Here are 100 books that Bad Blood fans have personally recommended if you like
Bad Blood.
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As a physician, medicine is my job. But along the way, I wondered how medicine got to where it is now–like really wondered. I wondered to the point that I was reading the original treatises written by 18th-century physicians. I started publishing research on medical history and giving presentations at medical conferences. I’d like to think this helps me be a better doctor by broadening my perspective on the healthcare industry. But at the very least, I’ve found these books enjoyable and compelling. I hope you enjoy them, too!
Healthcare is delivered by people who are sometimes subject to biases or prejudices, and this book is a vivid and extraordinarily researched account of how horrible it is when these biases and prejudices go unchecked.
However, what really hit hard for me was that this book is only half about medical history. The last part of this book discusses research practices and biases that are in effect today.
As a physician, this book was imperative to better understand the historical and contemporary issues involving race and medicine.
NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • The first full history of Black America’s shocking mistreatment as unwilling and unwitting experimental subjects at the hands of the medical establishment. No one concerned with issues of public health and racial justice can afford not to read this masterful book.
"[Washington] has unearthed a shocking amount of information and shaped it into a riveting, carefully documented book." —New York Times
From the era of slavery to the present day, starting with the earliest encounters between Black Americans and Western medical researchers and the racist pseudoscience that resulted, Medical Apartheid details the ways…
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
I began working in prisons 50 years ago. I was just out of grad school and I accepted the challenge of starting a literacy program in the Philadelphia Prison System. The shock of cellblock life was eye-opening, but the most unexpected revelation was the sight of scores of inmates wrapped in bandages and medical tape. Unknown to the general public, the three city prisons had become a lucrative appendage of the University of Pennsylvania’s Medical School. As I would discover years later, thousands of imprisoned Philadelphians had been used in a cross-section of unethical and dangerous scientific studies running the gamut from simple hair dye and athlete’s foot trials to radioactive isotope, dioxin, and US Army chemical warfare studies. My account of the prison experiments, Acres of Skin, helped instill in me an abiding faith in well-researched journalism as an antidote to societal indiscretions and crimes.
Welsome investigates a particularly repugnant episode in medical history; doctors secretly injecting hospital patients with plutonium as part of the Manhattan Project. Designed to weigh the increased threat of cancer during the outset of the atomic era, the book navigates the governmental and scientific concerns of a new nuclear world, the prestigious players who argued for human experimentation, and the unwitting victims - all hospital patients - who’d be used as test material. In addition, Welsome also explores other Cold War examples of atomic abuse such as “radioactive cocktails” given to pregnant women and radioactive breakfast cereal given to five and six-year-old “morons” at state institutions.
In a Massachusetts school, seventy-three disabled children were spoon fed radioactive isotopes along with their morning oatmeal....In an upstate New York hospital, an eighteen-year-old woman, believing she was being treated for a pituitary disorder, was injected with plutonium by Manhattan Project doctors....At a Tennessee prenatal clinic, 829 pregnant women were served "vitamin cocktails"--in truth, drinks containing radioactive iron--as part of their prenatal treatmen....
In 1945, the seismic power of atomic energy was already well known to researchers, but the effects of radiation on human beings were not. Fearful that plutonium would cause a cancer epidemic among workers, Manhattan Project doctors…
I began working in prisons 50 years ago. I was just out of grad school and I accepted the challenge of starting a literacy program in the Philadelphia Prison System. The shock of cellblock life was eye-opening, but the most unexpected revelation was the sight of scores of inmates wrapped in bandages and medical tape. Unknown to the general public, the three city prisons had become a lucrative appendage of the University of Pennsylvania’s Medical School. As I would discover years later, thousands of imprisoned Philadelphians had been used in a cross-section of unethical and dangerous scientific studies running the gamut from simple hair dye and athlete’s foot trials to radioactive isotope, dioxin, and US Army chemical warfare studies. My account of the prison experiments, Acres of Skin, helped instill in me an abiding faith in well-researched journalism as an antidote to societal indiscretions and crimes.
