Biography-Memoir Healthcare Science

What’s Past is Prologue: The Personal Stories of Women in Science at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine

“What’s past is prologue; what’s to come, in yours and my discharge,” wrote Shakespeare centuries ago in The Tempest. For the most part, women have been excluded from the enterprise of biomedical research throughout history. However, that practice has been changing in recent decades, and the trend will likely continue in coming decades. The challenge is mostly obvious: How can a woman balance a career demanding high performance with a fulfilling personal life, often with…

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Biography-Memoir

10 Little Rules for a Double-Butted Adventure

A lot of people live under the rubric that life conditions us and forms us by teaching us fixed truths about ourselves. However, recent scientific discoveries have taught us that the brain continues to adapt (i.e., learn and re-form) throughout one’s entire life – a property called neuroplasticity. Therefore, our spiritual lives and self-image can grow so long as we live. Author Teri Brown and her new husband Bruce discovered this life principle as they…

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Biography-Memoir Politics

The Art of Power: My Story as America’s First Woman Speaker of the House

Social media has exposed what many women knew implicitly: Broad misogyny in American society is real… especially when a woman has a platform or power. Nancy Pelosi, the first woman Speaker of the US House of Representatives, has been a target for decades. Because she comes from a progressive district in San Francisco, she’s labeled as out of touch with most Americans. Her deep, religious faith rarely receives media airing. In this memoir, she demonstrates…

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Biography-Memoir History

The Last Founding Father: James Monroe & a Nation’s Call to Greatness

Virginians seem to dominate the early pantheon of American presidents. Four of the first five presidents were Virginians by birth. The last of these four – and the last president from the generation of founding fathers – is James Monroe. Most American high school students learn to associate his name with the “Monroe Doctrine” – the contention that Europe should not further colonize the Americas. While this position is perhaps his most lasting legacy, this…

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Biography-Memoir Religion-Philosophy

Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & Saint

Because of its followers, Christianity has gotten a bad wrap. Perhaps that’s just in recent years, but I know enough to suspect that it’s always been so. To put people in the pews, many pastors have appealed to minor parts of the Bible while omitting parts that would make its followers uncomfortable. Like the fact that Jesus hung out with prostitutes. Or that God’s loving forgiveness of humanity is absolute. Or that the first Christian…

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Biography-Memoir History

An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s

The 1960s shaped the unfolding of American history. A new generation born after American triumph in World War II seized the national narrative with the election of John F. Kennedy (JFK). Even after his assassination, Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ) implemented many of those ideals through Civil Rights Acts and the Great Society. But the Vietnam War, internal fighting, more assassinations, and the troubled Democratic convention of 1968 halted a progressive course and haunted liberals for…

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Biography-Memoir Leadership Science

Breaking Through: My Life in Science

First, who is Katalin Karikó? She is the primary scientist who showed how mRNA can be synthesized to create a vaccine. Why is that important? This technology enabled the COVID19 vaccines, which recently carried the world out of a pandemic. So Karikó’s impact and legacy are tremendous. What’s more is that she has a meaningful, inspiring life story that overcame the odds both in her native Hungary and in the halls of academe in America’s…

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Biography-Memoir Healthcare HIV/AIDS

My Own Country: A Doctor’s Story

Stories about HIV and AIDS fascinate me. They speak of our common humanity and our tragically all-too-common inhumanity towards each other. In fear, so many in power sought to sweep this disease and its victims under the rug, yet it pervaded to impact human life in almost every sphere. When AZT first showed promise and HAART later showed effectiveness, many breathed sighs of collective relief. Today, we live in an era of PEPFAR, where the…

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Biography-Memoir History Leadership

William McKinley

William McKinley is generally known to history as the US president before Teddy Roosevelt (TR). He was assassinated early in his second term, and as his vice president, TR assumed office. Most historians view TR as proper founder marking the beginning of the American century. In this book, Kevin Phillips says, not so fast. He contends that much of TR’s administrative foundation was laid by his predecessor and that had he lived, McKinley, not TR,…

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Biography-Memoir

John Lewis: A Life by David Greenberg

Like many Americans, John Lewis’ casket coming across the Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, in 2020 evoked tears in me. He was one of the last great leaders of the 1960s civil rights movement to die. With the Black Lives Matter movement in the streets, the baton had been passed to a new generation. I grew up a white Republican in conservative South Carolina and did not knew who John Lewis was until much later…

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