Recommended Reading

*Indicates availability in the Health Professions Office

Human Medicine-General

*Caring for the Country, Howard Rabinowitz
270 Ways to Put Your Talent to Work in the Health Field, National Health Council
*A Not Entirely Benign Procedure: Four Years As a Medical Student and Baby Doctor: A Pediatrician’s Training, Perri Klass
*Am I My Brother’s Keeper? Arthur Caplan
Becoming a Doctor: A Journey of Initiation in Medical School, Melvin Konner
*Complications, A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science, Atul Gawande
*Confessions of a Medicine Man: An Essay in Popular Philosophy, Alfred I. Tauber
*Down From Troy and Letters to a Young Doctor, Richard Selzer
First, Do No Harm, Lisa Belkin
Five Patients: The Hospital Explained, Michael Crichton
*Forged By the Knife, Patricia Dawson (MD, PhD, and Allegheny graduate)
Gifted Hands, the Ben Carson Story, Ben Carson
Heirs of General Practice, John McPhee
How To Survive the Loss of a Love, Colgrove, Bloomfield & McWilliams
*Intensive Care: A Doctor’s Journal, John F. Murray, M.D.
Joycelyn Elders, MD: From Sharecropper’s Daughter to Surgeon General of the USA, Joycelyn Elders
Kitchen Table Wisdom, Rachel Remmen
Learning to Play God, Robert Marion
Life After Medical School: Thirty-two Doctors Describe How They Shaped Their Medical Careers, Leonard Laster
Midwives, Chris Bohjalian
My Own Country and The Tennis Partner: A Doctor’s Story of Friendship and Loss, Abraham Verghese
Not All of Us Are Saints: A Doctor’s Journey with the Poor and Healing the Wounds: A Physician Looks at his Work, David Hilfiker
On Doctoring: Stories, Poems, Essays, Richard Reynolds and John Stone, Eds.
Out of My Life and Thought, Albert Schweitzer
*Stick Figure: A Diary of My Former Self, Lori Gottlieb
Stories of Sickness, Howard Brody
The Call of Service, and The Call of Stories, Robert Coles
The Doctor Stories, William Carlos Williams
*The DO’s, Norman Gevitz
The Illness Narratives, Arthur Kleinman
The Intern Blues, Robert Marion
*The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, and A Leg to Stand On, Oliver Sacks
The Mysteries Within: A Surgeon Reflects on Medical Myths, Sherwin B. Nuland
*Walking Out On the Boys, Frances K. Conley, M.D.
Ward Six and Other Stories, Anton Chekhov
*White Coat, Ellen Lerner Rothman
*Women In Medicine, Getting in, Growing, and Advancing, Bickel, Janet B
* The Scalpel and the Silver Bear, Alvord, Lori Arviso and Van Pelt, Elizabeth Cohen
One Hundred Days: My Unexpected Journey from Doctor to Patient, Biro, David
House Calls: How We Can All Heal The World One Visit at a Time, Adams and Jacobs
Gesundheit!, Adams and Mylander
Landscape with Human Figure, Rafael Campo
The Woman in the Surgeon’s Body, Joan Cassell
A Life in Medicine: A Literary Anthology, Coles and Testa
Anatomy of an Illness, Cousins and Robards
A Piece of My Mind: A Collection of Essays from JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association), Bruce and Young
From Doctor to Healer: The Transformative Journey,Davies-Floyd and St. John
Residents: The Perils and Promise of Educating Young Doctors, David Duncan
Taking Care of Our Own: A Year in the Life of a Small Hospital, Susan Garrett
Married to their Careers: Career and Family Dilemmas in Doctors’ Lives, Lane Gerber
Second Opinions: Stories of Intuition and Choice in the Changing World of Medicine and The Measure of Our Days,
Jerome Groopman
White Cane: The Extraordinary Odyssey of a Blind Physician, Hartman and Asbell
The Dressing Station: A Surgeon’s Chronicle of War and Medicine, Jonathan Kaplan
Let Me Listen To Your Heart: Writings by Medical Students, Kozak and Svahn, eds.
On Being a Doctor and On Being a Doctor 2: Voices of Physicians and Patients, Michael LaCombe, ed.
Life After Medical School, Thirty-two Doctors Describe How They Shaped Their Medical Careers, Leonard Laster
This Side of Doctoring: Reflections from Women in Medicine, Eliza Lo Chin
*The Lost Art of Healing, Bernard Lown
A Measure of My Days: The Journal of a Country Doctor, David Loxterkamp
Learning to Play God: The Coming of Age of a Young Doctor, Robert Marion
Future Practice Alternatives, David Nash
*Doctors: the Biography of Medicine and How We Die, Nuland, Sherwin B.
Doctors Talk About Themselves, John Pekkanen
Health Professional and Patient Interaction, 5th Edition, Purtilo and Haddad
The Medicine of ER, or How We Almost Die, Ross and Gibbs
The Human Side of Medicine, Laurence Savett
Empathy and the Practice of Medicine, Beyond the Pill and Scalpel, Howard Spiro
*In the Country of Hearts: Journeys in the Art of Medicine, John Stone
Health and Healing, Andrew Weil
When the Phone Rings, My Bed Shakes: Memoirs of a Deaf Doctor, Philip Zazove
Chiropractic in American: The History of a Medical Alternative, Stuart Moore


