Medical Mysteries & Thrilling Histories

Updated June 7, 2026
Rochester Public Library RPL Staff
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Medical Mysteries & Thrilling Histories

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The lady's handbook for her mysterious illness : a memoir
Ramey, Sarah
Paper Book
"A best memoir of 2020" --BookPage The darkly funny memoir of Sarah Ramey's years-long battle with a mysterious illness that doctors thought was all in her head--but wasn't. A revelation and an inspiration for millions of women whose legitimate health complaints are...
The facemaker : a visionary surgeon's battle to mend the disfigured soldiers of World War I
Fitzharris, Lindsey
Paper Book
A New York Times Bestseller Finalist for the 2022 Kirkus Prize | Named a best book of the year by The Guardian "Enthralling. Harrowing. Heartbreaking. And utterly redemptive. Lindsey Fitzharris hit this one out of the park." --Erik Larson, author of...
Replaceable you : adventures in human anatomy
Roach, Mary
Paper Book
The body is the most complex machine in the world, and the only one for which you cannot get a replacement part from the manufacturer. For centuries, medicine has reached for what's available--sculpting noses from brass, borrowing skin from frogs and hearts from pigs, crafting eye parts from jet...
Destiny of the Republic A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President
Millard, Candice.
Paper Book
James A. Garfield was one of the most extraordinary men ever elected president. Born into abject poverty, he rose to become a wunderkind scholar, a Civil War hero, and a renowned and admired reformist congressman. Nominated for president against his will, he engaged in a fierce battle with the...
The invisible kingdom : reimagining chronic illness
O'Rourke, Meghan
Paper Book
Drawing on her own medical experience as well as fifteen years of interviews with doctors, patients, researchers, and public health experts, O'Rourke's incisive new work speaks to an urgent subject: the epidemic scale of autoimmune disease in America (even greater with the advent of 'Long Covid')...
Empire of pain : the secret history of the Sackler dynasty
Keefe, Patrick Radden
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR * A grand, devastating portrait of three generations of the Sackler family, famed for their philanthropy, whose fortune was built by Valium and whose reputation was destroyed by OxyContin. From...
The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks
Skloot, Rebecca
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * "The story of modern medicine and bioethics--and, indeed, race relations--is refracted beautifully, and movingly."--Entertainment Weekly NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE FROM HBO® STARRING OPRAH WINFREY AND ROSE BYRNE * ONE OF THE "MOST...
The emperor of all maladies : a biography of cancer
Mukherjee, Siddhartha
Paper Book
Selected as One of the Best Books of the 21st Century by The New York Times Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, adapted as a documentary from Ken Burns on PBS, this New York Times bestseller is "an extraordinary achievement" (The New Yorker)--a magnificent,...
Stiff : the curious lives of human cadavers
Roach, Mary.
Paper Book
"One of the funniest and most unusual books of the year....Gross, educational, and unexpectedly sidesplitting."--Entertainment Weekly Stiff is an oddly compelling, often hilarious exploration of the strange lives of our bodies postmortem. For two thousand years,...
Hidden Valley Road : inside the mind of an American family
Kolker, Robert
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK * ONE OF GQ's TOP 50 BOOKS OF LITERARY JOURNALISM IN THE 21st CENTURY * The heartrending story of a midcentury American family with twelve children, six of them diagnosed with schizophrenia, that became science's great hope in...
Five days at Memorial : life and death in a storm-ravaged hospital
Fink, Sheri
Paper Book
One of the New York Times's Best Ten Books of the Year Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction Winner of the 2014 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize, the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize,...
Bad blood : secrets and lies in a Silicon Valley startup
Carreyrou, John
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * The gripping story of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos--one of the biggest corporate frauds in history--a tale of ambition and hubris set amid the bold promises of Silicon Valley, rigorously reported by the prize-winning journalist. With a new Afterword.
All in her head : the truth and lies early medicine taught us about women's bodies and why it matters today
Comen, Elizabeth
Paper Book
Finalist for the 2025 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award USA Today Bestseller "All in Her Head accomplishes a remarkable feat of storytelling. By combining essential medical histories about women's bodies with all the narrative...
The code breaker : Jennifer Doudna, gene editing, and the future of the human race
Isaacson, Walter
Paper Book
A Best Book of 2021 by Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Time, and The Washington Post The bestselling author of Leonardo da Vinci and Steve Jobs returns with a "compelling" (The Washington Post) account of how Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Doudna...
