Medicine bestsellers

The Body Keeps the Score

Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

By: Bessel van der Kolk, M.D.
Narrated by: Sean Pratt
Length: 16 hours 15 minutes

“A beautiful dissection of trauma and its effects on the brain. One of the world’s foremost experts on trauma uses recent studies to show how trauma reshapes parts of us. The author frames trauma in a whole new way and makes you really consider the true definition of it. This book outlines how the traumas people carry can impact their capacity to... Read more

Between Two Kingdoms

A Memoir of a Life Interrupted

By: Suleika Jaouad
Narrated by: Suleika Jaouad
Length: 13 hours 2 minutes

“Wow, what a story. This was an extremely moving memoir about a devastating but successful fight with cancer and the toll it takes on your life and relationships. But more than that, it also bring you on a journey of moving on and re-learning how to live your life. Jaouad is a fabulous writer and really take the reader on the journey with her.... Read more

I Contain Multitudes

The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life

By: Ed Yong
Narrated by: Charlie Anson
Length: 9 hours 52 minutes

New York Times BestsellerNew York Times Notable Book of 2016NPR Great Read of 2016Economist Best Books of 2016Brain Pickings Best Science Books of 2016Smithsonian Best Books about Science of 2016Science Friday Best Science Book of 2016A Mother Jones Notable Read of 2016A Bill Gates “Gates Notes” PickMPR Best Books of 2016Chicago Public Library... Read more

The Year I Met My Brain

A travel companion for adults who have just found out they have ADHD

By: Matilda Boseley
Narrated by: Matilda Boseley
Length: 9 hours 13 minutes

Matilda Boseley's adult ADHD diagnosis was a massive, earth-shattering event. She was given a prescription but had no idea what ADHD meant for her identity, her relationships or her future.

Twelve months of confusion later, journalist Matilda embarked on an epic voyage to figure out what's really happening in the stormy seas of the ADHD brain and... Read more

The Myth of Normal

Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture

By: Gabor Maté, MD & Daniel Maté
Narrated by: Daniel Maté
Length: 18 hours 12 minutes

The instant New York Times bestseller

By the acclaimed author of In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, a groundbreaking investigation into the causes of illness, a bracing critique of how our society breeds disease, and a pathway to health and healing.

In this revolutionary book, renowned physician Gabor Maté eloquently dissects how in Western countries... Read more

How to Change Your Mind

What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence

By: Michael Pollan
Narrated by: Michael Pollan
Length: 13 hours 34 minutes

“Pollan brings his humor, lyricism, and love for deep research to the admittedly taboo field of psychedelics. This book is an exhaustive exploration of these mysterious substances, in which he balances skepticism of the culture that surrounds them with optimism for their potential therapeutic use. Read more

The In-Between

Unforgettable Encounters During Life's Final Moments

By: Hadley Vlahos, R.N.
Narrated by: Hadley Vlahos, R.N.
Length: 7 hours 19 minutes

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Passionate advocate for end-of-life care and TikTok star Hadley Vlahos shares moving stories of joy, wisdom, and redemption from her patients’ final moments in this “brilliant” (Zibby Owens, Good Morning America) memoir.
 
“This extraordinary book helps dispel fear around death and dying—revealing it to be a natural... Read more

Madness

Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum

By: Antonia Hylton
Narrated by: Antonia Hylton
Length: 11 hours 2 minutes

In the tradition of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, a page-turning 93-year history of Crownsville Hospital, one of the nation’s last segregated asylums, told by an award-winning journalist on her decade-long search for sanity in America’s mental healthcare system. 

On a cold day in March of 1911, officials marched twelve Black men into the... Read more

What Happened to You?

Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing

By: Oprah Winfrey & Bruce D. Perry
Narrated by: Bruce D. Perry & Oprah Winfrey
Length: 8 hours 27 minutes

"[Oprah Winfrey and Bruce D. Perry] are both capable, likable narrators who are sincerely engaged with their subject matter...The performances of these two humanitarians make this a must-hear for anyone recovering from their traumatic past." —AudioFile

This program is read by the authors.