Patient Point of View
Intoxicated By My Illness, Anatole Broyard
It’s Always Something, Gilda Radner
At the Will of the Body: Reflections on Illness, Arthur Frank
The Cancer Journals, Audre Lorde
Someday: The Story of a Mother and her Son, Andrew Malcolm
My Year Off, Recovering Life After a Stroke, Robert McCrum
Wit
Death of The Good Doctor: Lessons from the Heart of the AIDS Epidemic, Kate Scannell
Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and its Metaphors, Susan Sontag


Medical Ethics, Cultural Issues & Politics of Health Care
ICaring For Patients From Different Cultures: Case Studies From American Hospitals, Geri Ann Galanti
The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down, Anne Fadiman
Classic Cases in Medical Ethics: Accounts of Cases That Have Shaped Medical Ethics with Philosophical Legal, and Historical Background, Gregory E. Pence
Health Care Systems Around the World: Characteristics, Issues, Reforms, Marie L. Lassey, William R. Lassey and Martin Jinks
Medical Choices, Medical Chances, How Patients, Families, and Physicians Can Cope with Uncertainty, Harold Bursztajn
The Corporate Transformation of Health Care: Perspective and Implications, J. Warren Salmon, Editor
The Rise and Fall of Modern Medicine, James Le Fanu
Medicine’s 10 Greatest Discoveries, Friedman and Friedland
The Social Transformation of American Medicine, Paul Starr
Time to Heal: American Medical Education from the Turn of the Century to the Era of Managed Care, Kenneth M. Ludmerer
Western Medicine: An Illustrated History, Irvin Loudon
Forgive and Remember: Managing Medical Failure, Charles L Bosk
Drawing The Line, Life, Death, and Ethical Choices in an American Hospital, Samuel Gorovitz
Doctors’ Dilemmas, Samuel Gorovitz
Death and Dignity: Making Choices and Taking Charge Timothy E. Quill
Flexible Bodies: Tracking Immunity in American Culture from the Days of Polio to the Age of AIDS, Emily Martin
Living in the Shadow of Death: Tuberculosis and the Social Experience of Illness in American History, Sheila Rothman
Current Challenges to M.D. & D.O.’s, Coimbra Sirica
Unequal Treatment, What You Don’t Know About How Women are Treated by the Medical Community, Nechas and Foley
The Woman in the Body: A Cultural Analysis of Reproduction, Emily Martin
Health Care Systems Around the World: Characteristics, Issues, and Reforms, Lassey, Lassie, and Links


Veterinary Medicine
*Animal ER, Vicki Croke
Touched By All Creatures, Gay Balliet
The Preveterinary Planning Guide, Jane Diehl Crawford
Aleen Cust, Veterinary Surgeon. Britain’s First Woman Vet, Connie M. Ford
Phyllis, Phallus, Genghis Cohen, and Other Creatures I Have Known, Frederic Frey
If Wishes Were Horses, Loretta Gage
The Making of a Woman Vet., Sally Haddock
A Man of the Country, W.M. Henderson
All Creatures Great and Small, James Herriot
All Things Wise and Wonderful, James Herriot
The Lord God Made Them All, James Herriot
All Things Bright and Beautiful, James Herriot
Appointment at the Ends of the World, William Karesh
A Veterinary Odyssey, Frank Manley
Most of my Patients Are Animal, Robert Miller
Doctor, Matilda’s in Labor, James A. Porter
A Vet’s Tale – the Passing Years, Thomas Whyte Stobo
Is There A Doctor in the Zoo?, David Taylor
Next Panda, Please, David Taylor
Vet On the Wild Side, David Taylor
Zoo Vet: Adventure of a Wild Animal Doctor, David Taylor
The Several Lives of a Victorian Vet, Jean Ware and Hugh Hunt


“How To” and Admissions Process
*Health Professions Admissions Guide. Sixth Edition, Carol Baffi-Dugan, ed.
*Get Into Medical School! A Guide for the Perplexed, 2nd edition, Ken Iserson
Medical School Admissions: The Insider’s Guide, Zebala and Jones


Medical Science
*The Youngest Science, Lewis Thomas
*The Panda’s Thumb and several other collections of essays on science by Stephen J Gould
Death to Dust: What Happens to Dead Bodies?, Kenneth Iserson
*Stiff , Mary Roach