NAAHP Bibliography

Find a Topic

Admission Process

Alternative & Complementary Medicine

Cultural Competency

Exploring Health Professions

History of Medicine

Medical Ethics

Medical Education

Medicine: Fiction

Medicine: Poetry

Medicine: Non - Fiction

Medicine: Biographies and Memoirs

Public Health / Health Care System

The Science of Medicine

Veterinary Medicine


Abbreviation Key

B - what it’s like to become a physician: the medical student and resident experience

C - choosing a career in health care

D - patient diversity

P - what it’s like to be a physician

Pt - what it’s like to be a patient

About the Bibliography

This bibliography was collated by the NAAHP Communications Committee, with books recommended by NAAHP members. If you have additional recommendations, please email them to communications@naahp.org.

Admission Process

  • Baffi-Dugan, Carol, ed. Health Professions Admissions Guide. Tenth Edition. NAAHP, 2013. No longer in print.
  • Baffi-Dugan, Carol, ed. Premedical Advisor's Reference Manual. Tenth Edition – previously available to NAAHP members. No longer in print.
  • Danek, Jennifer and Marita Danek. Becoming a Physician: A Practical and Creative Guide to Planning a Career in Medicine. Wiley, 1997.
  • Fleenor, Jeremiah. The Medical School Interview: Secrets and a System for Success. Shift 4 Pub, 2006.
  • Freedman, Jessica. The Medical School Interview: From Preparation to Thank You Notes: Empowering Advice to Help You Succeed. MedEdits Publishing, 2010.
  • Huntington, Barbara and Linda Masse. Writing About Me: A step by step method to creating a powerful personal statement for schools of medicine, dentistry... Montezuma Pub, 2003.
  • Jackson, Evelyn. Write for Success: Preparing a Successful Professional School Application, NAAHP, 2014. No longer in print.
  • Molidor, John. Crazy Good Interviewing: How Acting a Little Crazy Can Get You the Job. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2012.
  • Stelzer, Richard. How to Write a Winning Personal Statement. Princeton, NJ: Peterson’s Guides, 1993.
  • Tysinger, JW. Résumés and Personal Statements for Health Professionals., 2nd edition. Tucson, AZ: Galen Press, Ltd., 1999.


Alternative and Complementary Medicine

  • Alvord, Lori and Elizabeth Cohen Van Pelt. The Scalpel and the Silver Bear: The First Navajo Woman Surgeon Combines Western Medicine and Traditional Healing. Bantam, 2000.
  • Boulevice Lyons, Dianne. Planning Your Career in Alternative Medicine: A Guide to Degree and Certificate Programs in Alternative Healthcare. Garden City Park, NY: Avery Pub. Group, 1997. C
  • Jones, Rosemary. Educational and Career Opportunities in Alternative Medicine. Rockland, CA: Prima Health, 1998.
  • Gevitz, Norman. Other Healers: Unorthodox Medicine in America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988.
  • Oz, Mehmet, et al. Healing from the Heart, the Power of Complementary Medicine. New York: Dutton, 1998.
  • Weil, Andrew. Health and Healing. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998. P, Pt


Cultural Competency

  • Chong, Nilda. The Latino Patient: A Cultural Guide for Health Care Providers. Intercultural Press, 2002.
  • Eugenides, Jeffrey. Middlesex. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2002.
  • Fadiman, Anne. The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down. New York: The Noonday Press, 1997. P, Pt
    (reviewed in The Advisor, Vol. 20, No. 2, March 2000, pp. 64-65)
  • Galanti, Geri Ann. Caring for Patients from Different Cultures: Case Studies from American Hospitals.
    Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997. D
  • Roth, Philip. Patrimony: A True Story. Vintage, 1996.


Exploring Health Professions

  • Baffi-Dugan, Carol, ed. Health Professions Admissions Guide. Tenth Edition. NAAHP, 2013. No longer in print.
  • Gevitz, Norman. The D.O.'s: Osteopathic Medicine in America. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1982. (reviewed in The Advisor, Vol.21, No.1, Dec. 2000, pp. 51-52)
  • Gutkin, Lee, ed. I Wasn't Strong Like This When I Started Out: True Stories of Becoming a Nurse. In Fact Books, 2013. B
  • Lasker, Judith. Hoping to Help: The Promises and Pitfalls of Global Health Volunteering. ILR Press, 2016.
  • Moore, Stuart. Chiropractic in American: The History of a Medical Alternative. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993.
  • National Health Council. 270 Ways to Put Your Talent to Work in the Health Field. Washington, D.C.: National Health Council, 1998.


