What Are Doctors and Nurses Reading This Summer?

MedPage Today asked some of our columnists and advisory board members for their summer book recommendations. Here’s what they shared.

Tornado of Life: A Doctor’s Journey through Constraints and Creativity in the ER by Jay Baruch, MD

In Tornado of Life, Jay Baruch recounts the stories of the eclectic group of patients he meets as an emergency department physician. He explores medicine as an exercise in storytelling, and struggles to find truth in the stories his patients tell him. For example, when a patient asks him for narcotics, when does he believe the patient’s story of pain, and when does he decline to fill the prescription? With each patient we encounter, those of us who have spent time in an emergency department, or collecting the intake of a patient’s story when that person is first admitted to the hospital, explore along with Baruch the moral quandaries of medical practice in the 21st century, and share in the devastation felt by the families surviving medical catastrophes. I loved Tornado of Life, because Baruch is just an ordinary doctor, just like the rest of us, trying to make sense of an often chaotic healthcare system.

— Mikkael Sekeres, MD, MS

In the Blood: How Two Outsiders Solved a Centuries-Old Medical Mystery and Took On the US Army by Charles Barber

Are you involved in medical research or innovating new drugs or devices? Ever wonder how inventions created by the U.S. military for wartime support make it through the pipeline? This captivating, factual tale reveals how an unknown inventor teams up with a small-time entrepreneur to develop and market a life-saving product now used by thousands worldwide. In the Blood is a classic David versus Goliath story with all the elements of a primetime movie: military turf wars, soldiers needlessly dying, power struggles, bureaucracy at its peak, and intense legal battles. Spoiler alert: the little guys win in the end, and you’ll find yourself rooting for them.

— Judy Davidson, DNP, RN

Tomorrow I’ll Be Brave by Jessica Hische

One book I recently read unexpectedly struck me: Tomorrow I’ll Be Brave by Jessica Hische. There’s this line in the book that hit me: “Tomorrow I’ll be brave; tomorrow, I’ll be adventurous. I’ll play, and I’ll explore. I’ll make or learn or try something I’ve never done.”

The simplicity and depth of this message reminded me of something crucial we often overlook — the permission to explore, learn, and embrace new experiences (even when they’re extremely uncomfortable). This, in its purest form, is bravery. I reflected on my journey as I listened to these words being read. Two years ago, I would have never imagined where I am today. Leaving a corporate executive position to start my own company (ABIG Health), teaching at UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School and ESCP Business School, and joining another international healthcare company (Radiant Healthcare) was not entirely what I had envisioned, but I’m smiling a lot these days.

Fun fact: Tomorrow I’ll Be Brave is a children’s book. Yet, its message is profound for all ages.

— Adam Brown, MD, MBA

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

My book recommendation is Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (of course). This lovely little book, written by a second century stoic Roman emperor, tells us plainly some things that are in our power and others that are not. The wise man alone is the true king, rich despite poverty or adverse circumstances too great. Wistful, wise, and compassionate, books one through 12 are easy reads and great bedtime companions.

— Russell Copelan, MD

Roctogenarians: Late in Life Debuts, Comebacks, and Triumphs by Mo Rocca and Jonathan Greenberg

Feeling like you’ve peaked and your best days are behind you? Mo Rocca and Jonathan Greenberg are here to prove you wrong. Roctogenarians shines the spotlight on a collection of people (plus some horses and one lucky tortoise) who either found or rekindled their passions late in life — and then succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, in ways that surprise and delight the authors’ lucky readers. Rocca’s own irrepressible energy and puckish wit shines through in each of these lighthearted and often surprising tales of (mostly) happy endings, which, taken as a whole or in easy bites, provide a healthy dose of perspective on long lives, hard lives, and — in a wild variety of ways — the good life. Roctogenarians will surely give you the lift that everyone needs and deserves this summer.