Our earliest experiences shape our lives far down the... Read more

The Body

A Guide for Occupants

By: Bill Bryson
Narrated by: Bill Bryson
Length: 14 hours 4 minutes

“At home while peeling wallpaper or making diner—or just closing my eyes for a while—a non-fiction audio book is a perfect companion, especially if it’s teaching me something as well as being entertaining. The Body: A Guide For Occupants by Bill Bryson, narrated by Bill Bryson, is exactly that kind of book. Bryson’s voice is genial, sometimes... Read more

Hidden Valley Road

Inside the Mind of an American Family

By: Robert Kolker
Narrated by: Sean Pratt
Length: 13 hours 8 minutes

“This came out in 2020, and I absolutely did not have the bandwidth to read it then. I revisited it this month via audiobook. Hidden Valley Road's focus is the Galvin family where six of the twelve children develop schizophrenia by the mid 1970s. Kolker expertly weaves together the strands of history of the Galvin's, the disease, and the... Read more

Vagina Obscura

An Anatomical Voyage

By: Rachel E. Gross
Narrated by: Siho Ellsmore
Length: 10 hours 50 minutes

“A wild journey into a long-neglected and maligned body part. I found myself equally enraptured and enraged the whole way through. Complete with haunting illustrations by Armando Veve, Vagina Obscura provides scientific, philosophical, psychological, and historical perspective on the past, present, and future of the vagina. Read more

The Song of the Cell

An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human

By: Siddhartha Mukherjee
Narrated by: Dennis Boutsikaris
Length: 16 hours 3 minutes

Winner of the 2023 PROSE Award for Excellence in Biological and Life Sciences and the 2023 Chautauqua Prize!

Named a New York Times Notable Book and a Best Book of the Year by The Economist, Oprah Daily, BookPage, Book Riot, the New York Public Library, and more!

In The Song of the Cell, the extraordinary author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning... Read more

Strangers to Ourselves

Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us

By: Rachel Aviv
Narrated by: Andi Arndt
Length: 7 hours 40 minutes

“This is part memoir, part examination of the experiences of four other people who experienced mental illness and struggled with the treatments available. Aviv is most insightful when writing about herself, or the affluent young woman who decides to go off her medications, most likely because Aviv relates more easily to her circumstances. Her... Read more

When the Body Says No

The Cost of Hidden Stress

By: Gabor Maté, MD
Narrated by: Daniel Maté
Length: 11 hours 48 minutes

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER

From renowned mental health expert and speaker Dr. Gabor Maté, this acclaimed, bestselling guide provides insight into the mind-body link between illness and health, and the critical role that stress and our emotional makeup play in an array of common diseases.

In this accessible and groundbreaking book—filled with the... Read more

Women in White Coats

How the First Women Doctors Changed the World of Medicine

By: Olivia Campbell
Narrated by: Jean Ann Douglass
Length: 11 hours 29 minutes

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!

For fans of Hidden Figures and Radium Girls comes the remarkable story of three Victorian women who broke down barriers in the medical field to become the first women doctors, revolutionizing the way women receive health care.

In the early 1800s, women were dying in large numbers from treatable diseases because they... Read more

Grown Woman Talk

Your Guide to Getting and Staying Healthy

By: Sharon Malone, M.D.
Narrated by: Sharon Malone, M.D.
Length: 12 hours 12 minutes

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A must-read for anyone who cares about their quality of life . . . Dr. Sharon Malone is the first person I turn to for a whole host of issues, especially my health.”—MICHELLE OBAMA

A practical guide to aging and health for women who have felt ignored or marginalized by the medical profession, from a leading OB/GYN and... Read more

Administrations of Lunacy

Racism and the Haunting of American Psychiatry at the Milledgeville Asylum

By: Mab Segrest
Narrated by: Hillary Huber
Length: 15 hours 13 minutes

Today, ninety percent of psychiatric beds are located in jails and prisons across the United States, institutions that confine disproportionate numbers of African Americans. After more than a decade of research, the celebrated scholar and activist Mab Segrest locates the deep historical roots of this startling fact, turning her sights on a... Read more

The New Menopause

Navigating Your Path Through Hormonal Change with Purpose, Power, and Facts

By: Mary Claire Haver, MD
Narrated by: Mary Claire Haver, MD
Length: 9 hours 45 minutes

Filling a gaping hole in menopause care, everything a woman needs to know to thrive during her hormonal transition and beyond, as well as the tools to help her take charge of her health at this pivotal life stage—by the bestselling author of The Galveston Diet.

