A list of books about medicine, society and more – posted here from one of my medical education wikispaces. Please send other suggestions! My intention is to keep adding to it.
Most of these books i’ve read. Many of them are old. Although I’ve linked them to Amazon for your convenience, i’d recommend you try your library (if you still have one), your local independent bookshop or second-hand from abebooks
General:
Henry E. Sigerist: Medical Historian and Social Visionary
- All of his books are very highly recommended, especially Medicine and Human Welfare
- His book ‘Man and Medicine’ was written for medical students.
Medicine and society:
- Dowrick, Title: Medicine in Society: Behavioural Sciences for Undergraduates
- Lupton, DA. Medicine as Culture
- Thomas McKeown: The Role of Medicine: Dream, Mirage or Nemesis?
- Illich, Ivan: Limits to Medicine : Medical Nemesis, the Expropri
- Marmot, Michael: Status Syndrome, How your social standing directly effects your health and life expectancy
- Marmot, Michael: The Social Determinants of Health
- Roy Porter: The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A medical history of humanity
- Le Fanu, James: The Rise and Fall of Modern Medicine
Medicine and science in the media:
- Gawande, Atul: Better/ Complications
- Goldacre, Ben: Badscience
- Singh, Simon: Trick or Treatment?: Alternative medicine on trial
- Diamond, John: Snake Oil and other Preoccupations.
- Lewis: The unnatural nature of science.
The media:
Hoxton history:
General practice:
- Berger, John, A Fortunate Man
- Widgery, David: Some Lives! A GP’s East End
- David Widgery
- Hutt, Patrick: Confronting an Ill Society: David Widgery, General Practice, Idealism and the Chase for Change
- Heath, Iona. Matters of Life and Death, Key Writings (includes The Mystery of General Practice)
- Helman, Cecil: Suburban Shaman, Tales from Medicine’s Front Line
- Loxterkamp, David: Essays about general practice
Doctors and patients:
- Balint, Michael: The Doctor, His Patient and the Illness
- Mol, Annemarie: The Logic of Care and the Problem of Patient Choice
- Kafka, Franz: The Country Doctor
- Bulgakov, Mikhail: A Country Doctor’s Notebook
- Kleinman, Arthur. The Illness Narrratives
- Kleinman, Arthur. Patients and Healers in the Context of Culture
- Frank, Arthur. The Wounded Storyteller
- Jamison, Leslie: The Empathy Exams
Medicine and politics:
- Julian Tudor Hart:The Political Economy of Health Care: A Clinical Perspective
- Julian Tudor Hart website
- The Equality Trust Website
- Lister, John: The NHS after 60, For Patients or Profits?
- Morbid symptoms: Health under Capitalism
- Mooney, Gavin. The Health of Nations
- Keep Our NHS Public website
- Macdonald, Theodore H. The Global Human Right to Health: Dream or Possibility?
- Dr Tomlinson’s NHS blog
- Bevan’s Run. Blog of Clive Peedell, NHS Consultants Assoc. Excellent history of NHS reform politics.
- NHSVault. Richardblogger’s detailed analyses of government health policy
Markets
- Raj Patel: The Price of Nothing
- Chris Harman: Zombie Capitalism
- Sandel, Michael. What money can’t buy. The moral limits of markets
Pregnancy and childbirth:
An examination of who controls childbirth and who controls doctors
Food, politics and health:
- Stuffed and Starved The best source of well researched food politics on the web. The book is highly recommended if you want to understand why a billion people are starving to death while a billion more are dying from over consumption.
- Orbach, Susie: Fat is a Feminist Issue
- Lupton, D A. Fat.
Health promotion
Poverty and medicine:
- Bevan, In Place of Fear
- Wilkinson, R, Picket K: The Spirit Level; Why More Eqal Societies Almost Always Do Better
- George Orwell: How the Poor Die.Essay online>
Pain: history and culture:
- Sarah Coakley, Kay Kaufman Shelemay: Pain and its Transformations: The Interface of Biology and Culture
- Wall, Patrick and Melzack, Ronald: The Challenge of Pain
- Rey, Roselyne: The History of Pain
- DB Morris: The Culture of Pain
- Scarry, Elaine: The Body in Pain
- Bourke, Joanna: The Story of Pain
Pharma
Medicalisation
- McCartney, Margaret. The Patient Paradox
- Welch, H. Gilbert. Overdiagnosed. Making people sick, in the pursuit of health>
- Dubos, Rene. The Mirage of Health: Utopias, Progress & Biological Change
- Brownlee, Shannon. Overtreated
Dying
- Tolstoy, Leo: The Death of Ivan Ilyich
- Heath, Iona. Matters of Life and Death, Key Writings (includes The Mystery of General Practice)
Mental health:
- A summer of Madness, a wonderful review of books about mental illness by Oliver Sacks published in the New York Review of Books September 5th 2008
- Frankl, Victor: Man’s Search for Meaning
Medical ethics
- Blackburn S: Being Good
- Hope T, Savilescu J, Hendrick J. Medical Ethics and the Law: the core curriculum. (there is also a very short introduction by one of the authors)
- Jackson, J: Ethics in Medicine
Medicine and History
Misc
A Better NHS 
Some more books!
The Natural History of Disease, John A. Ryle (contains some excellent words about interaction between patient and doctor);
Selling Sickness, Ray Moynihan and Alan Cassels;
Soul made Flesh, Carol Zimmer;
Women, Medicine and Health, Anne Oakley;
Thomas Willis’s Oxford Lecture, Kenneth Dewhurst;
The Common Sense of Science, Jacob Bronowski;
The Motion of the Heart and Blood, William Harvey;
Pain, Thomas Lewis;
The Integrative Action of the Nervous System, Charles Sherrington ( rather specialised but a wonderful example of clear scientific thinking);
William Richard Gowers, Ann Scoot, Mervyn Eadie, Andrew Lees (biography of a great neurologist)
A few ideas for the list:
The Natural History of Disease, John A Ryle; (great insights)
Selling Sickness, Ray Moyhihan & Alan Cassels;
Soul Made Flesh, Carol Zimmer;
Women, Medicine and Health, Ann Oakley;
Willis’s Oxford Lectures, Kenneth Dewhurst;
William Richard Gowers, Ann Scott, Mervyn Eadie and Andrew Lees; (biography of a great neurologist)
The Common Sense of Science, Jacob Bronowski; (writings of a superb mind and which can be applied to medicine or almost anything else);
The Integrative Action of the Nervous System, Charles Sherrington (see above for Bronowski)!
The Motion of the Heart and Blood, William Harvey;
Pain, Thomas Lewis.
Thank you for this idea of a booklist. Fascinating and illuminating
Lionel Shriver’s novel So Much for That is about the US health system and tells us what the Tories plan for us.
Atul Gwande “Being Mortal”
Kathryn Mannix “With the end in mind”
Two additions for the section “dying” but I think “Death and dying” are increasingly challenging to medical training and often confronted in the A&E right at the edge of understanding for both patients and doctors