John Rhodes, immunologist and author of The End of Plagues and How to Make a Vaccine, selects five of the best books to help the layperson understand the human immune system in all its fiendish complexity—and explains why the discovery of a successful vaccine is only the initial breakthrough in the long and logistically challenging battle for disease eradication.

What can literature offer to medicine and what can medicine offer to literature? Author and physician Gavin Francis offers his professional opinion – and prescribes a list of five notable books at the intersection of his two great passions.

Public understanding of radiation needs to improve if people are to properly assess its benefits and risks argues author and academic, Timothy Jorgensen. From the discovery of radio to a cancer cluster in New Jersey, he chooses highly readable books illuminating different aspects of radiation.

The history of vaccines is fascinating, and we highly recommend all the books discussed in this interview with Seth Mnookin, author of The Panic Virus and Professor of Science Writing at MIT. These are gripping reads that tell the story of vaccines, medicine’s greatest life-saver, and the risks people took to find them.

Infectious disease expert—and former director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention— Thomas Frieden, takes us inside the world of fighting epidemics, eradicating disease and confronting the preventable damage we do to ourselves.

Historian and author Louise Foxcroft prescribes reading on medical practices of the past, from treatments of madness and non-existent disease, to drug use and the origins of hypochondria.

The Italian cardiologist and fellow of the International Association for Cannabis as Medicine proposes five books on Medicinal Marijuana and explains why we should be reading them.