History of Medicine

  • Brooks, Geraldine. Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague. Penguin Books, 2002.
  • Friedman, Meyer and Gerald Friedland. Medicine’s 10 Greatest Discoveries. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998.
  • Gandt, Lois, ed. One Hundred Years of Osteopathic Medicine, a Photographic History. Greenwich Press, 1995.
  • Gevitz, Norman. The D.O.’s: Osteopathic Medicine in America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982.
  • Loudon, Irvine. Western Medicine, an Illustrated History. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
  • Ludmerer, Kenneth. Time to Heal: American Medical Education from the Turn of the Century to Managed Care. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. (reviewed in The Advisor, Vol. 23, No. 4, Sept. 2003, pp. 35-38)
  • Martin, Emily. Flexible Bodies: Tracking Immunity in American Culture from the Days of Polio to the Age of AIDS. Boston: Beacon Press, 1994.
  • Nuland, Sherwin. Doctors: the Biography of Medicine. New York: Vintage Books, 1995. P
  • Rothman, Sheila. Living in the Shadow of Death: Tuberculosis and the Social Experience of Illness in American History. New York: Basic Books, 1994.
  • Salmon, J. Warren. The Corporate Transformation of Health Care: Perspectives and Implications. Amityville, NY: Baywood Pub. Co, 1990.
  • Sirica, Coimbra. Current Challenges to M.D. & D.O.’s. New York: Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation, 1996. P
  • Skloot, Rebecca. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. New York: Crown Publishers, 2010.
  • Starr, Paul. The Social Transformation of American Medicine. New York: Basic Books, 1982.
  • Washington, Harriet. Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to Present. New York: Doubleday, 2006.
  • Young, James Harvey. American Health Quackery: Collected Essays. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992.
  • Young, James Harvey. The Medical Messiahs, a Social History of Health Quackery in Twentieth-Century America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967.


Medical Ethics

  • Beauchamp, Tom. Intending Death: The Ethics of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1997.
  • Beauchamp, Tom and James Childress. Principles of Biomedical Ethics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
  • Bosk, Charles. Forgive and Remember: Managing Medical Failure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979.
  • Crigger, Bette-Jane. Cases in Bioethics: Selections from the Hastings Center Report. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998.
  • Fadiman, Anne. The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down. New York: The Noonday Press, 1997. P, Pt
    (reviewed in The Advisor, Vol. 20, No. 2, March 2000, pp. 64-65)
  • Flynn, Eileen. Issues in Health Care Ethics. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2000.
  • Frankl, Viktor. Man’s Search for Meaning. Boston: Beacon Press, 2006.
  • Gorovitz, Samuel. Drawing the Line, Life, Death, and Ethical Choices in an American Hospital. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
  • Gorovitz, Samuel. Doctors' Dilemmas. New York, London: Macmillan, Collier Macmillan, 1982.
  • Holtkamp, Sue. Wrapped in Mourning: The Gift of Life and Donor Family Trauma. New York: BrunnerRoutledge, 2002.
  • Illich, Ivan. Limits to Medicine: Medical Nemesis, the Expropriation of Health. London: Boyars, 1976.
  • Jonsen, Albert. A Short History of Medical Ethics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
  • Lantos, John, and William Meadow. Neonatal Bioethics: The Moral Challenges of Medical Innovation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006.
  • Lerner, Barron. The Good Doctor: A Father, a Son, and the Evolution of Medical Ethics. Boston: Beacon Press, 2014.
  • Majumder, Mary. The Ethics of Managed Care: A Pragmatic Approach. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2001.
  • Malcolm, Andrew. Someday: The Story of a Mother and Her Son. New York: HarperPerennial, 1992.
  • Pence, Gregory. Classic Cases in Medical Ethics: Accounts of Cases that Have Shaped Medical Ethics with Philosophical, Legal, and Historical Background. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2004.
  • Quill, Timothy. Death and Dignity: Making Choices and Taking Charge. New York: W. W. Norton and Co., Inc., 1993.
  • Reverby, Susan, ed. Tuskegee’s Truths: Rethinking the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2000.
  • Skloot, Rebecca. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. New York: Crown Publishers, 2010.
  • Snyder, Lois and Arthur Caplan. Assisted Suicide: Finding Common Ground. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2002.
  • Tauber, Alfred. Confessions of a Medicine Man: An Essay in Popular Philosophy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999.
  • Teresi, Dick. The Undead: Organ Harvesting, the Ice-Water Test, Beating-Heart Cadavers – How Medicine is Blurring the Line Between Life and Death. New York: Pantheon Books, 2012.