Brain on fire : my month of madness
Cahalan, Susannah.
Paper Book
A gripping memoir and medical suspense story about a young New York Post reporter's struggle with a rare and terrifying disease, opening a new window into the fascinating world of brain science. One day in 2009, twenty-four-year-old Susannah Cahalan woke up alone in a...
I contain multitudes : the microbes within us and a grander view of life
Yong, Ed
Paper Book
New York Times Bestseller New York Times Notable Book of 2016 * NPR Great Read of 2016 * Named a Best Book of 2016 by The Economist, Smithsonian, NPR's Science Friday, MPR, Minnesota Star Tribune, Kirkus Reviews,...
Gulp : adventures on the alimentary canal
Roach, Mary.
Paper Book
"America's funniest science writer" (Washington Post) takes us down the hatch on an unforgettable tour. The alimentary canal is classic Mary Roach terrain: the questions explored in Gulp are as taboo, in their way, as the cadavers in Stiff and every bit as surreal as the universe of zero gravity...
The gene : an intimate history
Mukherjee, Siddhartha,
Paper Book
A #1 New York Times BestsellerA New York Times Notable BookA Washington Post and Seattle Times Best Book of the YearA Pulitzer Prize-winning AuthorWeaving science, social history, and personal narrative, Siddhartha Mukherjee tells the story of one of the most important conceptual breakthroughs of...
The poisoner's handbook : murder and the birth of forensic medicine in Jazz Age New York
Blum, Deborah
Paper Book
Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer Deborah Blum follows New York City's first forensic scientists to discover a fascinating Jazz Age story of chemistry and detection, poison and murder. Deborah Blum, writing with the high style and skill for suspense that is characteristic of...
The ghost map : the story of London's most terrifying epidemic--and how it changed science, cities, and the modern world
Johnson, Steven
CD
A thrilling historical account of the worst cholera outbreak in Victorian London-and a brilliant exploration of how Dr. John Snow's solution revolutionized the way we think about disease, cities, science, and the modern world. From the dynamic thinker routinely compared to Malcolm Gladwell, E. O....
The butchering art : Joseph Lister's quest to transform the grisly world of Victorian medicine
Fitzharris, Lindsey
Paper Book
Winner, 2018 PEN/E.O. Wilson Prize for Literary Science Writing Short-listed for the 2018 Wellcome Book Prize A Top 10 Science Book of Fall 2017, Publishers Weekly A Best History Book of 2017, The Guardian "Warning: She...
The great influenza : the epic story of the deadliest plague in history
Barry, John M.
Paper Book
The strongest weapon against pandemic is the truth. Read why in the definitive account of the 1918 Influenza Epidemic, adapted for young readers from the #1 New York Times bestseller. At the height of World War I, history's most lethal influenza virus erupted in an army...
Crisis in the red zone : the story of the deadliest Ebola outbreak in history, and of the outbreaks to come
Preston, Richard
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * An urgent wake-up call about the future of emerging viruses and a gripping account of the doctors and scientists fighting to protect us, told through the story of the deadly 2013-2014 Ebola epidemic   "Crisis in the Red Zone...
A history of the world in six plagues : how contagion, class, and captivity shaped us, from Cholera to COVID-19
Bonhomme, Edna
Paper Book
An "incredible, humane, insightful" (Ed Yong, Pulitzer Prize winner) account of humankind's battles with epidemic disease, and their outsized role in deepening inequality along racial, ethnic, class, and gender lines--in the vein of Medical Apartheid and ...
Bellevue : three centuries of medicine and mayhem at America's most storied hospital
Oshinsky, David M.
CD
From a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian comes a riveting history of New York's iconic public hospital that charts the turbulent rise of American medicine. Bellevue Hospital, on New York City's East Side, occupies a colorful and horrifying place in the public imagination: a den of mangled...
Twelve patients : life and death at Bellevue Hospital
Manheimer, Eric.
Paper Book
In the spirit of Oliver Sacks and the inspiration for the NBC drama New Amsterdam, this memoir from a Medical Director of Bellevue Hospital looks poignantly at patients' lives, highlighting the complex mind-body connection. "As intensely involving as any scripted...
My lobotomy : a memoir
Dully, Howard
Paper Book
At twelve, Howard Dully was guilty of the same crimes as other boys his age: he was moody and messy, rambunctious with his brothers, contrary just to prove a point, and perpetually at odds with his parents. Yet somehow, this normal boy became one of the youngest people on whom Dr. Walter Freeman...