Rothman was one of the first to examine the culture of research medicine and its relationship to science and American culture at large. Doctors on the cutting edge of new procedures, much desired medical elixirs, and scientific advancement used a utilitarian calculus to determine what was ethical and what the public was willing to accept. Scientific breakthroughs were celebrated with few - certainly no one of renown - taking notice that the breakthroughs were coming at the expense of vulnerable, powerless populations.
David Rothman gives us a brilliant, finely etched study of medical practice today. Beginning in the mid-1960s, the practice of medicine in the United States underwent a most remarkable--and thoroughly controversial--transformation. The discretion that the profession once enjoyed has been increasingly circumscribed, and now an almost bewildering number of parties and procedures participate in medical decision making.
Well into the post-World War II period, decisions at the bedside were the almost exclusive concern of the individual physician, even when they raised fundamental ethical and social issues. It was mainly doctors who wrote and read about the morality of withholding a…
Coyote weather is the feral, hungry season, drought-stricken, and ready to catch fire. It’s 1967, and the American culture is violently remaking itself while the country is forcibly sending its young men to fight in a deeply unpopular war.
Jerry has stubbornly made no plans for the future because he…
I began working in prisons 50 years ago. I was just out of grad school and I accepted the challenge of starting a literacy program in the Philadelphia Prison System. The shock of cellblock life was eye-opening, but the most unexpected revelation was the sight of scores of inmates wrapped in bandages and medical tape. Unknown to the general public, the three city prisons had become a lucrative appendage of the University of Pennsylvania’s Medical School. As I would discover years later, thousands of imprisoned Philadelphians had been used in a cross-section of unethical and dangerous scientific studies running the gamut from simple hair dye and athlete’s foot trials to radioactive isotope, dioxin, and US Army chemical warfare studies. My account of the prison experiments, Acres of Skin, helped instill in me an abiding faith in well-researched journalism as an antidote to societal indiscretions and crimes.
Known only to true devotees of medical ethics and the history of human research, Jay Katz’s hefty volume (1,150 pages) is a comprehensive encyclopedia of humans used as research material. Information-packed chapters cover everything from Chester Southam’s use of senile hospital patients in cancer cell injection studies during the 1960s, and the legal fallout from such indiscretions, to the ethical obligations of researchers, and the evolution of informed consent as a pillar of ethical human research. Impressive in both detail and scope, this imposing piece of scholarship is a valuable resource for anyone looking to learn the many moral and legal issues inherent in experimenting on humans.
In recent years, increasing concern has been voiced about the nature and extent of human experimentation and its impact on the investigator, subject, science, and society. This casebook represents the first attempt to provide comprehensive materials for studying the human experimentation process. Through case studies from medicine, biology, psychology, sociology, and law―as well as evaluative materials from many other disciplines―Dr. Katz examines the problems raised by human experimentation from the vantage points of each of its major participants―investigator, subject, professions, and state. He analyzes what kinds of authority should be delegated to these participants in the formulation, administration, and review…
I write to learn what I don’t know about myself and our purpose as flawed beings in this Alice-in-Wonderland world. In the documentary about singer/poet Leonard Cohen, creator of the much-covered “Hallelujah” (title of the documentary), to explain the song, he says that life is so impenetrable that the only options are to shake your fist or exclaim “Hallelujah.” I think there is a third option: to laugh. And I prefer to do all three because that is what comes through me: confusion, pain, and hilarity. And hopefully a better understanding of the whole mess once I’ve written about it. And that is what I hope to share with readers.
I’ve read this book twice and probably will read it a few more times before I die. It’s that good.
The story of a young Black man (named Not Sidney Poitier) traversing the U.S.A. is a picaresque, hilarious, heart-breaking tale about trying to find yourself.
Eighteen-year-old Not Sidney is surrounded by people who only see his race or his wealth, or conversely by geniuses who have succeeded despite themselves and, although they see Not Sidney without the cultural labels, are of little help in his quest to find his mission in life.
The first time I read this book, I was spitting coffee laughing. The second time, my heart broke. I am curious what my next read will evoke.