Medical Education

  • Becker, Howard Saul. Boys in White: Student Culture in Medical School. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961 B
  • Duncan, David Ewing. Residents: The Perils and Promise of Educating Young Doctors. New York: Scribner, 1996. B
  • Holt, Terrence. Internal Medicine: A Doctor’s Stories. New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2014. B
  • Klass, Perri. A Not Entirely Benign Procedure, Revised Edition: Four Years as a Medical Student. New York: Kaplan Publishing, 2010. B
  • Konner, Melvin. Becoming a Doctor: A Journey of Initiation in Medical School. New York: Viking, 1987. B
  • Kozak, Alan, and David Svahn. Let Me Listen To Your Heart: Writings by Medical Students. New York: Basset Healthcare, 2002. (reviewed in The Advisor, Vol.23, No.2, March 2003, pp. 35-36)
  • Lerner Rothman, Ellen. White Coat: Becoming a Doctor at Harvard Medical. New York: W. Morrow, 1999. B
  • Ludmerer, Kenneth. Time to Heal: American Medical Education from the Turn of the Century to the Era of Managed Care. Oxford University Press, 1999. (reviewed in The Advisor, Vol. 23, No. 4, Sept. 2003, pp. 35-38)
  • Maguire, Mary Ann. PreMed: Who Makes It and Why? New York: Teachers College Press, 1999. (reviewed in The Advisor, Vol. 20, No. 3, June 2000, pp. 49-50)
  • Marion, Robert. The Intern Blues. New York: Morrow, 1989. B
  • Miller, Robert, and Dan Bissell. Med School Confidential: A Complete Guide to the Medical School Experience: By Students for Students. New York: St. Martin's Griffin/Thomas Dunne Books, 2006. B
  • Pories, Susan, Sachin Jain, Gordon Harper, and Jerome Groopman, eds. The Soul of a Doctor: Harvard Medical Students Face Life and Death. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2006. B
  • Rivkees, Scott. Resident On Call: A Doctor's Reflections on His First Years at Mass General. Guilford, Connecticut: Lyons Press, 2014. P
  • Rosner, Ben, and Jayakar Nayak, with Brandon Minnery (illustrator). The Complete Guide to the MD/PhD Degree: The Art and Science of “Doing it Twice.” Alexandria, VA: J & S Pub., 2004. B
  • Takakuwa, Kevin, Nick Rubashkin, and Karen Herzig, eds. What I learned in Medical School: Personal Stories of Young Doctors. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. B
  • Young, Audrey. What Patients Taught Me: A Medical Student’s Journey. Seattle: Sasquatch Books, 2004 P

Medicine – Fiction

  • Genova, Lisa. Still Alice. New York: Pocket Books, 2009. P
  • Green, John. The Fault in Our Stars. New York: Dutton Books, 2012. Pt
  • Eliot, George. Middlemarch. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1962. P
  • Eugenides, Jeffrey. Middlesex. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2002.
  • Lewis, Sinclair. Arrowsmith. New York, Harcourt, Brace & World, 1925. P
  • Shem, Samuel. The House of God. New York: R. Marek Publishers, 1978. B
  • Verghese, Abraham. Cutting for Stone. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009. B


Medicine – Poetry

  • Belli, Angela, and John Coulehan. Blood and Bone: Poems by Physicians. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1998. Pt
  • Breedlove, C., ed. Uncharted Lines: Poems from the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).
    Albany, CA: Boaz, 1998. P
  • Campo, Rafael. Landscape with Human Figure. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002. P
  • Williams, William Carlos, and Robert Coles. The Doctor Stories. New York: New Directions, 1984. P, Pt