Menopause is inevitable, but suffering through it is not! This is the empowering... Read more

Slouch

Posture Panic in Modern America

By: Beth Linker
Narrated by: Laurel Lefkow
Length: 11 hours 18 minutes

This audiobook narrated by Laurel Lefkow recounts the strange and surprising history of the so-called epidemic of bad posture in modern America—from eugenics and posture pageants to today’s promoters of “paleo posture”

In 1995, a scandal erupted when the New York Times revealed that the Smithsonian possessed a century’s worth of nude “posture”... Read more

Health Communism

A Surplus Manifesto

By: Beatrice Adler-Bolton & Artie Vierkant
Narrated by: Sarah Welborn
Length: 7 hours 55 minutes

A searing analysis of health and illness under capitalism from hosts of the hit podcast Death Panel

Written by cohosts of the hit Death Panel podcast and longtime disability justice and healthcare activists Beatrice Adler-Bolton and Artie, Health Communism first examines how capital has instrumentalized health, disability, madness, and illness... Read more

NeuroTribes

The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity

By: Steve Silberman
Narrated by: William Hughes
Length: 18 hours 46 minutes

This New York Times bestseller upends conventional thinking about autism and suggests a broader model for acceptance, understanding, and full participation in society for people who think differently.What is autism: a lifelong disability or a naturally occurring form of cognitive difference akin to certain forms of genius? In truth, it is both... Read more

The Tennis Partner

A Doctor's Story of Friendship and Loss

By: Abraham Verghese
Narrated by: Neil Shah
Length: 13 hours 49 minutes

An unforgettable, illuminating story of how men live and how they survive, from Abraham Verghese, the acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of Cutting for Stone and The Covenant of Water, an Oprah's Book Club Pick.“Heartbreaking. . . . Indelible and haunting, [The Tennis Partner] is an elegy to friendship found, and an ode to a good friend... Read more

The Beauty of Dusk

On Vision Lost and Found

By: Frank Bruni
Narrated by: Frank Bruni
Length: 8 hours 46 minutes

From New York Times columnist and bestselling author Frank Bruni comes “a book about vision loss that becomes testimony to human courage, a moving memoir that offers perspective, comfort, and hope” (Booklist, starred review).

One morning in late 2017, New York Times columnist Frank Bruni woke up with strangely blurred vision. He wondered at first... Read more

Bad Blood

Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup

By: John Carreyrou
Narrated by: Will Damron
Length: 11 hours 36 minutes

“Theranos was a startup that set itself apart from the bevy of others in Silicon Valley. Its cause was noble, manufacturing revolutionary medical technology that could run a menu of blood tests on only a finger stick's worth of blood, eliminating the need for large painful needles. There was only one problem: the technology didn't exist.... Read more

I Cannot Control Everything Forever

A Memoir of Motherhood, Science, and Art

By: Emily C. Bloom
Narrated by: Emily C. Bloom
Length: 12 hours 6 minutes

This is Emily Bloom’s journey towards and through motherhood, a path that has become, for the average woman, laden with data and medical technology. Emily faces decisions regarding genetic testing and diagnosis, technologies that offer the illusion of certainty but carry the weight of hard decisions. Her desire to know more thrusts her back into... Read more

Call the Midwife

A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times

Call the Midwife: Book #1

By: Jennifer Worth
Narrated by: Nicola Barber
Length: 12 hours 1 minute

At the age of twenty-two, Jennifer Worth leaves her comfortable home to move into a convent and become a midwife in post war London’s East End slums. The colorful characters she meets while delivering babies all over London—from the plucky, warm-hearted nuns with whom she lives to the woman with twenty-four children who can’t speak English to... Read more

Dr Sebi Cure for Herpes

America's Guide to the Most Proven Methods to Cure Herpes Simplex Virus (HSV) in Less Than 2 Weeks Without Extreme Medications | Only natural remedies + Bonus FAQs

By: Jessica Russel
Narrated by: Khessia Nabali
Length: 3 hours 48 minutes

Have you been hearing a lot about Dr. Sebi’s dietary recommendations that have helped ordinary people around the world overcome some of the common ailments in life, and you are curious to know how you can use it to fight herpes?

And are you looking for a guide to show you everything you need to know about using Dr. Sebi’s dietary guidelines to... Read more

Taking Care

The Story of Nursing and Its Power to Change Our World

By: Sarah DiGregorio
Narrated by: Ann Marie Gideon
Length: 8 hours 23 minutes

“DiGregorio’s storytelling is pitch-perfect; narrative and nursing, she understands, come from the same place and both are concerned with a deep understanding of character and plot….This is a brilliant book, and DiGregorio is a beautiful writer. Taking Care deserves to be on the reading list for nursing and medical schools, and on the bedside... Read more

The Mystery of the Exploding Teeth

And Other Curiosities from the History of Medicine

By: Thomas Morris
Narrated by: Thomas Morris & Ruper Farley
Length: 9 hours 7 minutes

"Delightfully horrifying."--Popular Science
One of Mental Floss's Best Books of 2018
One of Science Friday's Best Science Books of 2018

This wryly humorous collection of stories about bizarre medical treatments and cases offers a unique portrait of a bygone era in all its jaw-dropping weirdness.