Not Sidney Poitier is an amiable young man in an absurd country. The sudden death of his mother orphans him at age eleven, leaving him with an unfortunate name, an uncanny resemblance to the famous actor and, perhaps more fortunate, a staggering number of shares in the Turner Broadcasting Corporation. Percival Everett's hilarious new novel follows Not Sidney's tumultuous life, as the social hierarchy scrambles to balance his skin color with his fabulous wealth.
I grew up as a closeted homosexual in a fundamentalist Christian home, enduring nearly two decades in a crisis of faith. Sermons frequently warned of damnation for my natural inclinations, pushing me to fast, pray, and achieve to resist temptation. This crisis gradually resolved over the eight years I spent writing Playing by the Book, the first coming-out novel to win a National IPPY Medal in religious fiction. Although I don’t consider myself a spiritual writer, I am drawn to stories that explore existential struggles and triumphs, including those related to a crisis of faith—much like the characters in the novels on this list.
I recommend this book because James Baldwin’s brilliant voice and profound writing explore the intersection of personal truths and deeply held beliefs. Baldwin masterfully captures the youth and naivety of John Grimes as he wrestles with sexuality, faith, and the pervasive racism of his time.
This book brilliantly brings these struggles to life while showcasing Baldwin’s gift for conveying complex emotions and societal pressures with intimacy and precision.
'Go back to where you started, or as far back as you can, examine all of it, travel your road again and tell the truth about it. Sing or shout or testify or keep it to yourself: but know whence you came.'
Originally published in 1953, Go Tell it on the Mountain was James Baldwin's first major work, based in part on his own childhood in Harlem. With lyrical precision, psychological directness, resonating symbolic power and a rage that is at once unrelenting and compassionate, Baldwin chronicles a fourteen-year-old boy's discovery of the terms of his identity as the stepson…
Homeless following the death of his adoptive parents in a car crash and the subsequent loss of their farm tenancy, Seb decides to enrol as a residential student at the Asklepios Foundation, a College of Natural Medicine, boasting a sanctuary modelled on an ancient Greek healing temple. Spending a night…
I am Professor Emeritus of History at Baruch College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. I grew up in Brooklyn, New York during the turbulent decades of the 1950s and 1960s where there were numerous social protest movements against the War in Vietnam, school segregation, and police brutality. My books explore the men and women who battled institutional racism.
Butler argues that the large increase of police assaults and killings of black men is not a breakdown in law enforcement or the activities of a few rogue cops. The system is doing what it has been designed to do. Police hurt black men, according to the author because “that is what they are paid to do.” Butler maintains that the Chokehold “is a way of understanding how American inequality is imposed.” It is a tool of oppression. One outcome of the Chokehold is mass incarceration. The construction of the thug is a means of justifying the Chokehold. Butler traces the “Ape” or “dehumanization” thesis.
The book contains loads of data showing how in city after city black people are disproportionately targeted by police officers. Programs such as Obama’s My Brothers’ Keeper ignores women and plays into perpetuating stereotypes of black men as the primary victims of racism.
Finalist for the 2018 National Council on Crime & Delinquency's Media for a Just Society Awards
Nominated for the 49th NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work (Nonfiction)
A 2017 Washington Post Notable Book
A Kirkus Best Book of 2017
"Butler has hit his stride. This is a meditation, a sonnet, a legal brief, a poetry slam and a dissertation that represents the full bloom of his early thesis: The justice system does not work for blacks, particularly black men." -The Washington Post
"The most readable and provocative account of the consequences of the war on drugs since Michelle Alexander's…
I have been writing about James Baldwin for over twenty years and have been reading him since my teens. My father saw the writer debate the conservative polemicist William F. Buckley Jr. at the University of Cambridge in 1965, and I’ve been hooked since he told me about that event. I’ve written three books on Baldwin, scores of articles, and book chapters, and I co-founded the journal James Baldwin Review a decade ago. It's been wonderful to see Baldwin gain popularity over the last decade, and I hope that more people continue to read his essays, novels, plays, and poetry.