Medicine – Non-Fiction

  • Bursztajn, Harold, Richard Feinbloom, Robert Hamm, and Archie Brodsky. Medical Choices, Medical Chances. How Patients, Families, and Physicians Can Cope with Uncertainty. New York: Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence, 1981. P, Pt
  • Cassell, Eric. Doctoring: The Nature of Primary Care Medicine. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. P
  • Colgrove, Melba, Harold Bloomfield, and Peter McWilliams. How to Survive the Loss of a Love. Los Angeles, CA: Prelude Press, 1991. Pt
  • Crichton, Michael. Five Patients: The Hospital Explained. New York: Knopf, 1970. P, Pt
  • Dans, Peter. Doctors in the Movies: Boil the Water and Just Say Aah. Bloomington, IL: Medi-Ed Press, 2000. P
  • Davis-Floyd, Robbie, and Gloria St. John. From Doctor to Healer: The Transformative Journey. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1998. B
  • Dweck, Carol. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. New York: Random House, 2006.
  • Freidson, Eliot. Medical Work in America: Essays on Health Care. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989. P
  • Galanti, Geri Ann. Caring for Patients from Different Cultures: Case Studies from American Hospitals. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997. D
  • Gawande, Atul. Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End. New York: Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company, 2014.
  • Gawande, Atul. The Checklist Manifesto. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2010. P
  • Gerber, Lane A. Married to their Careers: Career and Family Dilemmas in Doctors' Lives. New York: Tavistock Publications, 1983. P
  • Groopman, Jerome. How Doctors Think. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2007. P
  • Groopman, Jerome. Second Opinions: Stories of Intuition and Choice in the Changing World of Medicine. New York: Penguin Books, 2001. (reviewed in The Advisor, Vol. 21, No. 3, June 2001, pp. 40-45)
  • Iserson, Kenneth. Death to Dust: What Happens to Dead Bodies? Arizona: Galen Press, 2001. (reviewed in The Advisor, Vol. 22, No. 3, June 2002, pp. 82-85)
  • Martin, Emily. The Woman in the Body: A Cultural Analysis of Reproduction. Boston: Beacon Press, 1992. D
  • Mukherjee, Siddhartha. The Laws of Medicine: Field Notes from an Uncertain Science. New York: TED Books, Simon & Schuster, 2015. P
  • Mukherjee, Siddhartha. The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer. New York: Scribner, 2010.
  • Nash, David. Future Practice Alternatives. New York: Igaku - Shoin, 1987. C
  • Nechas, Eileen, and Denise Foley. Unequal Treatment, What You Don't Know About How Women are Treated by the Medical Community. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994. D
  • Ofri, Danielle. What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine. Boston: Beacon Press, 2013. P
  • Purtilo, Ruth, and Amy Marie Haddad. Health Professional and Patient Interaction, 5th Edition. Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders, 1996. P, Pt
  • Savett, Laurence. The Human Side of Medicine. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002. P, Pt, B, C (reviewed in The Advisor, Vol. 22, No. 4, Sept. 2002, pp. 76-77)
  • Spiro, Howard. Empathy and the Practice of Medicine, Beyond the Pill and Scalpel. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993. P, Pt
  • Sontag, Susan. Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and its Metaphors. New York: Doubleday, 1990. Pt, D
  • Washington, Harriet. Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans. New York: Doubleday, 2006.


