Sunday, November 26, 2017

My favorite public health and health care books of 2017

With some extra free time this Thanksgiving weekend, I'm getting to my top 10 books list a bit earlier than in past years. I suppose that it's possible I will read a great book in December that would have made the cut - if so, I'll post its own review or include it in next year's list. As I did in 2016, I made eligible any health-related book that I read this year, regardless of the year it was published. Interestingly, all but three of these books were authored by physicians, although most of them are no longer actively seeing patients.

Books are listed in alphabetical order rather than order of preference/enjoyment.

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1. An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back, by Elisabeth Rosenthal

2. Banker to the Poor: Micro-lending and the Battle Against World Poverty, by Muhammad Yunus

4. Dreamland: the True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic, by Sam Quinones


5. The Health Gap: The Challenge of an Unequal World, by Michael Marmot
6. Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, by J.D. Vance

7. Inferno: A Doctor's Ebola Story, by Steven Hatch

8. Look It Up! What Patients, Doctors, Nurses, and Pharmacists Need to Know about the Internet and Primary Health Care, by Pierre Pluye and Roland Grad

9. Saving Normal: An Insider's Revolt Against Out-of-Control Psychiatric Diagnosis, DSM-5, Big Pharma, and the Medicalization of Ordinary Life, by Allen Frances
10. Unanticipated Outcomes: A Medical Memoir, by Jerome Kassirer