Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic

And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic

by Randy Shilts

By the time Rock Hudson's death in 1985 alerted all America to the danger of the AIDS epidemic, the disease had spread across the nation, killing thousands of people and emerging as the greatest health crisis of the 20th century. America faced a troubling question: What happened? How was this epidemic allowed to spread so far before it was taken seriously? In answering these questions, Shilts weaves weaves the... (more)

The Great Influenza

The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History

by John M. Barry

At the height of WWI, history’s most lethal influenza virus erupted in an army camp in Kansas, moved east with American troops, then exploded, killing as many as 100 million people worldwide. It killed more people in twenty-four months than AIDS killed in twenty-four years, more in a year than the Black Death killed in a century. But this was not the Middle Ages, and 1918 marked the first collision of... (more)

The Coming Plague

Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance

by Laurie Garrett

A critically acclaimed study documents the outbreaks of newly discovered diseases around the globe, such as HIV, Lassa, and Ebola, and explores the social and environmental deterioration that helps to keep such viruses alive. Reprint. Tour. NYT.

The Ghost Map

by Steven Johnson

A thrilling historical account of the worst cholera outbreak in Victorian London-and a brilliant exploration of how Dr. John Snow's solution revolutionized the way we think about disease, cities, science, and the modern world. From the dynamic thinker routinely compared to Malcolm Gladwell, E. O. Wilson, and James Gleick, The Ghost Map is a riveting page-turner with a real-life historical hero that... (more)

The Demon in the Freezer : A True Story

by Richard Preston

“The bard of biological weapons captures the drama of the front lines.” -Richard Danzig, former secretary of the navy The first major bioterror event in the United States-the anthrax attacks in October 2001-was a clarion call for scientists who work with “hot” agents to find ways of protecting civilian populations against biological weapons. In The Demon in the Freezer , his first nonfiction book since The... (more)

Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present

Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present

by Harriet A. Washington

From the era of slavery to the present day, the first full history of black America’s shocking mistreatment as unwilling and unwitting experimental subjects at the hands of the medical establishment. Medical Apartheid is the first and only comprehensive history of medical experimentation on African Americans. Starting with the earliest encounters between black Americans and Western medical researchers and the... (more)

Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor (California Series in Public Anthropology, 4)

Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor (California Series in Public Anthropology, 4)

by Paul Farmer

Pathologies of Power uses harrowing stories of life-and death-in extreme situations to interrogate our understanding of human rights. Paul Farmer, a physician and anthropologist with twenty years of experience working in Haiti, Peru, and Russia, argues that promoting the social and economic rights of the world's poor is the most important human rights struggle of our times. With passionate eyewitness accounts from... (more)

The Hot Zone: A Terrifying True Story

by Richard Preston

A highly infectious, deadly virus from the central African rain forest suddenly appears in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. There is no cure. In a few days 90 percent of its victims are dead. A secret military SWAT team of soldiers and scientists is mobilized to stop the outbreak of this exotic "hot" virus. The Hot Zone tells this dramatic story, giving a hair-raising account of the appearance of rare and lethal... (more)

The American Plague: The Untold Story of Yellow Fever, the Epidemic that Shaped Our History

The American Plague: The Untold Story of Yellow Fever, the Epidemic that Shaped Our History

by Molly Caldwell Crosby

In this account, a journalist traces the course of yellow fever, stopping in 1878 Memphis to "vividly <evoke> the Faulkner-meets-'Dawn of the Dead' horrors,"*-and moving on to today's strain of the killer virus. Over the course of history, yellow fever has paralyzed governments, halted commerce, quarantined cities, moved the U.S. capital, and altered the outcome of wars. During a single summer in Memphis... (more)

Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World

Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World

by Greg Critser

In this astonishing expose, journalist Greg Critser looks beyond the sensational headlines to reveal why nearly 60 percent of Americans are now overweight. Critser's sharp-eyed reportage and sharp-tongued analysis make for a disarmingly funny and truly alarming book. Critser investigates the many factors of American life -- from supersize to Super Mario, from high-fructose corn syrup to the high cost of physical... (more)

Mountains Beyond Mountains : The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World

Mountains Beyond Mountains : The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World

by Tracy Kidder

Tracy Kidder is a winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the author of the bestsellers The Soul of a New Machine , House , Among Schoolchildren , and Home Town . He has been described by the Baltimore Sun as the “master of the non-fiction narrative.” This powerful and inspiring new book shows how one person can make a difference, as Kidder tells the true story of a gifted man who is in love with the world... (more)

Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health

Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health

by Laurie Garrett

In this meticulously researched and ultimately explosive new book by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the New York Times bestseller The Coming Plague, Laurie Garrett takes readers across the globe to reveal how a series of potential and present public health catastrophes form a terrifying portrait of real global disaster in the making.