Medicine – Biographies and Memoirs

  • Adams, Patch, and Pamela Jacobs. House Calls: How We Can All Heal The World One Visit at a Time. San Francisco, CA: Robert D. Reed Publishers, 1998. P
  • Adams, Patch, and Maureen Mylander. Gesundheit!. Rochester, VT: Healing Arts Press P
  • Albom, Mitch. Tuesdays with Morrie. New York: Doubleday, 1997.
  • Alvord, Lori Arviso, and Elizabeth Cohen Van Pelt. The Scalpel and the Silver Bear. New York: Bantam Books, 1999. (reviewed in The Advisor, Vol. 21, No. 4, Sept. 2001, pp. 39-40)
  • Ansell, David. County: Life, Death and Politics at Chicago's Public Hospital. Chicago: Academy Chicago Publishers, 2011
  • Austin, Paul. Something for the Pain: One Doctor's Account of Life and Death in the ER. New York: W. W. Norton Company, 2008. P
  • Belkin, Lisa. First Do No Harm. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993. P
  • Bickel, Janet. Women in Medicine: Getting in, Growing, and Advancing. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1983. P, B
  • Biro, David. One Hundred Days: My Unexpected Journey from Doctor to Patient. New York: Pantheon, 2000.P
  • Brody, Howard. Stories of Sickness. Oxford, New York: Basic Books, 2003. P, Pt
  • Broyard, Anatole. Intoxicated by My Illness. New York: Ballantine Books, 1992. Pt
  • Butler, Katy. Knocking on Heaven’s Door: The Path to a Better Way of Death. New York: Scribner, 2013.
  • Cahalan, Susannah. Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness. New York: Free Press, 2012 Pt
  • Campo, Rafael. The Desire to Heal: A Doctor's Education in Empathy, Identity, and Poetry. New York: WW Norton, 1997. P, B
  • Carson, Ben. Gifted Hands, the Ben Carson Story. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1991. P
  • Cassell, Joan. The Woman in the Surgeon's Body. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998. P
  • Chekhov, Anton. Ward Six and Other Stories. New York: New American Library, 1965. P
  • Chen, Pauline. Final Exam: A Surgeon’s Reflections on Mortality. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007. P
  • Chin, Eliza, ed. This Side of Doctoring: Reflections from Women in Medicine. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2002. P
  • Coles, Robert, and Randy-Michael Testa. A Life in Medicine: A Literary Anthology. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. INC., 2003. P
  • Coles, Robert. The Call of Stories. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1989. P, Pt
  • Collins, Michael. Blue Collar, Blue Scrubs: The Making of a Surgeon. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2009. P
  • Collins, Michael. Hot Lights, Cold Steel: Life, Death and Sleepless Nights in a Surgeon's First Years. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2005. P
  • Cousins, Norman, and Jason Robards. Anatomy of an Illness: As Perceived by the Patient. Studio City, CA: Dove, 1987. P, Pt
  • Dan, Bruce, and Roxanne Young. A Piece of My Mind: A Collection of Essays from JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association). New York: Feeling Fine, 1998 P
  • Davis, Sampson, George Jenkins and Rameck Hunt. The Pact: Three Young Men Make a Promise and Fulfill a Dream. New York: Riverhead Books, 2002.
  • Davis, Sampson, and Lisa Frazier Page. Living and Dying in Brick City: Stories from the Front Lines of an InnerCity E.R. New York: Spiegel & Grau Trade Paperbacks, 2013
  • Eisenberg, Mickey. Life in the Balance: Emergency Medicine and the Quest to Reverse Sudden Death. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. P
  • Elders, Jocelyn. Jocelyn Elders, MD: From Sharecropper's Daughter to Surgeon General of the USA. New York: William Morrow and Company, 1996. P
  • Fadiman, Anne. The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down. New York: The Noonday Press, 1997. P, Pt
    (reviewed in The Advisor, Vol. 20, No. 2, March 2000, pp. 64-65)
  • Fink, Sheri. Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital. New York: Crown Publishers, 2013.
  • Firlik, Katrina. Another Day in the Frontal Lobe: A Brain Surgeon Exposes Life on the Inside. New York: Random House, 2006. B, P
  • Frank, Arthur. At the Will of the Body: Reflections on Illness. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1991. Pt
  • Garrett, Susan. Taking Care of Our Own: A Year in the Life of a Small Hospital. New York: Dutton, 1994. P
  • Gawande, Atul. Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance. New York: Metropolitan, 2007. P
