Summer Reading List - Pritzker School of Medicine - University of ...

hSuggested Reading ListMEDICAL NONFICTIONHow Doctors Think by Jerome Groopman (336 pp.)The author, an oncologist at Harvard Medical School, exploresthe doctor-patient relationship and the biases physicians bringinto the clinical encounter.Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madnessby William Styron (84 pp.)Styron was an acclaimed novelist (Sophie’sChoice) and essayist who died in 2006.This is the true account of his descent intoa crippling and almost suicidal depression,and his enlightening path to recovery.How We Die: Reflections of Life’s Final Chapter by Sherwin Nuland(320 pp.)Dr. Sherwin Nuland (a surgeon at Yale University) won the 1994National Book Award with this exploration of what death means tothe doctor, patient, nurse, administrator, and family. Nuland closeshis book with a discussion of how we can control our own final daysand those of our loved ones – a critical text for medical studentsand physicians alike.The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a BlackDisease by Jonathan Metzl (272 pp.)The author, Jonathan Metzl tells the shocking story of howschizophrenia became the diagnostic term overwhelminglyapplied to African American protesters at Ionia—for politicalreasons as well as clinical ones. Expertly sifting through a vastarray of cultural documents, Metzl shows how associationsbetween schizophrenia and blackness emerged during thetumultuous decades of the 1960s and 1970s—and he provides acautionary tale of how anxieties about race continue to impactdoctor-patient interactions in our seemingly postracial America.Reading | Sponsored by the Pritzker Book Club

hPathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and theNew War on the Poor by Dr. Paul Farmer(438 pp.)Many medical students have been inspired by the work ofphysician-activist- anthropologist, Dr. Paul Farmer – thesubject of Tracy Kidder’s Mountains Beyond Mountains.This book is probably Dr. Farmer’s most accessible workon how economic deprivation, structural violence, andinternational financial organizations negatively impactthe health of billions of the world’s poor.Body of Work: Meditations on Mortality from theHuman Anatomy Lab by Christine Montross(320 pp.)Formerly a poet and writing teacher, Christine Montrosswrote this memoir during her medical training at BrownUniversity. It’s the story of not only her own personalexperience in anatomy, but the centuries old history ofstudying cadavers.Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science ofRemembering Everything by Joshua Foer (320 pp.)This recent bestseller entertainingly looks into the art andscience of memory and memorization. Not exactly medicallyrelated,but it might be a nice introduction to memorytechniques that will hold you in good stead for the manyyears of studying ahead.Reading | Sponsored by the Pritzker Book Club

hMEDICAL FICTIONCutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese (667 pp.)Dr. Abraham Verghese is a physician, novelist, and professorfor the Theory and Practice of Medicine at the StanfordUniversity School of Medicine. Few physicians today writeas eloquently as Dr. Verghese about the essence and nearspiritualexperience of caring for patients. This novel,according to Amazon.com, “is an unforgettable story oflove and betrayal, medicine and ordinary miracles – and twobrothers whose fates are forever intertwined.”Tinkers by Paul Harding(191 pp.)This incredible book, whichwon the 2009 Pulitzer Prizein Fiction, beautifully unfoldsthe history and final thoughtsof a dying grandfathersurrounded by his family inhis New England home.Of Love and Other Demons by Gabriel Garcia Marquez(160 pp.)From Library Journal: “In a Latin American port cityduring colonial times, a young girl named Sierva Mariade Todos los Angeles, the only child of the ineffectualMarquis de Casalduero, is bitten by a rabid dog. Herfather, who has shown no interest in the child, begins acrusade to save her life, eventually committing her tothe Convent of Santa Clara when the bishop persuadeshim that his daughter is possessed by demons. In fact,Sierva Maria has shown no signs of being infected byrabies or by demons; she is simply being punished forbeing different…Nobel Prize winner Garcia Marquezwrites with his usual inventiveness, but over the yearshis prose style has crystallized and condensed. Theresult is a tale whose sharp social retort is made allthe louder by the luminous, uncluttered telling.”Reading | Sponsored by the Pritzker Book Club

hCHICAGO NONFICTIONWhen Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor byWilliam Julius Wilson (322 pp.)This is probably the most important book written in the last25 years about the rising inner-city poverty, joblessness, andsegregation in the United States. It’s not explicitly about Chicago,but Wilson’s research and writing of this book took place duringhis long tenure as a sociology professor at the University ofChicago.Black Boy by Richard Wright (448 pp.)This autobiography by Richard Wright (who lived inChicago from 1927 to 1935), published in 1945, usesnovelistic techniquesto describe his harshboyhood and youth inrural Mississippi. It is apowerful and disturbingaccount of socialinjustice and humansuffering in the JimCrow South.Chicago: City on the Make by Nelson Algren(152 pp.)This is arguably the best book written about Chicago.Algren presents 120 years of Chicago history throughthe lens of its “nobodies nobody knows” – thetramps, hustlers, aging bar fighters, freed death-rowinmates, and anonymous working stiffs who prowlits streets.Reading | Sponsored by the Pritzker Book Club

hCHICAGO FICTIONHerzog by Saul Bellow (400 pp.)Saul Bellow is indisputably Chicago’s most famousliterary son, who for a time called Hyde Park andthe University of Chicago home. Herzog tells thetale of Moses E. Herzog, a tragically confusedintellectual who suffers from the breakup of hissecond marriage, the general failure of his life, andthe specter of growing up Jewish in the middle partof the 20th century.The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon(304 pp.)On a visit to Chicago in 1992, Hemon becamestranded when he was unable to return to hisnative Sarajevo after war broke out. He nowcalls Chicago his new home. This imaginativenovel is a dark, hilarious, and poignant tale ofwhat it means to be an immigrant in America.It weaves two stories together: the 1908 killingof Lazarus Averbuch, a 19-year-old Jewishimmigrant who was shot dead by the chief ofChicago police, and the story of Vladimir Brik,a Bosnian-American writer living in Chicago(in 2008) who gets funding to travel to EasternEurope and unearth what really happened.Reading | Sponsored by the Pritzker Book Club