National Public Health Week
National Public Health Week takes place on the first full week of April. This booklist includes excellent books on a wide variety of health topics.
March 29, 2023
National Public Health Week is April 3-9 this year! Here’s what the American Public Health Association has to say about health in our communities:
Our cultures have always shaped our health. We learn from the communities we’re born in and that we build together. For this NPHW, we look to community leaders as our health leaders. We celebrate the unique and joyful ways different cultures focus on health. And we look to how we can learn from each other, with humility and openness.
For this booklist, we’ve gathered together books on the following health topics:
- COVID-19
- Pandemics of the Past
- Environmental Impact on Health
- Food and Health
- Gun Violence
- Health Equity
- The Healthcare System
- Mental Health
- Misinformation Impacting Health
- The Opioid Crisis
- Other Topics in Health and Healthcare
COVID-19
Silent Invasion
The Untold Story Of The Trump Administration, COVID-19, And Preventing The Next Pandemic Before It’s Too Late
Deborah Birx
Silent Invasion is the story of what she witnessed and lived for the next year–an eye-opening, inside account, detailed here for the first time, of the Trump Administration’s response to the greatest public health crisis in modern times.
The Desperate Hours
One Hospital’s Fight To Save A City On The Pandemic’s Front Lines
Marie Brenner
Granted unprecedented 18-month access to the entire New York-Presbyterian hospital system, an award-winning journalist, drawing on more than 200 interviews, takes us to the front lines to tell the story of the early days of the COVID pandemic.
How To Prevent The Next Pandemic
Bill Gates
The technologist, business leader and philanthropist who founded Microsoft explains the science of fighting pandemics, discusses the lessons learned from COVID-19 and provides a path forward to preventing another pandemic from taking millions of lives.
The Premonition
A Pandemic Story
Michael Lewis
The #1 best-selling author’s nonfiction narrative pits a band of medical visionaries against the wall of ignorance that was the official response of the Trump administration to the outbreak of COVID-19.
Preventable
The Inside Story Of How Leadership Failures, Politics, And Selfishness Doomed The Us Coronavirus Response
Andy Slavitt
The former head of Obamacare presents an inside account of the US’s failed response to the Coronavirus pandemic, chronicling what he saw and how much could have been prevented, and investigating the cultural, political, and economic drivers that led to unnecessary loss of life.
The Plague Year
America In The Time Of COVID
Lawrence Wright
Honoring to the medical professionals around the country who’ve risked their lives to fight the virus, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author provides essential information–and fascinating historical parallels–examining the medical, economic, political, andsocial ramifications of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Pandemics of the Past
The Great Influenza
The Epic Story Of The Deadliest Plague In History
John M Barry
An account of the deadly influenza epidemic of 1918, which took the lives of millions of people around the world, examines its causes, its impact on early twentieth-century society, and the lasting implications of the crisis.
The Plague
Albert Camus
Chaos prevails when the bubonic plague strikes the Algerian coastal city of Oran. A haunting tale of human resilience in the face of unrelieved horror, Camus’ novel about a bubonic plague ravaging the people of a North African coastal town is a classic of twentieth-century literature.
How To Survive A Plague
The Inside Story Of How Citizens And Science Tamed Aids
David France
A definitive history of the successful battle to halt the AIDS epidemic, written by the creator of and inspired by the seminal documentary of the same name, also shares the poignant stories of gay activists who resolved to make their life battles purposeful.
It Was Vulgar & It Was Beautiful
How Aids Activists Used Art To Fight A Pandemic
Jack Lowery
Examines Gran Fury, a collective formed out of the group ACT UP in the late 1980s, offering a complex, moving portrait of a group that expressed through art the profound trauma of surviving the AIDS crisis and formed essential solidarities between gays and lesbians in the activist community.
Environmental Impact on Health
Exposure
Poisoned Water, Corporate Greed, And One Lawyer’s Twenty-Year Battle Against Dupont
Robert Bilott
In a true story that is the inspiration for a forthcoming film, the lawyer-author chronicles how he built a case against DuPont for its use of the hazardous, chemical PFOA, uncovering a history of worldwide environmental contamination.
Silent Spring
Rachel Carson
First published in 1962, this book alerted a large audience to the environmental and human dangers of indiscriminate use of pesticides. The outcry that followed its publication forced the banning of DDT and spurred revolutionary changes in the laws affecting our air, land, and water.