  • Gawande, Atul. Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2002. P
    (reviewed in The Advisor, Vol. 23, No. 4, Sept. 2003, pp. 35-38)
  • Grim, Pamela. Just Here Trying to Save a Few Lives: Tales of Life and Death from the ER. P
  • Groopman, Jerome. The Measure of Our Days. New York: Penguin, 1998. P, Pt
  • Hartman, David, and Bernard Asbell. White Cane: The Extraordinary Odyssey of a Blind Physician. P
  • Hilfiker, David. Healing the Wounds: A Physician Looks at his Work. New York: Pantheon Books, 1985. P
  • Hilfiker, David. Not all of us are Saints. New York: Hill and Wang, 1994. P, Pt
  • Humes, Edward. BABY ER: The Heroic Doctors and Nurses Who Perform Medicine’s Tiniest Miracles. Simon & Schuster, 2000. P
  • Huyler, Frank. The Blood of Strangers: Stories from Emergency Medicine. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999. P
  • Jadick, Richard, and Thomas Hayden. On Call in Hell: A Doctor’s Iraq War Story. New York: NAL Caliber, 2007. P
  • Kalanithi, Paul. When Breath Becomes Air. New York: Random House, 2016.
  • Kaplan, Johnathan. The Dressing Station: A Surgeon’s Chronicle of War and Medicine. New York: Grover / Atlantic, 2001. P
    (reviewed in The Advisor, Vol. 23, No. 4, Sept. 2003, pp. 35-38)
  • Kidder, Tracy. Mountains Beyond Mountains. New York: Random House, 2003. P
  • Klass, Perri. Baby Doctor: A Pediatrician's Training. New York: Random House, 1992. B
  • Kleinman, Arthur. The Illness Narratives. New York: Basic Books, 1988. P, Pt
  • Kraft, Heidi. Rule Number Two: Lessons I Learned in a Combat Hospital. New York: Little, Brown and Co., 2007. P
  • LaCombe, Michael, ed. On Being a Doctor. Philadelphia: American College of Physicians, 1995. P
  • Lacombe, Michael, ed. On Being a Doctor 2: Voices of Physicians and Patients. Philadelphia: American College of Physicians, 2000. P, Pt
  • Lapierre, Dominique. Beyond Love. New York: Warner Books, 1991. P
  • Laster, Leonard. Life After Medical School, Thirty-two Doctors Describe How They Shaped Their Medical Careers. New York: Norton, 1996. P
  • Lo Chin, Eliza. This Side of Doctoring: Reflections from Women in Medicine. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. P, Pt (reviewed in The Advisor, Vol. 24, No. 2, June 2004, pp. 51-53)
  • London, Oscar. Kill as Few Patients as Possible: And 56 Other Essays on How to Be the World’s Best Doctor. Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press, 1987. P
  • Lorde, Audre. The Cancer Journals. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1992, 1980. Pt
  • Lown, Bernard. The Lost Art of Healing. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1996. P
  • Loxterkamp, David. A Measure of My Days: The Journal of a Country Doctor. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1997. P
  • Magliato, Kathy. Heart Matters: A Memoir of a Female Heart Surgeon. New York: Broadway Books, 2010. P
  • Malcom, Andrew. Someday: The Story of a Mother and her Son. New York: Knopf, 1991. Pt
  • Marion, Robert. Learning to Play God: The Coming of Age of a Young Doctor. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1991. B
  • McCrum, Robert. My Year Off, Recovering Life After a Stroke. New York: Broadway Books, 1999. Pt
  • McPhee, John. Heirs of General Practice. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1986, 1984. P
  • Montross, Christine. Body of Work: Meditations on Mortality from the Human Anatomy Lab. New York: Penguin Press, 2007. P
  • Montross, Christine. Falling into the Fire: A Psychiatrist’s Encounters with the Mind in Crisis. New York: Penguin Press, 2013. P
  • Mukherjee, Siddhartha. The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer. New York: Scribner, 2010. P
  • Murray, John. Intensive Care: A Doctor’s Journal. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000. P
  • Newman, David. Talking with Doctors. Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press, 2006. P
  • Nolen, William. The Making of a Surgeon. New York, Random House 1970. B
  • Nuland, Sherwin. How We Die. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994. Pt
  • Nuland, Sherwin. The Soul of Medicine: Tales from the Bedside. New York: Kaplan Pub., 2009. P
  • Ofri, Danielle. The Best of the Bellevue Literary Review. New York: Bellevue Literary Press, 2008. P, Pt
  • Ofri, Danielle. Incidental Findings: Lessons from My Patients in the Art of Medicine. Boston: Beacon Press, 2005. D, P
  • Ofri, Danielle. Medicine in Translation: Journeys With My Patients. Boston: Beacon Press, 2009. D, P
