Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

The Cancer Journals: Special Edition

by Audre Lorde

"Grief, terror, courage, the passion for survival and for more than survival, are here in the searchings of a great poet."-Adrienne Rich "This book teaches me that with one breast or none, I am still me."-Alice Walker "The forthrightness and ferocity with which Audre Lorde greeted every social injustice is in full force in this courageous exploration."-Amazon.com Moving... (more)

Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors

Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors

by Susan Sontag

In 1978 Susan Sontag wrote Illness as Metaphor , a classic work described by Newsweek as "one of the most liberating books of its time." A cancer patient herself when she was writing the book, Sontag shows how the metaphors and myths surrounding certain illnesses, especially cancer, add greatly to the suffering of patients and often inhibit them from seeking proper treatment. By demystifying the fantasies... (more)

The Illness Narratives: Suffering, Healing, and the Human Condition

The Illness Narratives: Suffering, Healing, and the Human Condition

by Arthur Kleinman

A Harvard psychiatrist and anthropologist argues that interpreting the illness experience is an art tragically neglected by modern medical training, and presents a compelling case for bridging the gap between patient and doctor. Based on twenty years of clinical experience studying and treating chronic illness, a Harvard psychiatrist and anthropologist argues that diagnosing illness is an art tragically neglected... (more)

Good Days, Bad Days: The Self in Chronic Illness and Time

Good Days, Bad Days: The Self in Chronic Illness and Time

by Kathy Charmaz

Medicine as Culture: Illness, Disease and the Body in Western Societies

Medicine as Culture: Illness, Disease and the Body in Western Societies

by Deborah Lupton

Attempts to link the different theoretical perspectives informing scholarship and research directed toward understanding the socio-cultural dimension of medicine, illness, and the body at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Includes examples from research. Softcover, hardcover also available.

Chronic Illness: From Experience to Policy (Medical Ethics Series)

Chronic Illness: From Experience to Policy (Medical Ethics Series)

"…excellent…" -- Choices - Choice on Dying Newsletter "Toombs, Barnard, and Carson have organized and edited a valuable series of papers that provide a rare perspective on the impact of chronic illness. Beginning with the person who is experiencing the chronic condition, they are able to weave an important blend of personal, social, and policy themes." -- Choice "This volume of collected essays is a solid... (more)

Limits to Medicine: Medical Nemesis, the Expropriation of Health

Limits to Medicine: Medical Nemesis, the Expropriation of Health

by Ivan Illich

The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World

The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World

by Elaine Scarry

Part philosophical meditation, part cultural critique, The Body in Pain is a profoundly original study that has already stirred excitement in a wide range of intellectual circles. The book is an analysis of physical suffering and its relation to the numerous vocabularies and cultural forces--literary, political, philosophical, medical, religious--that confront it. Elaine Scarry bases her study on a wide range... (more)

Stories of SicknessHoward, M.D., Ph.D. Brody

Stories of Sickness

by Howard, M.D., Ph.D. Brody

The Renewal of Generosity: Illness, Medicine, and How to Live

The Renewal of Generosity: Illness, Medicine, and How to Live

by Arthur W. Frank

Through engaging narratives of illness, medical work, and nursing in which people choose to act in ways that affirm their humanity, The Renewal of Generosity depicts the transformation of demoralized medicine into caring relationships through generosity—generosity towards both others and oneself. Arthur Frank demonstrates how generosity is renewed through dialogue, and he also distinguishes authentic dialogue... (more)

The Meaning of Illness: A Phenomenological Account of the Different Perspectives of Physician and Patient (Philosophy and Medicine)

The Meaning of Illness: A Phenomenological Account of the Different Perspectives of Physician and Patient (Philosophy and Medicine)

by S. Kay Toombs

This work provides a phenomenological account of the experience of illness and the manner in which meaning is constituted by the patient and the physician. Rather than representing a shared reality between doctor and patient, illness represents two quite distinct realities - the meaning of one being significantly and qualitatively different from the meaning of the other. Drawing upon insights derived from... (more)

The Rejected Body: Feminist Philosophical Reflections on Disability

The Rejected Body: Feminist Philosophical Reflections on Disability

by Susan Wendell

The Rejected Body argues that feminist theorizing has been skewed toward non-disabled experience, and that the knowledge of people with disabilities must be integrated into feminist ethics, discussions of bodily life, and criticism of the cognitive and social authority of medicine. Among the topics it addresses are who should be identified as disabled; whether disability is biomedical, social or both; what causes... (more)

Missing Pieces: A Chronicle of Living With a Disability

Missing Pieces: A Chronicle of Living With a Disability

by Irving Kenneth Zola

The personal odyssey of a man with a disability, this passionate book tries to tell as well as analyze what it is like to have a disability in a world that values vigor and health. Zola writes, '"Missing Pieces" is an unraveling of a social problem in the manner of "Black Like Me". Like its author, I, too, am a trained social observer, but for me 'passing' was not an issue. For I already have the stigmata of the... (more)

Disrupted Lives: How People Create Meaning in a Chaotic World

Disrupted Lives: How People Create Meaning in a Chaotic World

by Gaylene Becker

Our lives are full of disruptions, from the minor--a flat tire, an unexpected phone call--to the fateful--a diagnosis of infertility, an illness, the death of a loved one. In the first book to examine disruption in American life from a cultural rather than a psychological perspective, Gay Becker follows hundreds of people to find out what they do after something unexpected occurs. Starting with bodily distress,... (more)

The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics

The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics

by Arthur W. Frank

In At the Will of the Body , Arthur Frank told the story of his own illnesses, heart attack and cancer. That book ended by describing the existence of a "remission society," whose members all live with some form of illness or disability. The Wounded Storyteller is their collective portrait. Ill people are more than victims of disease or patients of medicine; they are wounded storytellers. People tell... (more)

Artificial Happiness: The Dark Side of the New Happy Class

Artificial Happiness: The Dark Side of the New Happy Class

by Ronald William Dworkin

Reveals the dark side of the staggering rise in antidepressant prescription, alternative medicine, etc.

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: health/illness

The Cancer Journals: Special Edition

by Audre Lorde

Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors

by Susan Sontag

The Illness Narratives: Suffering, Healing, and the Human Condition

by Arthur Kleinman

Good Days, Bad Days: The Self in Chronic Illness and Time

by Kathy Charmaz

Medicine as Culture: Illness, Disease and the Body in Western Societies

by Deborah Lupton

Chronic Illness: From Experience to Policy (Medical Ethics Series)

Limits to Medicine: Medical Nemesis, the Expropriation of Health

by Ivan Illich

The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World

by Elaine Scarry

Stories of Sickness

by Howard, M.D., Ph.D. Brody

The Renewal of Generosity: Illness, Medicine, and How to Live

by Arthur W. Frank

The Meaning of Illness: A Phenomenological Account of the Different Perspectives of Physician and Patient (Philosophy and Medicine)

by S. Kay Toombs

The Rejected Body: Feminist Philosophical Reflections on Disability

by Susan Wendell

Missing Pieces: A Chronicle of Living With a Disability

by Irving Kenneth Zola

Disrupted Lives: How People Create Meaning in a Chaotic World

by Gaylene Becker

The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics

by Arthur W. Frank

Artificial Happiness: The Dark Side of the New Happy Class

by Ronald William Dworkin