The Poisoned City
Flint’s Water And The American Urban Tragedy
Anna Clark
Documents the 2014 poisoning of the residents of Flint, Michigan, by contaminated water, and the ensuing eighteen-month activism case in which the state admitted its complicity after twelve people died and many others suffered permanent injuries.
Tales Of Two Planets
Stories of Climate Change And Inequality In A Divided World
John Freeman
Building from his acclaimed anthology Tales of Two Americas, beloved writer and editor John Freeman draws together a group of our greatest writers from around the world to help us see how the environmental crisis is hitting some of the most vulnerable communities where they live.
Children And Environmental Toxins
What Everyone Needs To Know
Philip J Landrigan, Mary M Landrigan
More than 80,000 new chemicals have been developed and released into the global environment during the last four decades. Today the World Health Organization attributes more than one-third of all childhood deaths to environmental causes, and as rates of childhood disease skyrocket — autism, asthma, ADHD, obesity, diabetes, and even birth defects — it raises serious, difficult questions around how the chemical environment is impacting children’s health.
Food and Health
Food Fix
How To Save Our Health, Our Economy, Our Communities, And Our Planet-One Bite At A Time
Mark Hyman
The best-selling author of The Blood Sugar Solution explains how today’s agricultural policies have been compromised by corrupt influences, sharing insights into how everyday food choices shape chronic disease, climate change, poverty and other global crises.
The Reducetarian Solution
How The Surprisingly Simple Act Of Reducing The Amount Of Meat In Your Diet Can Transform Your Health And The Planet
Brian Kateman
Presents a collection of essays by influential scientists, physicians, and nutritionists about the health advantages of reducing meat in the diet and the impact this can also have on Earth’s future viability.
In Defense Of Food
An Eater’s Manifesto
Michael Pollan
Cites the reasons why people have become so confused about their dietary choices and discusses the importance of enjoyable moderate eating of mostly traditional plant foods.
The Case Against Sugar
Gary Taubes
Outlines compelling arguments about the health dangers of sugar, identifying the powerful lobbies behind its overuse while citing its role in a range of challenges from obesity to nonalcoholic fatty liver disease.
Gun Violence
Bloodbath Nation
Paul Auster
Traces centuries of America’s use and abuse of guns, exploring the bitter divide between our gun control and anti-gun control camps and how gun violence has become so prevalent and out of proportion to the rest of the world.
Children Under Fire
An American Crisis
John Woodrow Cox
Based on the Pulitzer-finalist series on the effects of gun violence on children, a urgent call to action investigates the effectiveness of gun safety reforms and the ongoing realities of traumatized survivors of community and campus shootings.
Stop The Killing
How To End The Mass Shooting Crisis
Katherine Schweit
Stop the Killing offers insight into what we can do to end the active shooter crisis plaguing America. The book is packed with training and sensible advice that takes readers through the latest research and best practices, making it a must read for every security-minded citizen and professional.
Health Equity
Unwell Women
Misdiagnosis And Myth In A Man-Made World
Elinor Cleghorn
This groundbreaking examination of the relationship between women, illness, and medicine is filled with character studies and case histories of women who have suffered, challenged and rewritten medical orthodoxy and the men who controlled their fate.
The Emergency
A Year Of Healing And Heartbreak In A Chicago Er
Thomas Fisher
From a renowned emergency room doctor and healthcare policy expert comes the riveting story of a year in the life of an emergency room on the South Side of Chicago during a pandemic.
The Sum Of Us
What Racism Costs Everyone And How We Can Prosper Together
Heather McGhee
One of today’s most insightful and influential thinkers offers a powerful exploration of inequality and the lesson that generations of Americans have failed to learn: Racism has a cost for everyone–not just for people of color.
Inflamed
Deep Medicine And The Anatomy Of Injustice
Rupa Marya, Raj Patel
Raj Patel, the New York Times bestselling author of The Value of Nothing, teams up with physician, activist, and co-founder of the Do No Harm Coalition Rupa Marya to reveal the links between health and structural injustices–and to offer a new deep medicine that can heal our bodies and our world.
The Broken Ladder
How Inequality Affects The Way We Think, Live, And Die
Keith Payne
A leading social scientist examines the physical, psychological, and moral effects of inequality that explains how inequality is attributed to factors identified by both conservatives and progressives and has a profound impact on health and value systems.
No Apparent Distress
A Doctor’s Coming-Of-Age On The Front Lines Of American Medicine
Rachel Pearson
Based on the author’s viral essay, a fifth-generation Texan, humanities expert and Seattle Children’s Hospital pediatrician presents a brutally frank memoir about the realities of America’s medical system and how it subjects the underprivileged to high risks.
