What’s on Your Shelf? Recommended Reading in the New Year
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Over the past few years in this column, I have occasionally shouted out a book I have read and I have occasionally been rewarded by more than a few of my readers then sharing with me their thoughts and experiences of these same works. As the first editorial of 2020, I thought it might be fun to go to my bookshelf and share a number of the titles I have read over the past year.
I always read both nonfiction and fiction at the same time, but I am only going to give you my nonfiction picks. To get my fiction reading list, you will have to buy me a glass of wine so I can wave my hands and tell you why I picked certain books. A second caveat is that I must be truthful and tell you that I often buy the Kindle version of a nonfiction book first, and if I really like it, then I buy the real deal because I like to write and scribble in my books. I am not sure what that says about me but that’s the way it is and virtually all have come into my passion this way.
Calabrese
There is no total unifying theme of the nine books I am recommending to you but, after looking at this stack, I think I found a few threads. My intention in this column is to give you enough information that will tempt you to pick one or more up on the basis of our shared interests. The first theme surrounds my work, namely the field of immunology in all its glory. There are three books that deal with my field and thus one may wonder what there could be in books written for the lay public that would make heart a card-carrying immunology guy’s heart sing to read? The answer is easy. It’s all about the humanity.
In An Elegant Defense, Matt Richtel recounts stories of real patients with HIV, rheumatoid arthritis, and cancer intersecting with therapeutic advances in the field, and the enormous impact these changes have had on them. In The Breakthrough, Charles Graeber details the backstory of the people behind the development of checkpoint inhibitors, including many colorful interviews with Nobel Laureate James P. Allison, PhD — even for me, actively working in the field, this was a terrific read.
Finally, the real sleeper in the immunology cassette, is The Beautiful Cure by Daniel M. Davis, which — despite not garnering the press it deserves, in my opinion — is a brilliant treatise on the evolution of the field of immunology over the past century. The book is written in scholarly fashion, but laced with terrific backstories in the style of The Gene by Siddhartha Mukherjee. Read it!
Switching gears, The Compassionate Connection by David Rakel and Suggestible You by Eric Vance are all about placebo science and the role of interpersonal relationships in building wellness and healing. Both of these are great reads and I am planning on a cover story/roundtable in the spring on placebo science in rheumatology. See how this works now?
The Longevity Diet by Valter Longo, PhD, a leading researcher in aging/longevity research is a terrific read on something we all share an interest in — namely how to eat and living a long life. I find choosing books in the wellness field often problematic given the myriad of bugnutty offerings out there, but I assure you, Dr. Longo is a scientist in the truest sense of the word. I recently hosted him at my 2019 Cleveland Clinic Biologic Therapies VIII Summit, a presentation you will be able to watch when it posts on our website in the near future.
In my previous editorials in February 2019 and April 2019, I have already discussed the profound impact of The Empathy Effect by Helen Reiss, MD, and Deep Medicine by Eric Topol, MD, so I will not expound on them again — if you haven’t picked up by now, please do. Perhaps counterintuitively, I believe these books on empathy and artificial intelligence are intimately related. As I have written in the past, one of the most exciting and challenging areas of investigation lying ahead is how to bring empathy to the growing onslaught of AI, machine learning and technology. We must figure this out.
Finally, why did Leonardo Da Vinci, by the noted biographer Walter Isaacson, make it to my bedside reading table? There are many reasons, perhaps prominent among them that 2019 was the 500th anniversary of the death of the most curious man with the greatest mind the world has ever known. Probably more important is a passion to learn about him instilled by a friend and a physician, humanist and Da Vinci scholar, Sal Mangione, MD, from Thomas Jefferson University.
I have heard Dr. Mangione speak on Da Vinci many times, and he has also graced our Medical Grand Rounds podium frequently discussing art, observation and humanism. His passion for the life, work and genius of Leonardo Da Vinci is quite infectious, and the book is a great start to understanding the master — Thank you Sal, I am hooked.
These are my nonfiction picks from the last year – tell me about yours through Twitter at @LCalabreseDO or email me at calabrl@ccf.org.
- For more information:
- Leonard H. Calabrese, DO, is the Chief Medical Editor, Healio Rheumatology, and Professor of Medicine, Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University, and RJ Fasenmyer Chair of Clinical Immunology at the Cleveland Clinic.
Disclosures: Calabrese reports consulting relationships with AbbVie, Centecor Biopharmaceutical, Crescendo Bioscience, GlaxoSmithKline, Horizon Pharma, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Pfizer, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals and UCB.