A fatal inheritance : how a family misfortune revealed a deadly medical mystery
Ingrassia, Lawrence
Paper Book
Nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Nonfiction Named a best book of the year by Amazon, NPR, and Kirkus Weaving his own moving family story with a sweeping history of cancer research, Lawrence Ingrassia delivers an intimate,...
The Doctors' Riot of 1788 : body snatching, bloodletting, and anatomy in America
McPhee, Andy
Paper Book
Throughout the seventeenth century, medical lecturers demonstrated human anatomy by dissecting a cadaver while surrounded by students. After the Revolutionary War, though, instructors realized that they needed many more cadavers to serve a growing number of medical students. Enter the...
The mystery of the exploding teeth : and other curiosities from the history of medicine
Morris, Thomas
Paper Book
"Delightfully horrifying."--Popular Science One of Mental Floss's Best Books of 2018 One of Science Friday's Best Science Books of 2018 This wryly humorous collection of stories about bizarre medical treatments and cases offers a unique portrait of a bygone era in...
The other Dr. Gilmer : two men, a murder, and an unlikely fight for justice
Gilmer, Benjamin
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS' CHOICE * A "mesmerizing" (The New York Times Book Review) true story about a shocking crime and a mysterious illness that will forever change your notions of how we punish and how we heal--an expansion on one of the most popular This American Life...
Hysterical : a memoir
Bassist, Elissa
Paper Book
SEMI-FINALIST FOR THE 2023 THURBER PRIZE FOR AMERICAN HUMOR *  "A fiery cultural critique." --Kirkus Reviews  *  "...a powerful, beautifully written, and utterly important book."--New York Journal of Books...
Sick : a memoir
Khakpour, Porochista
Paper Book
A Best Book of the Year: Real Simple, Entropy, Mental Floss, Bitch Media, The Paris Reivew, and LitHub. Time Magazine's Best Memoirs of 2018 * Boston Globe's 25 Books We Can't Wait to Read in 2018  *  Buzzfeed's 33 Most Exciting New Books  * GQ Best...
The perfect predator : a scientist's race to save her husband from a deadly superbug: a memoir
Strathdee, Steffanie
Paper Book
A harrowing memoir of one woman's extraordinary effort to save her husband's life--and the discovery of a forgotten cure that has the potential to save millions more. Epidemiologist Steffanie Strathdee and her husband, psychologist Tom Patterson, were vacationing in...
Black Death at the Golden Gate : the race to save America from the bubonic plague
Randall, David K.
Paper Book
For Chinese immigrant Wong Chut King, surviving in San Francisco meant a life in the shadows. His passing on March 6, 1900, would have been unremarkable if a city health officer hadn't noticed a swollen black lymph node on his groin--a sign of bubonic plague. Empowered by racist pseudoscience,...
How we do harm : a doctor breaks ranks about being sick in America /
Brawley, Otis Webb.
Paper Book
How We Do Harm exposes the underbelly of healthcare today--the overtreatment of the rich, the under treatment of the poor, the financial conflicts of interest that determine the care that physicians' provide, insurance companies that don't demand the best (or even the least expensive) care...
Mapping the darkness : the visionary scientists who unlocked the mysteries of sleep
Miller, Kenneth (Journalist)
Paper Book
WINNER OF THE 2024 ASJA BOOK AWARD, BIOGRAPHY/HISTORY  NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023 BY THE NEW YORKER   NEW YORK TIMES EDITOR'S CHOICE SELECTION From award...
The Colony
Tayman, John.
Paper Book
In the bestselling tradition of In the Heart of the Sea, The Colonyreveals the untold history of the infamous American leprosy colony on Molokai and of the extraordinary people who struggled to survive under the most horrific circumstances. In 1866, twelve men and women and one small child were...
Mind wide open : your brain and the neuroscience of everyday life
Johnson, Steven
CD
BRILLIANTLY EXPLORING TODAY'S CUTTING-EDGE BRAIN RESEARCH, MIND WIDE OPEN IS AN UNPRECEDENTED JOURNEY INTO THE ESSENCE OF HUMAN PERSONALITY, ALLOWING READERS TO UNDERSTAND THEMSELVES AND THE PEOPLE IN THEIR LIVES AS NEVER BEFORE. Using a mix of experiential reportage, personal...
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