The cigarette is the deadliest artifact in the history of human civilization. It is also one of the most beguiling, thanks to more than a century of manipulation at the hands of tobacco industry chemists. In <i>Golden Holocaust</i>, Robert N. Proctor draws on reams of formerly-secret industry documents to explore how the cigarette came to be the most widely-used drug on the planet, with six trillion sticks sold per year. He paints a ...
This innovative ethnographic study animates the racial politics that underlie genomic research into type 2 diabetes, one of the most widespread chronic diseases and one that affects ethnic groups disproportionately. Michael J. Montoya follows blood donations from «Mexican-American» donors to laboratories that are searching out genetic contributions to diabetes. His analysis lays bare the politics and ethics of the research process, addressing th ...
Grounded in intimate moments of family life in and out of hospitals, this book explores the hope that inspires us to try to create lives worth living, even when no cure is in sight. <i>The Paradox of Hope</i> focuses on a group of African American families in a multicultural urban environment, many of them poor and all of them with children who have been diagnosed with serious chronic medical conditions. Cheryl Mattingly proposes a n ...
This lively, inspiring, and informative book zeroes in on the state of American fitness—persistently sedentary, plagued by obesity—and issues a clarion call to action that reaches across economic, racial, and educational lines. Toni Yancey finds that despite our best intentions and repeated resolutions to exercise, as well as a 40-year investment in fitness education and counseling, physical activity in all levels of society continues to plummet ...
Even the most powerful men in the world are human—they get sick, take dubious drugs, drink too much, contemplate suicide, fret about ailing parents, and bury people they love. Young Richard Nixon watched two brothers die of tuberculosis, even while doctors monitored a suspicious shadow on his own lungs. John Kennedy received last rites four times as an adult, and Lyndon Johnson suffered a «belly buster» of a heart attack. David Blumenthal and Ja ...