Scourge: The Once and Future Threat of Smallpox

Scourge: The Once and Future Threat of Smallpox

by Jonathan B. Tucker

A Washington Post Best Book of 2001, Scourge provides a definitive account of the dramatic story of smallpox by a leading "expert on biological and chemical weapons" (The New York Times). Jonathan B. Tucker traces the history of the smallpox virus from its first recorded outbreak around 3700 B.C. through its use as the first biological warfare agent in human history, and draws some decisively important lessons for... (more)

The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time (P.S.)

The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time (P.S.)

by John Kelly

La moria grandissima began its terrible journey across the European and Asian continents in 1347, leaving unimaginable devastation in its wake. Five years later, twenty-five million people were dead, felled by the scourge that would come to be called the Black Death. The Great Mortality is the extraordinary epic account of the worst natural disaster in European history -- a drama of courage, cowardice, misery,... (more)

The Secret History of the War on Cancer

by Devra Lee Davis

From the National Book Award finalist, author of When Smoke Ran Like Water , a searing, haunting and deeply personal account of the War on Cancer. The War on Cancer set out to find, treat, and cure a disease. Left untouched were many of the things known to cause cancer, including tobacco, the workplace, radiation, or the global environment. Proof of how the world in which we live and work affects whether we... (more)

HIV, Health, and Your Community: A Guide for Action

HIV, Health, and Your Community: A Guide for Action

by Reuben Granich

Easy-to-understand guide for health workers in areas with few medical resources, such as rural Africa or Thailand. Designed as a manual for those confronting the HIV epidemic in their communities and without medical or technical knowledge or prior training in the prevention of HIV. Uses contemporary examples and halftone line drawings. Hardcover, softcover available.

Choice and Coercion: Birth Control, Sterilization, and Abortion in Public Health and Welfare (Gender and American Culture)

Choice and Coercion: Birth Control, Sterilization, and Abortion in Public Health and Welfare (Gender and American Culture)

by Johanna Schoen

In August 2003, North Carolina became the first U.S. state to offer restitution to victims of state-ordered sterilizations carried out by its eugenics program between 1929 and 1975. The decision was prompted by newspaper stories based on the research of Johanna Schoen, who was granted unique access to summaries of 7,500 case histories and the papers of the North Carolina Eugenics Board. In this book, Schoen... (more)

Women Behind Bars: The Crisis of Women in the U.S. Prison System

Women Behind Bars: The Crisis of Women in the U.S. Prison System

by Silja J. A. Talvi

More and more women—mothers, grandmothers, wives, daughters, and sisters—are doing hard prison time all across the United States. Many of them are facing the prospect of years, decades, even lifetimes behind bars. Oddly, there’s been little public discussion about the dramatic increase of women in the prison system. What exactly is happening here, and why? The answers are in Women Behind Bars , in which... (more)

La Mentira Del Colesterol/ the Lie About Cholesterol (Alternativas -Salud Natural)

La Mentira Del Colesterol/ the Lie About Cholesterol (Alternativas -Salud Natural)

by Walter Hartenbach

The Sanitarians: A HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC HEALTH

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: public health

by Randy Shilts

The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History

by John M. Barry

Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance

by Laurie Garrett

by Steven Johnson

by Richard Preston

by Harriet A. Washington

by Paul Farmer

by Richard Preston

by Molly Caldwell Crosby

by Greg Critser

by Tracy Kidder

by Laurie Garrett

by Jonathan B. Tucker

by John Kelly

by Devra Lee Davis

by Reuben Granich

by Johanna Schoen

by Silja J. A. Talvi

by Walter Hartenbach

by John Duffy