Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down explores the clash between a small county hospital in California and a refugee family from Laos over the care of Lia Lee, a Hmong child diagnosed with severe epilepsy.
Lia's parents and her doctors both wanted what was best for Lia, but the lack of understanding between them led to tragedy. Winner of the National

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The nurses of the Civil War ushered in a new era for medicine in the midst of tremendous hardship. Toler tells the true stories of the nurses at Mansion House, the Alexandria, Virginia hotel turned wartime hospital. Women like Dorothea Dix, Mary Phinney, and Anne Reading saw casualties on a scale Americans had never seen before, and working conditions were abysmal-- but they met the challenges every step of the way.

"The inside story of how Big Pharma's relentless pursuit of ever-higher profits corrupts medical knowledge, misleading doctors, misdirecting American health care, and harming our health. The United States spends an excess $1.5 trillion annually on health care compared to other wealthy countries -- yet the amount of time that Americans live in good health ranks a lowly sixty-eighth in the world. At the heart of the problem is Big Pharma, which funds...

A primary care doctor examines the ways that such factors as race, gender, sexual orientation, age, and income have a negative impact on medical outcomes and offers solutions for overcoming systemic medical bias.

"As revelatory as Atul Gawande's Being Mortal, physician and award-winning author Louise Aronson's Elderhood is an essential, empathetic look at a vital but often disparaged stage of life. For more than 5,000 years, "old" has been defined as beginning between the ages of 60 and 70. That means most people alive today will spend more years in elderhood than in childhood, and many will be elders for 40 years or more. Yet at the very moment that humans...

"From award-winning ProPublica reporter Marshall Allen, a primer for anyone who wants to fight the predatory health care system--and win. Every year, millions of Americans are overcharged and underserved while the health care industry makes record profits. We know something is wrong, but the layers of bureaucracy designed to discourage complaints make pushing back seem impossible. At least, this is what the health care power players want you to think....

At a time when healthcare and medical insurance are more important than ever comes this authoritative, unbiased new volume in the acclaimed Get What's Yours series. Healthcare expert Philip Moeller has written a reliable, concise guide to healthcare and health insurance basics. He provides tools that patients need before, during, and after they get medical care. He describes the care we need, the care we don't, and how to deal with doctors, hospitals,...