Our genetic markers have come to be regarded as portals to the past. Analysis of these markers is increasingly used to tell the story of human migration; to investigate and judge issues of social membership and kinship; to rewrite history and collective...

The strange and surprising history of the so-called epidemic of bad posture in modern America—from eugenics and posture pageants to today’s promoters of “paleo posture”In 1995, a scandal erupted when the New York Times revealed that the Smithsonian...

From a giant of health care policy, an engaging and enlightening account of why American health care is so expensive—and why it doesn't have to beUwe Reinhardt was a towering figure and moral conscience of health care policy in the United States and...

An intellectual history of scurvy in the eighteenth centuryScurvy, a disease often associated with long stretches of maritime travel, generated sensations exceeding the standard of what was normal. Eyes dazzled, skin was morbidly sensitive, emotions...

Turn your garden into a hummingbird hotspot, a haven for butterflies, and a thriving ecosystem that will delight and inspire the young and young-at-heart. Gardening with children is a pleasure in itself, but when you learn to include wildlife in your...

This work is a sampling of the Hippocratic Corpus, a collection of ancient Greek medical works. At the beginning, and interspersed throughout, there are discussions on the philosophy of being a physician. There is a large section about how to treat limb...

Why, alone among industrial democracies, does the United States not have national health insurance? While many books have addressed this question, Dead on Arrival is the first to do so based on original archival research for the full sweep of the...

Winner of the 1983 Pulitzer Prize and the Bancroft Prize in American History, this is a landmark history of how the entire American health care system of doctors, hospitals, health plans, and government programs has evolved over the last two centuries...

Featured on the New York Times' The Daily podcast and CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPSWhat our failures during the pandemic cost us, and why we must do betterThe Covid pandemic quickly led to the greatest mobilization of emergency powers in human history. By...

Retracing the philosophical discussions around careOur current culture is dominated by the ideology of creativity. One is supposed to create the new and not to care about the things as they are. This ideology legitimises the domination of the “creative...

How scientists saved humanity from the deadliest infectious diseases—and what we can do to prepare ourselves for future epidemics.After the unprecedented events of the COVID-19 pandemic, it may be hard to imagine a time not so long ago when deadly...

Instant national bestseller!Parenting is about to get easier--and a whole lot more effective….In a time when so many children and young adults seem to be struggling, parents are looking for help in bringing up mentally healthy kids who are equipped to...

Classrooms and Clinics is the first book-length assessment of the development of public school health policies from the late nineteenth century through the early years of the Great Depression. Richard A. Meckel examines the efforts of early...

Punctuated with remarkable case studies, this book explores extraordinary encounters between hermaphrodites--people born with "ambiguous" sexual anatomy--and the medical and scientific professionals who grappled with them. Alice Dreger focuses on events...

A New Scientist Best Book of 2020Our evolutionary ancestors once possessed the ability to intuit what food their bodies needed, in what proportions, and ate the right things in the proper amounts—perfect nutritional harmony. From wild baboons to gooey...