Books like The Prison Doctor

I loved this memoir because it was humorous and it transported me back to my own days as a junior doctor in a District General hospital, in the mid-1980s.

The black humour of a medic combined with the real human stories made it very relatable. This, merged with an easy-to-read diary style, captured the true life experiences and dilemmas of a junior doctor working in the NHS perfectly.

It was a walk down memory lane for me and it would provide an amusing insight for non-medics.

I loved this book as it gave a vivid, no holds barred glimpse into the world of a general/vascular surgeon volunteering in a war zone.

It was written with passion and an eye for detail which captured the imagery and emotions for me, in a way that transported me right into the frontline of the war zone beside him.

This book highlights the necessity for medical services to be provided in war zones and the superhuman personal attributes of those brave staff who venture in there. I am not sure I would have been so brave.

I bought this book when I was doing some research for a project, expecting it to be very dry but was happily surprised at the humor and style of her writing. She is extremely knowledgeable about her field and has helped solve hundreds of cases, but you won’t hear any humble bragging. She is all about the teamwork that goes into solving criminal cases, which makes me respect her even more.

I learned so much more about anthropology from this book than I did working at my job, and in a thoroughly entertaining way. This is easily a book I can read more than once.

Whilst this book is not a medical memoir, I have included it, as it is written by a local authority worker dealing with the gritty side of life.

Often his clients may have crossed over into criminality and have wound up at scenes of crimes, in hospitals, or in custody, where they would have encountered some medics from the grittier specialties with which I am more familiar.

It was raw and funny, but underlying this there was a sadness about the state of humanity and the impact on the health of staff. Local authority service workers are overstretched and understaffed, but find themselves working with some of the most complex and challenging situations and individuals.

This fly-on-the-wall account takes us right into the situations and we feel the emotion. It provides a valuable insight into a less well-known occupation.

This is the story of 99 Army and Navy nurses who I consider the first U.S. women to serve in combat.

The women endured four months of harrowing bombings, dwindling supplies, and disease as they tended to U.S. casualties from the Japanese invasion of The Philippines in the early days of WWII.

After U.S. forces surrendered, 77 of the nurses were interred in civilian camps in the Philippines until February 1945. The women continued to work as nurses while enduring starvation diets and disease.

Part of my fascination with this story of strength and courage also lies with the fact that one of my great uncles was a survivor of the Bataan Death March. I like to think that my uncle encountered one of these wonderful women at some point.

This is a shattering account of a man who was forced to work in the gas chambers of Auschwitz for several years. Not only did he see the serial mass murder up close, but he also witnessed the failed rebellion at Crematorium IV on October 7, 1944. Müller’s writing is sparse and harrowing as he describes daily life in the Third Reich’s largest concentration camp. This is an essential document about the Holocaust and it helps the reader understand what it meant to be part of the Sonderkommando—those unfortunate prisoners who were forced to work in the gas chambers and crematoria. This is an unforgettable and vital book.

While The Alchemist asked me to listen to the quiet voice that guides me, Papillon screams, “Don’t let them break you.”  

The story drops us into the penal colony in French Guiana. This was one of the most brutal environments a man can survive, where freedom is stripped away, and hope is a luxury the desperate can’t afford.  

I couldn’t put this book down. The physical and psychological suffering Papillon survives has a way of shrinking our problems by comparison. Papillon’s purpose isn’t discovered through reflection or signs. It is forged through what he must endure and the decision to stay who he was when everything else has been taken from him.

So good, I read it twice!

This book is horrifying, weird as shit, and absolutely beautiful, from China Mieville’s stunning prose to the grotesque splendor of his imagery.

Mieville’s follow-up to Perdido Street Station is a Melvillian Gothic that takes its characters on a sprawling, twisted naval journey that incorporates such horrors as giant mosquito monsters, a symbiotic pair of dictators known as the Lovers, and a Frankensteinian punishment system where bio-thaumaturgists graft foreign limbs or organs onto their victims’ bodies.

The Scar blew my mind when I first read it in college, and made me rethink what a novel could be. Its creativity and depth feel endless, with layers of philosophical and thematic depth. It’s the kind of book that makes you feel like you could read it a hundred times, and still find fresh meaning.

The Scar’s final act also perfectly captures the feeling that you’re beholding something beyond your capacity to fathom—and… show more.

In the early 1970s, when I was a Buck Sergeant in the US Army stationed overseas in Korea, I received a small package from my cousin. He was a year older than me and in the Navy and stationed at Subic Bay in the Philippines. What was odd about the package was that he seldom mailed me anything, and certainly nothing that would be more trouble than a brief letter. I opened the package and therein lay a paperback copy of The Last Detail.

The story starts out with Petty Officer First Class William Buddusky, better known as Billy Bad-Ass, passed out drunk in the Day Room in the barracks, still in dress uniform with an almost empty bottle of cheap wine next to him. Immediately, I recognized a kindred spirit. A lifer, an enlisted man, and somebody who lived in the real world of the military as I… show more.

To set the record straight, I do not love this book. I still haven’t come to a decision if I even like it. It isn’t the “best” book on my list, yet it is the most disturbing. And it is a must-read.

A warning, though. It’s a book that you won’t be able to stop and you’ll likely feel very guilty for even reading it. It dives into human behaviors that we don’t want to think about and surely would not intentionally want to take part in. I’ve a question for you: Is there a limit to what you would do to another human being if others were doing it too? How confident are you in your answer? The worse part about this novel is that it is based on a true story.