Industrial History

Dr. Melody Glenn didn’t expect to find herself working with addiction patients when she started out in medicine. Like most physicians she’s encountered, she harbored a set of conscious and unconscious beliefs about addicts—she even sometimes resented them. Once she realized how effective harm reduction treatments like methadone could be, she set out to discover why these treatments weren’t used more broadly. This led her to Dr. Marie Nyswander.

Seamus O'Mahony writes about the illusion of progress, the notion that more and more diseases can be "conquered" ad infinitum. He punctures the idiocy of consumerism, the idea that healthcare can be endlessly adapted to the wishes of individuals. He excoriates the claims of Big Science, the spending of vast sums on research follies like the Human Genome Project. And he highlights one of the most dangerous errors of industrialized medicine: an over-reliance on metrics, and a neglect of things that can't easily be measured, like compassion.

Hippocrates earned the title “Father of Medicine” for his extensive work in ancient Greece. He effectively established medicine as a profession. Modern doctors still swear to uphold the ethical standards he laid out in the Hippocratic Oath. His work On Surgery provides a fascinating look into medical history and the historical practices of this great physician.

A revolutionary new history of humankind through the prism of work, from the origins of life on Earth to our ever-more automated present. The work we do brings us meaning, moulds our values, determines our social status and dictates how we spend most of our time. But this wasn't always the case: for 95 percent of our species' history, work held a radically different importance. How, then, did work become the central organisational principle of our societies? How did it transform our bodies, our environments, our views on equality and our sense of time?

La medicina acompaña al hombre desde el inicio de los tiempos, siempre hemos conocido la enfermedad y la muerte y siempre hemos luchado, con todos nuestros medios, contra ellas. Desde la Prehistoria, en la que la curación estaba ligada a la magia, hasta la actualidad, en la que existen máquinas nanotecnológicas o píldoras capaces de regular casi todos nuestros procesos, la historia de la medicina es una aventura apasionante llena de hombres que sacrificaron todo por acabar con las enfermedades principales de sus comunidades.

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. Born a poor black tobacco farmer, her cancer cells – taken without her knowledge – became a multimillion-dollar industry and one of the most important tools in medicine. Yet Henrietta’s family did not learn of her ‘immortality’ until more than twenty years after her death, with devastating consequences . . .

Revolutionary Surgeons offers an integrated picture of surgeons as political and military leaders of the American Revolution.

Detailing the development of the prison and its outlying stations, including its dreaded coal mines and providing an account of the changing views to convict rehabilitation, Convict-era Port Arthur focuses in on a number of individuals, telling the story through their eyes. Charles O'Hara Booth, a significant commandant of Port Arthur; Mark Jeffrey, a convict who became the grave digger on the Island of the Dead and William Thompson, who arrived just as the new probation system started and who was forced to work in the treacherous coal mines.

In the early 1960s, Dr. Frances Oldham Kelsey of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration became one of the most celebrated women in America when she prevented a deadly sedative from entering the U.S. market. A Canadian-born pharmacologist and physician, Kelsey saved countless Americans from the devastating side effects of thalidomide, routinely given to pregnant women to prevent morning sickness. As the FDA medical officer charged with reviewing Merrell Pharmaceutical’s application for approval, Kelsey was unconvinced that there was sufficient evidence of the drug’s efficacy and safety.

Pain is the number one reason people schedule medical appointments. Yet many people do not receive adequate relief, especially for chronic pain. Pain: The Culture and Science of Pain describes the multiple factors that contribute to the ongoing problem of unrelieved pain. There are both cultural and scientific reasons. The book discusses how various cultures and religions throughout history have downplayed the importance of relieving pain. Such biases persist today.

Hippocrates revolutionized the study of medicine in Ancient Greece, but some of his ideas still influence the medical field today. In his book On Ulcers, Hippocrates details the recommended treatment for this ailment. While modern medicine has moved beyond using honey, boiled leaves, and white wine to treat ulcers, Hippocrates’ advice on diet and rest hold true. This text is fascinating for anyone interested in the historical development of medical practices.

We have long understood the Industrial Revolution as a triumphant story of innovation and technology. Empire of Guns, a rich and ambitious new book by award-winning historian Priya Satia, upends this conventional wisdom by placing war and Britain's prosperous gun trade at the heart of the Industrial Revolution and the state's imperial expansion.

"The Rock Trenches: Journal of a Music Industry Executive" by Phillip Rauls is the memoir of a Memphis-born music promoter who worked with some of the top rock 'n' roll recording artists of the 1960s-1990s, including the Gentrys, Robert Palmer, Yes, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, the Eagles, and Led Zeppelin, to name a few. The Rock Trenches begins with Phillip as he gains entry into the music business by becoming the road manager for a local band just out of high school, the Gentrys. The Memphis band scored a million selling record in 1965 titled "Keep On Dancing" and Rauls...

In Woody Allen's 1973 film, Sleeper, a character wakes up in the future to learn that civilization was destroyed when "a man by the name of Albert Shanker got hold of a nuclear warhead." Shanker was condemned by many when he shut down the New York City school system in the bitter strikes of 1967 and 1968, and he was denounced for stirring up animosity between Black parents and Jewish teachers. Later, however, he built alliances with Blacks, and at the time of his death in 1997, such figures as Bill Clinton celebrated Shanker for being an educational reformer.

Stuart Jamieson's story is the story of four decades of advances in heart surgery. Taut, elegantly crafted, and ever-attentive to the patients for whom he was the last best chance, Close to the Sun is an adventurous, riveting account based on the experience of over 40,000 heart surgeries, where everything was on the line every moment in the O.R.

Dementia, heart failure and cancer are now the leading causes of death in industrialised nations, where life expectancy is mostly above 80. A century ago, life expectancy was about 50 and people died mainly from infectious diseases. In the Middle Ages, death was mostly caused by famine, plague, childbirth and war. In the Palaeolithic period, where our species spent 95% of its time, we frequently died from violence and accidents.

The Cancer Problem offers the first medical, cultural, and social history of cancer in 19th-century Britain. It argues that it was in the 19th century that cancer acquired the unique emotional, symbolic, and politicized status it maintains today. Through an interrogation of the construction, deployment, and emotional consequences of the disease's incurability, this book reframes our conceptualization of the relationship between medicine and modern life and reshapes our understanding of chronic and incurable maladies, both past and present.

From the beginning of the eighteenth century to the high water mark of the Victorian era, the world was transformed by a technological revolution the like of which had never been seen before. Inventors, businessmen, scientists, explorers all had their part to play in the story of the Industrial Revolution and in this Brief History Thomas Crump brings their story to life, and shows why it is a chapter in English history that can not be ignored.

A narrative that originates in the garment industry of mid-century New York, which produced over 80 percent of the nation's dresses at the time, Murder in the Garment District quickly moves to a national stage, where congressional anti-corruption hearings gripped the nation and forever tainted the reputation of American unions. Replete with elements of a true-crime thriller, Murder in the Garment District includes a riveting cast of characters, from wheeling and dealing union president David Dubinsky to the notorious gangster Abe Chait and the crusading Robert F. Kennedy.

The mystical floating city of Venice has inspired awe for generations and continues to be one of the most visited European cities for good reason. Tourists are drawn to the stunning blend of classical, Gothic, and Renaissance-inspired architecture across the picturesque towns and villages, the charming open-air markets, the mouthwatering traditional cuisine, and of course, the famous gondolas drifting down the twinkling blue waters.