— Judy Melinek, MD, and T.J. Mitchell

The Kissing Bug — A True Story of a Family, an Insect, and a Nation’s Neglect of a Deadly Disease by Daisy Hernández

The Kissing Bug is an award-winning, journalistic memoir about Chagas disease and my latest favorite book of medical non-fiction. In it, author Daisy Hernandez first takes us back to her childhood in an East Coast factory town and the arrival of an aunt with severe sequelae of Trypanosoma cruzi. Starting at age 6, Hernandez often serves as her aunt’s medical translator while her parents — recent immigrants from Cuba and Colombia — struggle to understand the parasite’s Latin American roots, vector-borne transmission, and life-threatening woes. This highly-readable book, which is laced with human stories and chilling insights about health inequity in the U.S., is lyrical and riveting. It is also a love letter to Hernandez’s culture and a cri de coeur for health as a universal human right.

— Claire Panosian, MD

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

Middlesex is a coming-of-age novel mimicking a Homeric epic that spans three generations of a family of Greek immigrants to the U.S. after the Great Fire of Smyrna. The narrator is a middle-age man raised as a girl who discovers that he is intersex at the age of 14 due to undiagnosed 5-alpha reductase deficiency. In the process of self-discovery, he unearths family secrets and wrestles with his gender identity. This book is a brilliant mix of Greek-American history, culture shock, endocrinology, and dry humor. I absolutely loved the read and was genuinely sad when I finished the book.

— Chloe Lee, MD, MPH

Random Acts of Medicine: The Hidden Forces That Sway Doctors, Impact Patients, and Shape Our Health by Anupam Jena, MD, PhD, and Christopher Worsham, MD

Not every problem can be studied in a randomized clinical trial. Sometimes, though, something unexpected happens making “natural experiments” possible — that is, a random event that in essence creates a control and “intervention” group. Random Acts of Medicine describes many clever examples, revealing insights about medicine (and life) that otherwise would remain elusive.

— Jeremy Faust, MD, MS, MA

The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese, MD, MACP

The Covenant of Water is a beautiful novel set in Kerala, South India, spanning from 1900 to 1977. It chronicles the complex, multi-generational stories of a family that suffers at least one drowning every generation. This masterpiece sits on my virtual bookshelf on Goodreads for many reasons, but perhaps what led me to fall in love with it was how the author weaves every character’s story into an interconnected afghan. The book explores themes of love, spirituality, friendship, and healing within the context of their lives. While the narrative was slow at times, the more than 700-page novel was absolutely worth it — even Oprah Winfrey agrees. Below is one of my favorite quotes from the book:

“And now that daughter is here, standing in the water that connects them all in time and space and always has. The water she first stepped into minutes ago is long gone and yet it is here, past and present and future inexorably coupled, like time made incarnate. This is the covenant of water: that they’re all linked inescapably by their acts of commission and omission, and no one stands alone.”

— Michal Ruprecht, MD candidate

The Art of Making Memories: How to Create and Remember Happy Moments by Meik Wiking

In a busy world of trying to climb ladders in different aspects of our lives, sometimes we forget to slow down and appreciate the journey. While reading The Art of Making Memories, I was reminded about the importance of living life and savoring moments in time, especially for those we care about — for it is only memories that we will have of others, and they will have of us, when we are no longer on this earth. The author goes into detail about ways to foster memory-making as a skill and how key attributes such as mindfulness, emotions, and the use of our senses are key to effective story-telling, and to allowing memories to have meaning and live on. Wiking also reminds us it is important to appreciate the processes of life and not just the outcome — in other words, the journey, not just the destination, matters.

— Shanina Knighton, PhD, RN

The Poison Squad by Deborah Blum

Originally published in 2018, this book takes on new relevance in the wake of the rising popularity of “raw milk” and the recent reversal of the Chevron deference by the Supreme Court. The Poison Squad chronicles the quest for food safety in the U.S., from the many ways that everyday food products used to kill unsuspecting consumers and leading up to the landmark Food and Drug Act and creation of the FDA. Author Deborah Blum is not only a great science communicator but is one of our greatest storytellers, who is capable of making food safety, political history, and seemingly-dry government agency work into a captivating page turner.

— Ryan Marino, MD

Any books that you’d recommend? Tell us in the comments below!

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