Book Reviews

Healthcare History

Gray Matters: A Biography of Brain Surgery

The topic of brain surgery impresses the general public, but specific knowledge about the brain remains weak among the same public. That shortcoming will likely change in coming decades as twenty-first-century science penetrates neuroscience as a frontier, much as physics was explained in the twentieth century. In this book, neurosurgeon Theodore Schwartz explains the past, present, and future of brain surgery in this well-written history of the medical specialty. Henry Cushing stands as the father…

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Leadership

On Becoming a Leader: The Leadership Classic

First, the good: This book lives up to the cover’s hype. Its ten chapters take a deep look at the character of everyday leaders. What’s true in 1989 remains true in 2009, at the time of the text’s republishing, and it remains true in 2026, at the time of my writing. The word “classic” is not hyperbole. Warren Bennis provides a script and a set of principles to build everyday leaders. A clinical psychologist by…

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Research-Education Writing-Communication

Writing the NIH Grant Proposal: A Step-by-Step Guide

I’m a newbie to the grant-writing process who wants to see how to formulate a proposal to the National Institutes of Health (NIH). When I looked for books to help, this one, in its third edition, seemed to be the seminal text in this domain. Its rigor and comprehensiveness did not disappoint. It took the grant-writing process seriously enough to convey challenges with gravity, yet it was approachable enough to make the entire process seem…

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Healthcare History Science

Medal Winners: How the Vietnam War Launched Nobel Careers

Doctors graduating medical school during the Vietnam War had several options. Most went to serve medically in the war theater. A few went into other smaller niches like the Public Health Service. A select few were drafted into a program to train in research at the NIH; these were subsequently known as “yellow berets” – an epithet turned point-of-pride among its recipients. Over the years, those who trained in this Clinical Associates program ended up…

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Management-Business

The Consulting Bible: How to Launch & Grow a Seven-Figure Consulting Business

Consulting is a business built around bettering the client’s business. Many work in large consulting firms to market their expertise, but in this book, Alan Weiss instead shows how to run a solo firm or a smaller firm to achieve the main good. The goal is to direct more money into one’s own pockets while maintaining more independence that can lead to better quality of life. This book teaches about running the business of a…

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Artificial Intelligence

Agentic Artificial Intelligence: Harnessing AI Agents to Reinvent Business, Work & Life

Artificial Intelligence (AI) continues to evolve quickly, perhaps too quickly for all of us to keep up. One of the current innovations is agentic AI, which can accomplish specific tasks for you with minimal programming or coding. Pascal Bornet and his vast team shows us how these innovations can help our lives and our work. Why did I pick up this book? I kept hearing the words “agentic AI” without really having a strong grasp…

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Healthcare Religion-Philosophy

Beholden: Religion, Global Health & Human Rights

Interactions between culture and religion are fraught with difficulties. Some want to do away with religion altogether. Others welcome religious influences on policy and practice. One thing’s for sure, though: There are always points of both friction and synergy between the two groups. Susan Holman, a scholar in the Christian tradition, examines these interactions in six distinct articles. In so doing, she examines the roots and nature of human rights and the religious value of…

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Biography-Memoir Healthcare Science

My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey

What is it like to go through a stroke? Additionally, what’s it like to observe your own stroke if you’re an elite brain scientist? Those two storylines are what Jill Bolte Taylor offers in this short memoir. For those not yet exposed to the internals of how the brain works, it offers an accessible tutorial. Many readers are not accustomed to understanding how different regions of the brain function together to provide a coherent experience…

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Mentoring Research-Education

Mentorship: Empowering Mentees to Take the Lead & Co-Create Their Development

This book is frankly mis-titled. It’s not addressed to mentors but to mentees. It’s a guide to mentees on how to guide their own development in a mentoring relationship. Despite the mis-titling, it’s really good. And in support of the title, the only way to become a great mentor is to become a great mentee – that is, a great learner of how to succeed at your position. So in a sense, it’s written to…

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Society Software-Technology

Data Empire: The Power of Information to Organize, Control & Dominate

This book exhibits such promise on a hyper-relevant topic, but falls short of its ideals. It offers a fascinating history of data and its use by civilization to organize itself. It points out where it has veered to dominate people (e.g., slavery, colonization, Roman control) and how humans have objected to its control. Today, we live in an age where generating data is inescapable with modern life. Data’s scale and reach are unprecedented. It concludes…

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