A puzzling series of dental explosions beginning in... Read more

Fatal Conveniences

The Toxic Products and Harmful Habits That Are Making You Sick—and the Simple Changes That Will Save Your Health

By: Darin Olien
Narrated by: Andrew Eiden
Length: 7 hours 51 minutes

The New York Times bestselling author of SuperLife and cohost with Zac Efron of the hit Netflix series Down to Earth, Darin Olien offers invaluable advice for addressing the health of our bodies and the health of the planet by identifying common products and behaviors that are harmful and providing alternatives that are non-toxic and... Read more

If I Betray These Words

Moral Injury in Medicine and Why It's So Hard for Clinicians to Put Patients First

By: Wendy Dean & Simon Talbot
Narrated by: Wendy Dean
Length: 9 hours 57 minutes

An incredibly important and captivating book for patients, families, and clinicians detailing how we’re all hurt by corporate medicine

“Wendy Dean diagnoses the dangerous state of our healthcare system, illustrating the thumbscrews applied to medical professionals by their corporate overlords… Required reading for all stakeholders in healthcare.”... Read more

The Ghost in My Brain

How a Concussion Stole My Life and How the New Science of Brain Plasticity Helped Me Get It Back

By: Clark Elliott, Ph.D.
Narrated by: Arthur Morey
Length: 9 hours 14 minutes

The dramatic story of one man’s recovery offers new hope to those suffering from concussions and other brain traumas.In 1999, Clark Elliott suffered a concussion when his car was rear-ended. Overnight his life changed from that of a rising professor with a research career in artificial intelligence to a humbled man struggling to get through a... Read more

Riding the Lightning

A Year in the Life of a New York City Paramedic

By: Anthony Almojera
Narrated by: Anthony Almojera
Length: 8 hours 41 minutes

“An intense look at the high-stakes world of a NYC paramedic in the months before and after COVID-19 altered our landscape.”—Damon Tweedy, MD, author of Black Man in a White Coat: A Doctor's Reflections on Race and MedicineThe education of a New York City paramedic, whose tales of tragedy and transcendence over a single year culminate in the... Read more

The Cellular Wellness Solution

Tap Into Your Full Health Potential with the Science-Backed Power of Herbs

By: Bill Rawls, MD
Narrated by: Derek Shoales
Length: 11 hours 36 minutes

Are you searching for a natural wellness plan that is grounded in science? The Cellular Wellness Solution delivers a fresh take on the critical role our cells play in supporting optimal health. A classically-trained physician, Bill Rawls, MD, departs from the medical norm to shine a light on the unrecognized potential of herbs to energize your... Read more

Birthing Justice

Black Women, Pregnancy, and Childbirth, Second Edition

By: Julia Chinyere Oparah & Alicia D Bonaparte
Narrated by: Deanna Anthony
Length: 12 hours 37 minutes

The second edition of this pathbreaking, widely taught book offers five new chapters, on breastfeeding and Black infant health; Black birthing during Covid; Black doulas rethinking birthing practices; the recent buildup of a US national movement; and expanding the global movement for sexual and reproductive wellbeing. Other chapters are updated... Read more

The Book That Changed Me: 20 Essays on Influential Literature

A BBC Radio 3 Collection

By: Various Artists
Narrated by: Various
Length: 4 hours 31 minutes

Part of BBC Radio 3's 'The Essay' strand, The Book That Changed Me features writers, academics and other eminent professionals discussing the literary works that have had the greatest impact on their lives.

This fascinating selection contains some of the best episodes from the series, including legendary songwriter Steve Earle on Truman Capote's... Read more

Being Mortal

Medicine and What Matters in the End

By: Atul Gawande
Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
Length: 9 hours 3 minutes

#1 New York Times Bestseller

In Being Mortal, bestselling author Atul Gawande tackles the hardest challenge of his profession: how medicine can not only improve life but also the process of its ending

Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming birth, injury, and infectious disease from harrowing to manageable. But in the inevitable... Read more

Legacy

A Black Physician Reckons with Racism in Medicine

By: Uché Blackstock, MD
Narrated by: Uché Blackstock, MD
Length: 8 hours 6 minutes

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

“This book is more than a memoir—it also serves as a call to action to create a more equitable healthcare system for patients of color, particularly Black women.” —Essence

One of NPR’s 11 Books to Look Forward to in 2024

One of Good Morning America’s 15 New Books to Read for the New Year

“Legacy is both a... Read more

Ancestor Trouble

A Reckoning and a Reconciliation

By: Maud Newton
Narrated by: Catherine Taber
Length: 11 hours 13 minutes

An acclaimed writer goes searching for the truth about her wildly unconventional Southern family—and finds that our obsession with ancestors opens up new ways of seeing ourselves.

