Quarantine reading list: my collected book reviews

Whether you are self-isolating at home because your state remains under a stay-at-home order, you had recent close contact with someone with COVID-19 (as have several members of the White House's Coronavirus Task Force), or you have been presumptively or definitely diagnosed with the disease yourself, you may have more time to read. If you are interested in reading about a health topic other than the current pandemic, here are links to all of the book reviews I have written for Family Medicine and Common Sense Family Doctor over the past decade.

Generally positive reviews:

Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, by David Epstein (2020)

Pulse, Voices From the Heart of Medicine. Editor’s Picks. A Third Anthology, edited by Paul Gross, Diane Guernsey, Johanna Shapiro, and Judy Schaefer (2017)

Ending Medical Reversal, by Vinay Prasad and Adam Cifu (2015)

Epic Measures, by Jeremy N. Smith (2015)

What Every Medical Writer Needs to Know, by Robert B. Taylor (2015)

The Great Prostate Hoax, by Richard Ablin (2014)

Between the Lines: Finding the Truth in the Medical Literature, by Marya Zilberberg (2012)

Your Medical Mind, by Jerome Groopman and Pamela Hartzband (2011)

Overdiagnosed: Making People Sick in the Pursuit of Health, by H. Gilbert Welch (2011)

The Color of Atmosphere, by Maggie Kozel (2011)

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot (2010)

Medicine in Translation, by Danielle Ofri (2010)


Mixed reviews:

Health Systems Science, edited by Susan E. Skochelak and Richard E. Hawkins (2018)

Fractured: America's Broken Health Care System and What We Must Do to Heal It, by Ted Epperly (2012)

In Stitches, by Anthony Youn (2011)


Another source of book recommendations is my annual top ten favorite public health and health care book lists from the past five years:

2019
2018
2017
2016
2015

Finally, I highly recommend two notable new books by the above-named authors: Dr. Vinay Prasad's Malignant: How Bad Policy and Bad Evidence Harm People with Cancer (which I peer reviewed and later endorsed for the Johns Hopkins University Press) and Dr. Danielle Ofri's When We Do Harm: A Doctor Confronts Medical Error.