtful and insightful look at the life and work of a
country doctor. Funny, moving and not afraid of the dark, it will speak to listeners
Country Doctor’s Story everywhere. Polly Morland was clearing her late mother’s house when she found a battered
paperback fallen behind the family bookshelf. Opening it, she was astonished to see an old
photograph of the remote, wooded valley in which she lives. The book was A Fortunate
Man, John Berger’s classic account of a country doctor working in the same valley more
than half a century earlier. This chance discovery led Morland to the remarkable doctor who
serves that valley community today, a woman whose own medical vocation was inspired by
reading the very same book as a teenager. A Fortunate Woman tells her compelling, true
story, and how the tale of the old doctor has threaded through her own life in magical ways.
Working within a community she loves, she is a rarity in contemporary medicine: a modern
doctor who knows her patients inside out, the lives of this ancient, wild place entwined with
her own.
Revisiting Berger’s story after half a century of seismic change, both in our society and in
the ways in which medicine is practised, A Fortunate Woman sheds light on what it means
to be a doctor in today’s complex and challenging world. Interweaving the doctor’s story
with those of her patients, reflecting on the relationship between landscape and
community, and upon the wider role of medicine in society, a unique portrait of a twenty-
first century family doctor emerges
Trust me I'm a Junior Pemberton Max IF YOU'RE GOING to be ill, it's best to avoid the first Wednesday in August. This is the day
when junior doctors graduate to their first placements and begin to face having to put into
Doctor practice what they have spent the last six years learning.
Starting on the evening before he begins work as a doctor, this book charts Max
Pemberton's touching and funny journey through his first year in the NHS. Progressing from
youthful idealism to frank bewilderment, Max realises how little his job is about 'saving
people' and how much of his time is taken up by signing forms and trying to figure out all
the important things no one has explained yet -- for example, the crucial question of how to
tell whether someone is dead or not.
Along the way, Max and his fellow fledgling doctors grapple with the complicated questions
of life, love, mental health and how on earth to make time to do your laundry.
The Doctor Will See Khan Amir Charting his 15 years working as a GP, from rookie to becoming a partner in one of the UK's
busiest surgeries, Dr Amir Khan's stories are as much about community and care as they are
You Now: The highs about blood tests and bodily fluids.
and lows of my life as Along the way, he introduces us to the patients that have taught him about love, loss and
an NHS GP family - from the regulars to the rarities - giving him the most unbelievable highs and
crushing lows, and often in just 10 minutes. There is the unsuspecting pregnant woman
about to give birth at the surgery; the man offering to drop his trousers and take a urine
sample there and then; the family who needs support through bereavement, the vulnerable
child who will need continuing care for a long-term health condition; and, of course, the
onset of COVID-19 that tested the surgery at every twist and turn. But, it's all in a day's work
for Amir.
The Doctor Will See You Now is a powerful story of hope, love and compassion, but it's also
a rare insider account of what really goes on behind those surgery doors.
Fall Down Seven Times Higashida Naoki Naoki Higashida met international success with The Reason I Jump, a revelatory account of
life as a thirteen-year-old with non-verbal autism. Now he offers an equally illuminating
Get up Eight insight into autism from his perspective as a young adult.
In concise, engaging pieces, he shares his thoughts and feelings on a broad menu of topics
ranging from school experiences to family relationships, the exhilaration of travel to the
difficulties of speech. Aware of how mystifying his behaviour can appear to others,
Higashida describes the effect on him of such commonplace things as a sudden change of
plan, or the mental steps he has to take simply to register that it's raining. Throughout, his
aim is to foster a better understanding of autism and to encourage those with disabilities to
be seen as people, not as problems.
Human Traces Sebastian Foulks Jacques Rebière and Thomas Midwinter, both sixteen when the story starts in 1876, come
from different countries and contrasting families. They are united by an ambition to
understand how the mind works and whether madness is the price we pay for being
human. As psychiatrists, their quest takes them from the squalor of the Victorian lunatic
asylum to the crowded lecture halls of the renowned Professor Charcot in Paris; from the
heights of the Sierra Madre in California to the plains of unexplored Africa. Their search is
made urgent by the case of Jacques's brother Olivier, for whose severe illness no name has
yet been found. Thomas's sister Sonia becomes the pivotal figure in the volatile relationship
between the two men, which threatens to explode with the arrival in their Austrian
sanatorium of an enigmatic patient, Fräulein Katharina von A, whose illness epitomises all
that divides them. As the concerns of the old century fade and the First World War divides
Europe, the novel rises to a climax in which the value of what it means to be alive seems to
hang in the balance.
How to Argue with a Adam Rutherford How to argue with a racist is a vital manifesto for a twenty-first century understanding of
human evolution and variation, and a timely weapon against the misuse of science to justify
Rascist bigotry. Rutherford argues that race is real because we perceive it. Racism is real because
we enact it. But the appeal to science to strengthen racist ideologies is on the rise - and
increasingly part of the public discourse on politics, migration, education, sport and
intelligence. Stereotypes and myths about race are expressed not just by overt racists, but
also by well-intentioned people whose experience and cultural baggage steer them towards
views that are not supported by the modern study of human genetics. Even some scientists
are uncomfortable expressing opinions deriving from their research where it relates to race.
Yet, if understood correctly, science and history can be powerful allies against racism,
granting the clearest view of how people actually are, rather than how we judge them to
be.