I remember feeling exhausted the first time I finished reading Baldwin’s last novel. In common with many novels published during the late 1970s, this is a saga, a sprawling account of interlocking families and characters across thirty years. It takes the reader to the US, South, London, Korea, Paris, and Africa. It is also a pioneering book that describes an intense sexual relationship between African American men.
As I’ve read Baldwin over the last twenty-plus years, I’ve relished seeing patterns and themes that cut across his work. One of his earliest essays, “Journey to Atlanta,” published in 1948, is an account of his brother David’s trip to the US South as part of a gospel quartet, a story that is played out in his final novel. As with much of Baldwin’s work, this novel explores love, family, and politics.
James Baldwin’s final novel is “the work of a born storyteller at the height of his powers” (The New York Times Book Review).
“Not everything is lost. Responsibility cannot be lost, it can only be abdicated. If one refuses abdication, one begins again.”
The stark grief of a brother mourning a brother opens this stunning, unforgettable novel. Here, in a monumental saga of love and rage, James Baldwin goes back to Harlem, to the church of his groundbreaking novel Go Tell It on the Mountain, to the forbidden passion of Giovanni’s Room, and to the political fire that…
Since I was a tween, I’ve been fascinated by romance. That happily ever after has always taken my breath away. Growing up in Detroit, Michigan, suspense and mystery have always surrounded my life, and intertwining these two elements in my own stories was a norm, but reading them was required and loved. I’m a part of several groups that focus on these genres and I share my readings with them along with my own group on Facebook. I know you will enjoy reading these books as much as I have.
As a long-time fan of this author, I always find myself in his characters and very much engrossed in the story.
This story was filled with deep suspense wrapped around a good romance, and it kept me turning pages until the end. I received this book at a conference from the author and I was so engrossed in this book I finished it by the time I was home from the event.
This masterpiece by celebrated New York Times bestselling author Walter Mosley is the mysterious story of a young Black man who agrees to an unusual bargain to save the home that has belonged to his family for generations.
The man at Charles Blakey's door has a proposition almost too strange for words. The stranger offers him $50,000 in cash to spend the summer in Charles's basement, and Charles cannot even begin to guess why. The beautiful house has been in the Blakey family for generations, but Charles has just lost his job and is behind on his mortgage payments. The…
Marriage and Fatherhood in the Nazi SS
by
Amy Carney,
When I was writing this book, several of my friends jokingly called it the Nazi baby book, with one insisting it would make a great title. Nazi Babies – admittedly, that is a catchy title, but that’s not exactly what my book is about. SS babies would be slightly more…
Philosophical novels challenge rather than appease. They subvert. They obscure. As a former acquisitions editor at major publishing houses, I am confounded by the scarcity of chances taken on books that don’t fit the status quo or, are "difficult." I am most interested in how books—even when they meander and cavort—lead to surprising and unsettling revelations. Or how they don’t lead to revelations at all but keep the reader guessing as to when some semblance of grace will be achieved. I don’t wish to sound pessimistic; if anything, I wish to be realistic. Philosophical novels are reflections of life, which is often confusing, contradictory, and, yes, difficult. With a touch of grace for good measure.
Perhaps the most “realistic” novel of this bunch, Ralph Ellison’s National Book Award-winning novel follows an unnamed black narrator’s life in a small southern town, as detailed through his memories, dreams, and desires.
Ellison didn’t intend to write a “protest novel,” apparently, but it has become exactly that: a protestation of the inequities of an American system designed to keep Black people in the shadows. The novel’s voice, though singular, is representative of an entire social movement. A perfect novel.
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • In this deeply compelling novel and epic milestone of American literature, a nameless narrator tells his story from the basement lair of the Invisible Man he imagines himself to be.
He describes growing up in a Black community in the South, attending a Negro college from which he is expelled, moving to New York and becoming the chief spokesman of the Harlem branch of "the Brotherhood," before retreating amid violence and confusion.
Originally published in 1952 as the first novel by a then unknown author, it remained on the bestseller list for…
