98 Books Like The Waiting Rooms

I love this book because it is a war novel without a single battlefield or battle, except the one for Siegfried Sassoon’s sanity. I became fascinated by WWI as a teenager. I can’t say why this war caught my imagination, but it did, and that fascination has continued for my whole life.

I gobbled up books, movies, and history about the war, and I especially loved the poetry of Siegfried Sassoon, a noted poet and war hero who publicly refused to continue fighting in 1917. When I re-read his poetry fifty years later, I found a kinship with that refusal and the boys around me who were conscientious objectors to the Vietnam War.

I was a dreamy, romantic teenager, which is why Sassoon’s words pierced my heart: “Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin they think of firelit homes, clean beds, and wives.” Oh! How I cried over his poems… show more.

I read this probably when I was in my early twenties. Randle McMurphy was, and still is, to some degree, an inspiring character: a rebellious soul, a flawed genius, a bit of a wrong’un at times, but also a hilariously cocky piss-taker.

There’s something deeply human in the portrayal of this character and his conflict with institutionalised authority, as represented by the frankly terrifying Nurse Ratched. It may be set in a psychiatric hospital, but I find the themes relatable to the wider world, the constant pressure to conform or be crushed. I still feel incensed by it.

Michael Ondaatje’s novel is one of the most beautiful books I have ever read. It is not a study or analysis of Herodotus’ history, and yet Herodotus’ spirit infuses virtually every page. Taking place during World War II, it explores the intertwined lives of four characters, including the unnamed English patient, who has survived the shooting-down of his plane, although he is severely burned.

He has nothing with him but his annotated copy of Herodotus’ Histories. I loved Anthony Minghella’s 1996 film adaptation of the novel, and it is no criticism of the film to say that it treats only one of the many strands one finds in the book. Meditating on space, time, identity, and truth, The English Patient is a book that I think Herodotus would have loved.

This book was published in 1946, at the end of the 2nd World War, by a writer who had been a model, a dancer, a shop assistant, and a governess, as well as a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse in a rural hospital, which is where this wartime story is set.

For me, it’s the ultimate "closed circle" whodunnit, where an ever-decreasing group of suspects is trapped together, in this case surrounded by wounded and dying soldiers. It’s brilliantly claustrophobic, and you know it has to be one of the main characters, however unlikely that seems. The solution and the perpetrator are in plain sight. But I didn’t get it till the end.

This is the first volume of lecture notes from the infamous Alexander (Sasha) Shulgin, “inventor” of MDMA “ecstasy or molly”. Sasha and his wife Ann are well known in the world of psychedelics for their publications based on Sasha’s incredible knowledge of chemistry, Ann’s capacity to integrate experiences, and their shared contributions to the world of psychedelia. This new book, with an introduction from Mariavittoria Mangini, is a ‘warts and all’ introduction to the chemistry of mind alteration. It is highly accessible, at times comical, and a fascinating opportunity to voyeuristically sit in on a series of Shulgin lectures that promises to pique your curiosity about our chemical lives.

Two pharmacists sit in a Boston courtroom accused of murder. The weapon: a fungus. The death count: 100 and rising. These facts set the stage for a true-crime thriller by investigative journalist Jason Dearen, and it has the makings of a horror movie. There’s scientific hubris, sketchy ethics, a cover-up, and a monster, too: a slimy, sticky, fungal mold that infected patients and began eating their brains alive. It’s riveting, packed with information about how fungal spores managed to contaminate a medical supply chain, and frankly hard to put down. I have done my share of forensic research, and never have I encountered killer fungus before; I consider this an unmissable book.

This account of the early years of Vertex Pharmaceuticals, from its inception as a scrappy start-up to its early work in HIV, is a must-read classic for anyone interested in how science turns into new drugs. Barry Werth’s journalistic play-by-play is a cinematic, true-to-life picture of the strategic decisions, real-world challenges, and larger-than-life personalities that underlie modern drug development. His riveting follow-up, The Antidote, continues the saga by taking readers through Vertex’s pathbreaking work to transform the care of patients with hepatitis C and cystic fibrosis.

A best-seller in the UK, it never garnered the attention it deserved in the US. As a trained physician, Goldacre explains why doctors cannot trust the information concerning prescription drugs that is made available to them, and why this should concern every patient. The incentives motivating drug regulators constitute a big part of the problem, but the actual conduct of clinical trials comes in for intensive scrutiny as well. The rigors of double-blinded trials are useless if owners of the data can hide whatever outcomes they don’t like. His chapter on how to bend a clinical trial has become a classic.

I find Angell’s The Truth About the Drug Companies extremely valuable for teaching students about how the pharmaceutical industry translates high profits into power resources to protect and increase those profits over time.

The former New England Journal of Medicine editor exposed how drug companies enlist politicians, the FDA, and medical academia for their cause. And armies of lawyers to extend monopoly marketing rights for years.

It was my first introduction to how they spend more on marketing than research, much of that on “copy-cat” drugs of dubious superiority to ones with expired patents.

As a tax (and high drug price) payer, I was disturbed to learn how they use government funds for basic research and then rig and spin their reporting of clinical studies to inflate their products’ therapeutic value and underplay their risks. 

I found, as a history buff, The Struggle for Drug Reform to be an eye-opener about how America’s exceptionally high drug prices among other deficits in health care quality and coverage resulted from the past exercise of power by the pharmaceutical industry, the lynchpin of America’s “medico-industrial complex.”

I was impressed by historian Tobbell’s meticulously researched account of the industry’s strategic alliances with self-interested medical scientists, not just conservative political forces, and its use of anti-communist propaganda to fight off the threat of drug pricing regulations.

I personally found important her discussions of how the industry allied with the American Medical Association against universal health care, against FDA demands for evidence about drug efficacy and safety before allowing drugs on the market, and against the threat to its profits from generic drugs.