  • Ofri, Danielle. Singular Intimacies: Becoming a Doctor at Bellevue. Boston: Beacon Press, 2003. B, D
  • Pausch, Randy. The Last Lecture. New York: Hyperion, 2008.
  • Pekkanen, John. Doctors Talk About Themselves. New York: Delacorte Press, 1988. P
  • Price, Reynolds. A Whole New Life: An Illness and a Healing. New York: Scribner, 2003. Pt
  • Quill, Timothy. Death and Dignity: Making Choices and Taking Charge. New York: WW Norton, 1993. P
  • Quinones-Hinojosa, Alfredo. Becoming Dr. Q: My Journey from Migrant Farm Worker to Brain Surgeon. University of California Press, 2011. P
  • Radner, Gilda. It's Always Something. New York: Avon Books, 1996. Pt
  • Remen, Rachel Naomi. Kitchen Table Wisdom. New York: Riverhead Books, 1996. P, Pt
  • Remen, Rachel Naomi. My Grandfather’s Blessings. Stories of Strength, Refuge, and Belonging. New York: Riverhead Books, 2000. P, Pt
  • Reynolds, Richard, and John Stone. On Doctoring. New York: Simon and Schuster. 1995. P, Pt
  • Ross, Alan Duncan, and Harlan Gibbs. The Medicine of ER, or How We Almost Die. New York: Basic Books, 1996. P
  • Roth, Phillip. Patrimony: A True Story. South Yarmouth, MA: Curley Pub, 1991. Pt
  • Sacks, Oliver. A Leg to Stand On. New York: Perennial Library, 1987. P, Pt
  • Sacks, Oliver. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales. New York: Summit Books, 1985.
  • Sanders, Lisa. Every Patient Tells a Story. New York: Broadway Books, 2009. P
  • Scannell, Kate. Death of the Good Doctor: Lessons from the Heart of the AIDS Epidemic. San Francisco: Cleis Press Inc., 1996. P, Pt (reviewed in The Advisor, Vol. 24, No. 1, March 2004, pp. 48-49)
  • Schum, Joanne, compiler. Taking Flight: Inspirational Stories of Lung Transplantation. Victoria, BC: Trafford, 2002. Pt
  • Schweitzer, Albert. Out of My Life and Thought. New York: The New American Library, 1949. P
  • Segal, Erich. Doctors. Toronto ; New York: Bantam Books, 1988. B, P
  • Selzer, Richard. Letters to a Young Doctor. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982. P (reviewed in The Advisor, Vol. 20, No. 4, Dec. 1999, pp. 39-40)
  • Servan-Schreiber. Anti-Cancer, A New Way of Life. Carlton North, Vic.: Scribe Publications, 2010. Pt
  • Siegel, Bernie, and John Bauers. Love, Medicine, and Miracles. New York: Caedmon, 1988. P, Pt
  • Skloot, Rebecca. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. New York: Crown Publishers, 2010.
  • Spiro, Howard. The Power of Hope: A Doctor’s Perspective. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998. P
  • Stone, John. In the Country of Hearts: Journeys in the Art of Medicine. New York: Delacorte Press, 1993. P
  • Svahn, David, ed. Let Me Listen to Your Heart: Writings by Medical Students. Cooperstown, NY: Bassett Healthcare, 2002. B
  • Sweet, Victoria. God’s Hotel: A Doctor, A Hospital, and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of Medicine. New York: Riverhead Books, 2012. P
  • Takakuwa, Kevin, Nick Rubashkin, and Karen Herzig, eds., What I Learned in Medical School. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. P
  • Taylor, Jill Bolte. My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey. New York: Viking, 2008. Pt
  • Taylor, Patrick. An Irish Country Doctor. New York: Forge, 2007. P • Thernstrom, Melanie. The Pain Chronicles. 2010, P, Pt
  • Thomas, Lewis. The Youngest Science: Notes of a Medicine-Watcher. New York: Viking Press, 1983. P
  • Verghese, Abraham. My Own Country. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994. P, Pt
  • Verghese, Abraham. The Tennis Partner: A Doctor's Story of Friendship and Loss. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1998. (reviewed in The Advisor, Vol. 20, No. 4, Sept. 2000, pp. 71-72)
  • Vertosick, Frank Jr. When the Air Hits Your Brain: Tales from Neurosurgery. New York: W.W. Norton, 1996. P
  • Wible, Pamela. Pet Goats and Pap Smears: 101 Medical Adventures to Open Your Heart and Mind. Eugene, OR: Pamela Wible, M.D., Publishing, 2012. P, Pt
  • Williams, William Carlos and Coles, Robert. The Doctor Stories. New York: New Directions, 1984. P, Pt
  • Young, Audrey. The House of Hope and Fear: Life in a Big City Hospital. Seattle: Sasquatch Books, 2009. P
  • Young, Roxanne, ed. A Piece of My Mind: A New Collection of Essays from JAMA. 2000. P
  • Zazove, Philip. When the Phone Rings, My Bed Shakes: Memoirs of a Deaf Doctor. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press, 1993. P
  • Ziegler, Edward. Emergency Doctor. New York: Harper & Row, 1987. P