Under The Skin
The Hidden Toll Of Racism On American Lives And The Health Of A Nation
Linda Villarosa
The first book to tell the full story of race and health in America today, showing the toll racism takes on individuals and the health of our nation, by a groundbreaking journalist at the New York Times Magazine.
The Healthcare System
The Hospital
Life, Death, And Dollars In A Small American Town
Brian Alexander
An intimate, heart wrenching portrait of one small hospital that reveals the magnitude of America’s health care crises. By following the struggle for survival of one small-town hospital, and the patients who walk, or are carried, through its doors, The Hospital takes readers into the world of the American medical industry in a way no book has done before.
Never Pay The First Bill
And Other Ways To Fight The Health Care System And Win
Marshall Allen
Drawing on 15 years of investigating the health care industry, an award-winning ProPublica reporter, in this guerilla guide to health care the American people and employers need, reveals how companies and individuals have managed to force medical providers to play fair, and shows how you can, too.
America’s Bitter Pill
Money, Politics, Backroom Deals, And The Fight To Fix Our Broken Healthcare System
Steven Brill
Relates the story of the fight to pass and implement the Affordable Care Act, discussing the healthcare industry abuses it was intended to change and how it has succeeded or failed to do so.
Where Does It Hurt?
An Entrepreneur’s Guide To Fixing Health Care
Jonathan Bush
The CEO of Athenahealth reflects on his journey from ambulance driver to CEO and outlines a blueprint for improving the current health-care system through innovation, less regulation, and a wider range of customer choices.
The Ten Year War
Obamacare And The Unfinished Crusade For Universal Coverage
Jonathan Cohn
This definite account of the history of Obamacare examines the battle to pass the most sweeping and consequential law in modern American history and the dangerous shifts it has caused in American politics.
Reinventing American Health Care
How The Affordable Care Act Will Improve Our Terribly Complex, Blatantly Unjust, Outrageously Expensive, Grossly Inefficient, Error Prone System
Ezekiel J Emanuel
A health policy expert explains the American health care system and five problems that work against any attempts to reform it, and discusses how the Affordable Care Act was passed and how it will positively affect future health care.
Old And Sick In America
The Journey Through The Health Care System
Muriel R Gillick
A scholar who has practiced medicine for over thirty years, Gillick offers readers an informed and straightforward view of health care from the ground up, revealing that many crucial medical decisions are based not on what is best for the patient but rather on outside forces, sometimes to the detriment of patient health and quality of life. Gillick suggests a broadly imagined patient-centered reform of the health care system with Medicare as the engine of change, a transformation that would be mediated through accountability, cost-effectiveness, and culture change.
How To Be A Patient
The Essential Guide To Navigating The World Of Modern Medicine
Sana Goldberg
From registered nurse and public health advocate Sana Goldberg, a timely, accessible, and comprehensive handbook to navigating common medical situations. From the routine to the unexpected, How to Be a Patient is your ultimate guide to better healthcare.
Catastrophic Care
How American Health Care Killed My Father–And How We Can Fix It
David Goldhill
An investigation into America’s failing health-care industry shares the story of the author’s tragic experience of losing his father to hospital-acquired infections, arguing against the expansion of insurance coverage while recommending a comprehensive, patient-empowering approach that renders health care transparent, affordable and effective.
Priceless
Curing The Healthcare Crisis
John C Goodman
In the groundbreaking book Priceless, renowned healthcare economist John Goodman reveals how patients, healthcare providers, employers, and employees are all trapped in a dysfunctional, bureaucratic, healthcare system fraught with perverse incentives that raise costs, reduce quality, and make care less accessible.
The Slippery Slope Of Healthcare
Why Bad Things Happen To Healthy Patients And How To Avoid Them
Steven Z Kussin
A slippery slope describes how events progress from an initially innocent step to a cascade of subsequent misfortunes that are increasingly inevitable, difficult to stop, and more harmful than the last. In the attempt to improve what is already just fine, patients can unknowingly find themselves on this slope. This book shows them how to avoid it.
The Price We Pay
What Broke American Health Care–And How To Fix It
Marty Makary
The best-selling author of Accountable presents an urgent critique of America’s broken health-care system that provides compelling examples that explain why health care has become a financial crisis, counseling readers and business leaders on how to secure better deals.
