Are you looking for some summer reading? Himmelfarb Library’s Humanities and Health Collection might have the right book for you! Literary accounts of illness can provide valuable insight to healthcare providers about the lives of sick people. Popular health sciences-related non-fiction titles can help those working in the health sciences understand how far the implications of their work can reach.
Himmelfarb’s Humanities and Health Collection is composed of fiction and popular non-fiction selections that offer a variety of perspectives on being a health provider and a patient. This collection is located in the “nook” to the right as you enter the library, past the service desks, near the first-floor restrooms. If you need a break from textbooks and journal articles, consider trying our Humanities and Health Collection!
Here are some recently published books that are part of this great collection:
- All Boys Aren’t Blue: A Memoir-Manifesto: This series of personal essays explore the childhood, adolescence, and college years of prominent journalist and LGBTIA+ activist George M. Johnson. Call number: HQ76.27.A37 2020
- Compassion Amidst the Chaos: Tales Told by an ER Doc: This book follows Dr. Davis’ personal journey and lessons learned while caring for people in their most vulnerable moments during his 35-year career as an Emergency Department physician. Call number: R690.D385 2020
- Homeland Elegies: A Novel: Part family drama, part social essay, part picaresque novel, this novel is the story of identity and belonging in a nation coming apart at the seams in a post-9/11 world. Call number: PS3601.K53 H66 2020
- Loss and Grief: Personal Stories of Doctors and Other Healthcare Professionals: This unique collection of personal narratives chronicles the journeys of doctors and healthcare professionals whose life-altering losses have personally impacted them. Call number: BF575.G7 L676 2023
- The Covenant of Water: A Novel: Set in Kerala, South India, this epic story of love, faith, and medicine follows three generations of a family seeking answers to a strange secret. Call number: PS3622.E744 C68 2023
- The Doctors Blackwell: How Two Pioneering Sisters Brought Medicine to Women - and Women to Medicine: This book explores the lives of sisters Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell - two complicated pioneers who exploded the limits of possibility for women in medicine. Call number: R692.N56 2021
- The Facemaker: A Visionary Surgeon’s Battle to Mend the Disfigured Soldiers of World War I: Harold Filles dedicated himself to reconstructing the burned and broken faces of the injured soldiers of World War I. This book is a vivid account of how medicine can be an art, and of what courage and imagination can accomplish in the presence of relentless horror. Call number: RD27.35.G555 A3 2022
- The Genome Defense: Inside the Epic Legal Battle to Determine Who Owns Your DNA: This is the gripping true story of a Supreme Court civil rights battle to prevent biotech companies from owning the very thing that makes us who we are - our DNA. Call number: KF228.A8436 C66 2021
- Under the Skin: Racism, Inequality, and the Health of a Nation: This incredible book lays bare the forces in the American healthcare system and American society that cause Black people to “live sicker and die quicker” compared to their white counterparts. Anchored by unforgettable human stories, this book is dramatic, tragic, and necessary reading. RA448.5.B53 V55 2022
