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…

Continue reading

Biography-Memoir History

The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt

Alexander Hamilton, America’s first Treasury Secretary, is often credited with forming the nation’s new economic system. Not far behind him (or even beside him) sits Cornelius Vanderbilt. In modern times, his name is most associated with a university in Nashville, but his legacy touched many turning points of nineteenth-century America. In this biography, Stiles describes Vanderbilt’s story beginning with the waning years of the eighteenth century and continuing after the Civil War until railroads united…

Continue reading