Showing results for "History" in Health & Wellness

Brought to you by Penguin. Tuberculosis has been entwined with humanity for millennia. Once romanticized as a malady of poets, today tuberculosis is a disease of poverty that walks the trails of injustice and inequity we blazed for it. In 2019, John Green met Henry, a young tuberculosis patient...

The story of viruses and humanity is a story of fear and ignorance, of grief and heartbreak, and of great bravery and sacrifice. Michael Oldstone tells all these stories as he illuminates the history of the devastating diseases that have tormented humanity, focusing mostly on the most famous viruses. For this revised edition, Oldstone includes discussions of new viruses like SARS, bird flu, virally caused cancers, chronic wasting disease, and West Nile. Viruses, Plagues, and History paints a sweeping portrait of humanity's long-standing conflict with our unseen viral enemies.  

Brought to you by Penguin. Thomas Asbridge’s remarkable new book reveals the global impact of humanity’s greatest natural disaster, and the terrible human cost of this calamity. In the mid-fourteenth century, a lethal plague struck the medieval world, causing unimaginable suffering and...

Mescaline, LSD, and psilocybin mushrooms. There’s been a lot of discussion in the medical world lately about the potential benefits of these and other drugs for certain medical conditions, such as anxiety and depression. As we consider the place of psychedelics in the future, we can draw insight and guidance from the history of how psychedelics have been described, sought after, applied, and prohibited over the centuries. Erika Dyck, professor of history at the University of Saskatchewan, introduces you to the world of hallucinogens.

David W. Powell enlisted for a tour of duty in April 1966 with the US Marines after receiving an imminent draft notice. Believing he would be able to leverage his existing skills as a computer programmer, he never thought all they would see on his resume was his Karate expertise. Even less that he would wind up serving as a Rocket man in the jungles of Da Nang and Chu Lai for a 13 month tour in hell. David's journey from naive civilian to battle-hardened combat veteran shows us all how fragile our humanity really is.

The vivid and emotional story of one soldier's heroic struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder.1944: Norm Bussel, an introspective and happy-go-lucky teen from Memphis, finds himself bailing out of a burning B-17 bomber just months after his 19th birthday. Touching-down in a field outside Berlin, Norm was immediately seized by local farmhands, who were in the process of lynching him when a passing German soldier put a stop to the execution.

Brought to you by Penguin. Shortlisted for the 2021 Baillie Gifford prize and the 2021 Costa Biography Award. Lea Ypi grew up in one of the most isolated countries on earth, a place where communist ideals had officially replaced religion. Albania, the last Stalinist outpost in Europe, was almost...

Plagues upon the Earth is a monumental history of humans and their germs. Weaving together a grand narrative of global history with insights from cutting-edge genetics, Kyle Harper explains why humanity’s uniquely dangerous disease pool is rooted deep in our evolutionary past, and why its growth is accelerated by technological progress. He shows that the story of disease is entangled with the history of slavery, colonialism, and capitalism, and reveals the enduring effects of historical plagues all around us, in patterns of wealth, health, power, and inequality.

Enjoy calming sleep stories about history to help you relax at bedtime. Narratted by a real person (Not AI). Topics include The Titanic, Henry Ford, Gold Rush, Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, Pirates, True Crime, UFOs, Bigfoot, Loch Ness Monster, Jesse Owens, Jackie Robinson, Marco Polo, Rum, Salt, Coal, Oil, Pearls, and much more. These calm history sleep stories will distract and relax your bedtime brain squirrels. Access over 600 relaxing and AD-FREE episodes at www.calmhistory.com.

 Today, astonishing surgical breakthroughs are making limb transplants, face transplants, and a host of other previously undreamed-of operations possible. But getting here has not been a simple story of medical progress. In Blood and Guts, veteran science writer Richard Hollingham weaves a compelling narrative from the key moments in surgical history. We have a ringside seat in the operating theater of University College Hospital in London as world-renowned Victorian surgeon Robert Liston performs a remarkable amputation in 30 seconds - from first cut to final stitch.

It's been said that, after 9/11, the 2008 financial crash and the COVID-19 pandemic, we're a more fearful society than ever before. Yet fear, and the panic it produces, have long been driving forces - perhaps the driving force - of world history: fear of God, of famine, war, disease, poverty, and other people. In Fear: An Alternative History of the World, Robert Peckham considers the impact of fear in history, as both a coercive tool of power and as a catalyst for social change.

A provocative journey through human sexual history, packed with fun factoids and forgotten stories, from the historian and storyteller behind Kinky History, @esme.louisee on TikTok Contrary to popular belief, our predecessors had all sorts of obscene hobbies long before Christian Grey hit the...

How did an obscure academic idea pave the way to the Holocaust within just fifty years? Why does eugenics still loom large in the 21st century, despite its genocidal past? Did eugenics work? Could it work? Or was it always a pseudoscientific fantasy? Throughout history, people have sought to...

This is the story of our quest to understand the most mysterious object in the universe. Today we tend to picture the brain as a computer. Earlier scientists thought about it in their own technological terms: as a telephone switchboard, or a clock, or all manner of fantastic mechanical or hydraulic devices. Could the right metaphor unlock the brain's deepest secrets once and for all? Galloping through centuries of wild speculation and ingenious, sometimes macabre anatomical investigations, scientist and historian Matthew Cobb reveals how we came to our present state of knowledge. 

From the masters of storytelling-meets-science and co-authors of Quackery, Patient Zero tells the long and fascinating history of disease outbreaks—how they start, how they spread, the science that lets us understand them, and how we race to destroy them before they destroy us. Written in the...

“Powerful, rich with details, moving, humane, and full of important lessons for an age when weapons of mass destruction are loose among us.” — Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb The Great Plague is one of the most compelling events in human...

What really drives our decisions? Where do language and memory come from? Why do our minds sometimes seem to work against us? Psychologists have long attempted to answer these questions, seeking to understand human behavior, feelings, and thoughts. But how to explore something so elusive?

The remarkable stories of the world's most famous body parts. Louis XIV's rear end inspired the British National Anthem. Queen Victoria's armpit led the development of antiseptics. Robert Jenkin's ear started a war. All too often, historical figures feel distant and abstract; more myth and...

Bloomsbury presents Soft by Ferdinand Mount, read by Paul Blezard A sweeping history of emotion that spans the decades, from renowned author Ferdinand Mount. In this day and age, whatever we think we feel, you can be sure that the past has had a part to play in it. In Soft, Ferdinand Mount tells...

The history of surgery in 28 famous operations - from Louis XIV to JFK, and from Einstein to Houdini. In Under the Knife, surgeon Arnold Van de Laar uses his own experience and expertise to tell the witty history of the past, present and future of surgery. From the story of the desperate man...