Unaccountable
What Hospitals Won’t Tell You And How Transparency Can Revolutionize Health Care
Marty Makary
A co-developer of the medical care list outlined in Atul Gawande’s best-selling The Checklist Manifesto presents an urgent call for action that advocates more transparent, democratic and safer healthcare practices to keep patients better informed and hold poor-performing doctors and flawed systems accountable.
Prepare To Defend Yourself
How To Navigate The Healthcare System And Escape With Your Life
Matthew Minson
Matthew Minson, a physician and disaster medicine and healthcare policy expert, pulls back the examination room curtain on the healthcare system, empowering patients and their families to become proactive and knowledgeable users of medical services.
Get What’s Yours For Healthcare
How To Get The Best Care At The Right Price
Philip Moeller
An authoritative, unbiased reference by the award-winning Ask Phil columnist shares concise information about how to communicate with doctors, hospitals and health-care providers to get access to quality care, minimize medical bills and contest denied insurance claims.
Get What’s Yours For Medicare
Maximize Your Coverage, Minimize Your Costs
Philip Moeller
The co-author of the best-selling social security entry in the Get What’s Yours series shares advice for saving money and maximizing health coverage through Medicare, explaining the essentials of signing up, understanding what it costs and selecting which plans are most appropriate.
The People’s Hospital
Hope And Peril In American Medicine
Ricardo Nuila
Recounting the stories of five individuals denied access to health insurance, a physician, who emphasizes people over payments, interweaves their dramas into a singular narrative that contradicts the established idea that the only way to receive good healthcare is with good insurance.
Prescription For The People
An Activist’s Guide To Making Medicine Affordable For All
Fran Quigley
In Prescription for the People, Fran Quigley diagnoses our inability to get medicines to the people who need them and then prescribes the cure. He delivers a clear and convincing argument for a complete shift in the global and U.S. approach to developing and providing essential medicines–and a primer on how to make that change happen. Globally…
An American Sickness
How Healthcare Became Big Business And How You Can Take It Back
Elisabeth Rosenthal
An award-winning New York Times reporter reveals expensive dysfunctions in America’s healthcare system, outlining practical guidelines for recognizing misleading information and obtaining the care and pharmaceuticals needed to safeguard family health interests.
The American Health Care Paradox
Why Spending More Is Getting Us Less
Elizabeth H Bradley, Lauren A Taylor
Considers the issues in the United States health care system and identifies lack of social services, outdated care allocations, and a resistance to government programs as the root causes of the problems.
The Price Of Health
The Modern Pharmaceutical Enterprise And The Betrayal Of A History Of Care
Michael Kinch, Lori Weiman
The Price of Health reveals the story of how the pharmaceutical enterprise took shape and led to the present crisis. The reputation of the pharmaceutical industry is suffering from self-inflicted wounds and its continued viability, indeed survival, is increasingly questioned. Yet the drug makers do not shoulder all the blame or responsibility for the current price crisis. Deeply researched, The Price of Heatlh gives us hope as to how we can still right the ship, even amidst the roiling storm of a globalpandemic.
Lifelines
A Doctor’s Journey In The Fight For Public Health
Leana Wen
Public health expert Leana Wen gives an insider’s account of public health and its crucial role-from opioid addiction to global pandemic-and tells an inspiring story of her journey from homeless immigrant to being named one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People.
Mental Health
From Survive To Thrive
Living Your Best Life With Mental Illness
Margaret S Chisolm
This upbeat guide is the first to detail evidence-based principles for improving well-being in those with mental illness.
You Are Not Alone
The Nami Guide To Navigating Mental Health–With Advice From Experts And Wisdom From Real People And Families
Ken Duckworth
This first-and-only book fully supported by the National Alliance on Mental Illness provides practical guidance on dealing with mental health conditions and navigating care, research-based evidence on what treatments and approaches work, insight and advice from renowned clinical experts and practitioners and real-life stories.
Logged In And Stressed Out
How Social Media Is Affecting Your Mental Health And What You Can Do About It
Paula Durlofsky
Logged In and Stressed Out teaches readers to feel happier and more confident by examining the ways in which social media is negatively affecting their lives and determining how they can develop healthier online habits.
How Not To Fall Apart
Lessons Learned On The Road From Self-Harm To Self-Care
Maggy van Eijk
This is a book about what it’s like to live with anxiety and depression, panic attacks, self-harm and self-loathing–and it’s also a hopeful roadmap written by someone who’s been there and is still finding her way.
The Unspeakable Mind
Stories Of Trauma And Healing From The Frontlines Of Ptsd Science
Shaili Jain
A Stanford professor and Post-traumatic Stress Disorder specialist presents an informative assessment of PTSD that examines the current scientific research and clinical advances that are shaping how the disorder is understood and treated.