Public Health / Health Care System

  • Askin, Elisabeth and Nathan Moore. The Health Care Handbook: A Clear and Concise Guide to the US Health Care System, 2nd Edition. St. Louis: Academic Publishing Services, Washington University School of Medicine, 2014.
  • Brownlee, Shannon. Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine is Making us Sicker and Poorer. New York: Bloomsbury, USA, 2007.
  • Cohn, Jonathan. Sick: The Untold Story of America’s Health Care Crisis – and the People who Pay the Price. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2007.
  • Lassey, Marie, William Lassie, and Martin Links. Health Care Systems Around the World: Characteristics, Issues, and Reforms. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1997.
  • Rosen, George. A History of Public Health. New York: MD Publications, 1958.
  • Starr, Paul. The Social Transformation of American Medicine. New York: Basic Books, 1982.


The Science of Medicine

  • Davidson, Richard, and Sharon Begley. The Emotional Life of Your Brain. New York: Hudson Street Press, 2012.
  • De Kruif, Paul. Microbe Hunters. New York, Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1926.
  • Judson, Horace Freeland. The Eighth Day of Creation: Makers of the Revolution in Biology. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979.
  • Mukherjee, Siddhartha. The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer. New York: Scribner, 2010.
  • Nesse, Randolph, and George Williams. Why We Get Sick: The New Science of Darwinian Medicine. New York: Times Books, 1994.
  • Roach, Mary. Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex. New York: W.W. Norton, 2008.
  • Roach, Mary. Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife. New York: W.W. Norton, 2005.
  • Roach, Mary. Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2003.
  • Schimpff, Stephen. The Future of Medicine: Megatrends in Healthcare That Will Improve Your Quality of Life. Thomas Nelson, 2007.
  • Thomas, Lewis. The Youngest Science: Notes of a Medicine Watcher. New York: Viking Press, 1983.
  • Wenegrat, Brant. Theatre of Disorder: Patients, Doctors, and the Construction of Illness. Oxford University Press, 2001.


Veterinary Medicine

  • Catanzaro, Thomas. Promoting the Human-Animal Bond in Veterinary Practice. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 2001.
  • Diehl Crawford, Jane. The Preveterinary Planning Guide. Williams and Wilkins, 1995.
  • Ford, Connie. Aleen Cust, Veterinary Surgeon. Britain’s First Woman Vet. Bristol: BioPressLTD, 1990.
  • Frey, Frederic. Phyllis, Phallus, Genghis Cohen, and Other Creatures I Have Known. Santa Barbara, CA: American Veterinary Publications, 1984.
  • Gage, Loretta. If Wishes Were Horses. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993.
  • Haddock, Sally. The Making of a Woman Vet. New York: Simon Schuster, 1985.
  • Hasselbush, Willard. Mark Morris: Veterinarian. 1984.
  • Henderson, W. M. A Man of the Country. Edinburgh: Pentland Press, 1994.
  • Herriot, James. All Creatures Great and Small. Boston: G.K. Hall, 1973.
  • Herriot, James. All Things Wise and Wonderful. Boston: G.K. Hall, 1977.
  • Herriot, James. The Lord God Made Them All. New York: Bantam Books, 1982.
  • Herriot, James. All Things Bright and Beautiful. ONT: Collier-Macmillan, 1974.
  • Karesh, William. Appointment at the Ends of the World. New York: Warner Books, 1999.
  • Manley, Frank. A Veterinary Odyssey. Hicksville, NY: Exposition Press, 1978.
  • Miller, Robert. Most of my Patients Are Animals. Middlebury, VT: P.S. Eriksson, 1985.
  • Natterson-Horowitz, Barbara, and Kathryn Bowers. Zoobiquity: The Astonishing Connection Between Human and Animal Health. Doubleday Canada, 2013
  • Porter, James. Doctor, Matilda’s in Labor. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1986.
  • Sawicki, Stephen. Animal Hospital. Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 1996.
  • Stobo, Thomas Whyte. A Vet’s Tale – the Passing Years. Southampton: Hamble Valley Press, 1993.
  • Taylor, David. Is There A Doctor in the Zoo?. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1978.
  • Taylor, David. Next Panda, Please. New York: Stein and Day, 1983.
  • Taylor, David. Vet on the Wild Side. New York: St. Martin Press, 1990.
  • Taylor, David. Zoo Vet: Adventure of a Wild Animal Doctor. Dell Publishing Co., Inc., 1978.
  • Vogelsang, Jessica. All Dogs Go to Kevin: Everything Three Dogs Taught Me (That I didn’t Learn in Veterinary School). New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2015.
  • Ware, Jean, and Hugh Hunt. The Several Lives of a Victorian Vet. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1980.


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