“A roadmap for all of us who long to understand, at the deepest level, where we come from.”—Dani Shapiro, author of Inheritance

ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF... Read more

The Menopause Manifesto

Own Your Health With Facts and Feminism

By: Dr. Jen Gunter
Narrated by: Jen Gunter
Length: 13 hours 4 minutes

The only thing predictable about menopause is its unpredictability. Factor in widespread misinformation, a lack of research, and the culture of shame around women's bodies, and it's no wonder women are unsure what to expect during the menopause transition and beyond.

Menopause is not a disease—it's a planned change, like puberty. And just like... Read more

Madame Restell

The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Old New York's Most Fabulous, Fearless, and Infamous Abortionist

By: Jennifer Wright
Narrated by: Mara Wilson
Length: 14 hours 1 minute

“An interesting and engaging biography of Ann Trow, aka Madame Restell, a well-known abortion provider in NYC in the 1830’s-1870’s who became one of the wealthiest women of her time, this book is also a timely story of women’s history, specifically of their access to reproductive health care in the US. Read more

The Emperor of All Maladies

A Biography of Cancer

By: Siddhartha Mukherjee
Narrated by: Fred Sanders
Length: 22 hours 17 minutes

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a documentary from Ken Burns on PBS, this New York Times bestseller is “an extraordinary achievement” (The New Yorker)—a magnificent, profoundly humane “biography” of cancer—from its first documented appearances thousands of years ago through the epic battles in the twentieth century to cure, control, and conquer... Read more

The Beauty in Breaking

A Memoir

By: Michele Harper
Narrated by: Nicole Lewis
Length: 7 hours 46 minutes

“This memoir is a fascinating examination of a life dedicated to helping others, and an illuminating, up-close view of what happens in emergency rooms. Moments of profound human connection exist alongside confrontations with dangerous and erratic patients, overzealous police demands, a lack of resources, and bureaucratic barriers. And the... Read more

Rough Sleepers

Dr. Jim O'Connell's urgent mission to bring healing to homeless people

By: Tracy Kidder
Narrated by: Tracy Kidder
Length: 8 hours 41 minutes

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The powerful story of an inspiring doctor who made a difference, by helping to create a program to care for Boston’s homeless community—by the Pulitzer Prize–winning, New York Times bestselling author of Mountains Beyond Mountains

“I couldn’t put Rough Sleepers down. I am left in awe of the human spirit and inspired to... Read more

Stiff

The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

By: Mary Roach
Narrated by: Shelly Frasier
Length: 7 hours 59 minutes

An oddly compelling, often hilarious exploration of the strange lives of our bodies postmortem.

For 2,000 years, cadavers—some willingly, some unwittingly—have been involved in science's boldest strides and weirdest undertakings. They've tested France's first guillotines, ridden the NASA Space Shuttle, been crucified in a Parisian laboratory... Read more

Smile

The Story of a Face

By: Sarah Ruhl
Narrated by: Sarah Ruhl
Length: 6 hours 28 minutes

“The story of Sarah Ruhl’s smile—how it broke and how it healed again—encompasses so many other stories, so many other journeys: through early motherhood, through postpartum depression, through maintaining an artistic self when you are torn in many directions. She asks why it’s so important—for women in particular—that we always keep a smile on... Read more

The Invisible Kingdom

Reimagining Chronic Illness

By: Meghan O'Rourke
Narrated by: Meghan O'Rourke
Length: 9 hours 2 minutes

A landmark exploration of one of the most consequential and mysterious issues of our time: the rise of chronic illness and autoimmune diseases

A silent epidemic of chronic illnesses afflicts tens of millions of Americans: these are diseases that are poorly understood, frequently marginalized, and can go undiagnosed and unrecognized altogether.... Read more

Medical Apartheid

The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present

By: Harriet A. Washington
Narrated by: Ron Butler
Length: 19 hours 1 minute

Medical Apartheid is the first and only comprehensive history of medical experimentation on African Americans. Starting with the earliest encounters between black Americans and Western medical researchers and the racist pseudoscience that resulted, it details the ways both slaves and freedmen were used in hospitals for experiments conducted... Read more

Weathering

The Extraordinary Stress of Ordinary Life in an Unjust Society

By: Dr. Arline T Geronimus
Narrated by: Alma Cuervo
Length: 13 hours 3 minutes

Fusing science and social justice, renowned public health researcher Dr. Arline T. Geronimus offers an urgent and necessary book exploring the ways in which systemic injustice erodes the health of marginalized people.
  America has woken up to what many of its citizens have known for centuries and to what public health statistics have evidenced... Read more