This selection of books examines the field of medicine, exposing its history of exploitation, bias, and failure, often reinforcing social inequalities.
created by lizzyy
last updated October, 2025
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Rebecca Skloot
Legacy: A Black Physician Reckons with Racism in Medicine
Uché Blackstock
Mind Fixers: Psychiatry's Troubled Search for the Biology of Mental Illness
Anne Harrington
All in Her Head: The Truth and Lies Early Medicine Taught Us About Women's Bodies and Why It Matters Today
Elizabeth Comen
You're the Only One I've Told: The Stories Behind Abortion
Meera Shah
The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women
Kate Moore
The Pain Gap: How Sexism and Racism in Healthcare Kill Women
Anushay Hossain
The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide
Robert Jay Lifton
The Lobotomist: A Maverick Medical Genius and His Tragic Quest to Rid the World of Mental Illness
Jack El-Hai
The Conjuring of America: Mojos, Mermaids, Medicine, and 400 Years of Black Women’s Magic
Lindsey Stewart
The Book of Woe: The DSM and the Unmaking of Psychiatry
Gary Greenberg
The Autobiography of a Transgender Scientist
Ben A. Barres
Rabid: A Cultural History of the World's Most Diabolical Virus
Bill Wasik
Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control
Stephen Kinzer
The Phantom Plague: How Tuberculosis Shaped History
Vidya Krishnan
Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present
Harriet A. Washington
Lakewood
Megan Giddings
Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family
Robert Kolker
Get Well Soon: History's Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them
Jennifer Wright
Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty
Patrick Radden Keefe
The Anatomy of a Calling: A Doctor's Journey from the Head to the Heart and a Prescription for Finding Your Life's Purpose
Lissa Rankin
Daughters of Madness: Growing Up and Older with a Mentally Ill Mother
Susan Nathiel
Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick
Maya Dusenbery
Building a Life Worth Living: A Memoir
Marsha M. Linehan
Crisis in the Red Zone: The Story of the Deadliest Ebola Outbreak in History, and of the Outbreaks to Come
Richard Preston
© 2025 Pagebound