No One Cares About Crazy People
The Chaos And Heartbreak Of Mental Health In America
Ron Powers
Offers a carefully researched narrative of the social history of mental illness in the United States, focusing specifically on schizophrenia, the taboos that compromise mental health care, and the way the disease has devastated the author’s own family.
Surviving Schizophrenia
A Family Manual
E Fuller Torrey
Describes the symptoms, causes, and treatment of schizophrenia, tells those concerned how to take care of a schizophrenic, and discusses legal and ethical problems related to the mental illness.
Misinformation Impacting Health
The Menopause Manifesto
Own Your Health With Facts And Feminism
Jen Gunter
An internationally best-selling author, obstetrician and gynecologist and author of The Vagina Bible, empowers readers through knowledge by countering myths and misunderstandings about menopause with hard facts and real science.
Hype
A Doctor’s Guide To Medical Myths, Exaggerated Claims And Bad Advice – How To Tell What’s Real And What’s Not
Nina Shapiro
An award-winning Otolaryngologist examines the actual science behind our collective health beliefs, dispelling misinformation and myths including the idea that sugar is toxic and the importance of drinking 8 glasses of water a day.
The Opioid Crisis
The Hard Sell
Crime And Punishment At An Opioid Startup
Evan Hughes
The inside story of a band of entrepreneurial upstarts who made millions selling painkillers—until their scheme unraveled, putting them at the center of a landmark criminal trial.
Raising Lazarus
Hope, Justice, And The Future Of America’s Overdose Crisis
Beth Macy
In this complex story of public health, big pharma, dark money, politics, race and class, the New York Times best-selling author of Dopesick takes us to the forefront of the opioid crisis where we meet the everyday heroes fighting to stem the tide of drug overdose
American Overdose
The Opioid Tragedy In Three Acts
Chris McGreal
A reporter for The Guardian describes how the current opioid crisis was driven by greed, incompetence and indifference and exposes Big Pharma’s control of the health care system and the how the FDA was duped into pushing painkillers.
Undoing Drugs
The Untold Story Of Harm Reduction And The Future Of Addiction
Maia Szalavitz
Offering a new path forward, the author tells the story of how a small group of committed people changed the world with an idea that has revolutionized not only the treatment of addiction, but also our treatment of behavioral and societal issues.
Other Topics in Health and Healthcare
The Truth About Cancer
What You Need To Know About Cancer’s History, Treatment, And Prevention
Ty M Bollinger
Draws on the history of medicine and cutting-edge research to lay out methods that can be used to prevent and treat cancer beyond conventional means.
The Undying
Pain, Vulnerability, Mortality, Medicine, Art, Time, Dreams, Data, Exhaustion, Cancer, And Care
Anne Boyer
The award-winning author of Garments Against Women presents a meditation on pain and economics that draws on her experiences as a single parent with a catastrophic illness to explore emerging ideas about mortality and the gendered politics of healthcare.
Mountains Beyond Mountains
Tracy Kidder
A thought-provoking portrait of world-renowned infectious disease expert Dr. Paul Farmer follows the efforts of this unconventional Harvard genius to understand the world’s great health, economic, and social problems and to bring healing to humankind.
Deadliest Enemy
Our War Against Killer Germs
Michael T Osterholm, Mark Olshaker
An epidemiologist describes what can be done to protect ourselves against fast-moving infectious diseases that can challenge world order, separating scientific fact from panic and fear and detailing the plans and resources that must be put into place before the next pandemic strikes.
The Invisible Kingdom
Reimagining Chronic Illness
Meghan O’Rourke
Drawing on her own medical experiences as well as a decade of interviews with doctors, patients, researchers, and public health experts, the author offers a revelatory investigation into the rise of chronic illness and autoimmune diseases that resist easy description or simple cures.
The Demon In The Freezer
A True Story
Richard Preston
In a chilling new look at the world of bioterrorism, the best-selling author of The Hot Zone explores the return of smallpox, eradicated in 1979 but now returning in a deadlier, genetically engineered form, and the crusade of three doctors to not only uncover the mastermind of the 2001 anthrax attacks but also prepare for future bioterrorist actions.
No Visible Bruises
What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us
Rachel Louise Snyder
An award-winning journalist and expert guest explores America’s epidemic of domestic violence and how it has been misunderstood, sharing insights into what domestic violence portends about other types of violence and what countermeasures are needed today.