Health & Lifestyle
Last updated: September 25, 2024
Our health and lifestyle books section covers an extraordinarily rich range of topics on mental and physical health, how we lose them and how to keep them, and on modern living, how to manage it and how to enjoy it. Everything from Marriage and motherhood to death and depression, from childbirth to midlife crises, from happiness to capital punishment.
Health sections explore books on diet, addiction, illnesses and medical conditions. Those related to lifestyles cover every aspect of families and relationships and sex and sexuality, parenting, and education. There are interviews on motherhood, fatherhood, happiness for children, millenials, mindful parenting, boyhood and growing up, to mention a few. There are interviews on sex, sex education, sex and society, sex and marriage, the 18th century sexual revolution, gay fiction, adultery and sperm.
There are a range of interviews dedicated to fashion and style, but also work and leisure and how to cope with (and remain in good health under) the strains of a modern lifestyle, including the mid-life crisis, everyday living, relationship therapy, health and the internet, the art of living, dieting, glamour, misery in the modern world, happiness through negative thinking, slow living, why cities are good for you, optimism, living prudently, how to be happier, wrongness, lying, human imperfection and the meaning of life.
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1
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
by Siddhartha Mukherjee -
2
Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
by Atul Gawande -
3
When Breath Becomes Air
by Paul Kalanithi -
4
Rebel Cell: Cancer, Evolution and the New Science of Life
by Kat Arney -
5
Stories of Cancer and Hope
by Kevin Donaghy
The best books on Cancer, recommended by Jarle Breivik
The best books on Cancer, recommended by Jarle Breivik
Many of us view cancer as an enemy that we have to fight and look forward to the day it is eliminated by modern medicine. But that’s not going to happen, says Jarle Breivik, a professor of medicine at the University of Oslo. He argues for a more realistic approach to cancer as a fundamental part of life and what it means to be human.
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1
Nine Perfect Strangers
by Liane Moriarty -
2
The New Wellness Workbook: How to Achieve Enduring Health and Vitality
by John Travis -
3
The Serial: A Year in the Life of Marin County
by Cyra McFadden -
4
The Penguin Book of New Age And Holistic Writing
ed. William Bloom -
5
Wellmania: Extreme Misadventures in the Search for Wellness
by Brigid Delaney
The best books on Wellness, recommended by James Riley
The best books on Wellness, recommended by James Riley
Today the idea of wellness has been wrapped into ‘self care’ and the luxury lifestyle. But the movement grew out of radical ideas in the 1960s and 1970s, explains the Cambridge academic James Riley, whose new book presents a cultural history of alternative health. Here he recommends five of the best books on wellness—taking in both satirical novels and how-to guidebooks.
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1
Lifespan: Why We Age and Why We Don't Have To
by David A. Sinclair -
2
Eat Like the Animals: What Nature Teaches us About the Science of Healthy Eating
by David Raubenheimer & Stephen Simpson -
3
The Human Advantage: A New Understanding of How Our Brain Became Remarkable
by Suzana Herculano-Houzel -
4
Long for this World: The Strange Science of Immortality
by Jonathan Weiner -
5
Charlatan: America’s Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam
by Pope Brock
The best books on Longevity, recommended by Steven Austad
The best books on Longevity, recommended by Steven Austad
The promises of potions or techniques to achieve longevity have been with us since time immemorial, the outlandishness of some claims matched only by our willingness to believe them. And, yet, today’s scientific research does give some clues on how to live longer and healthier lives. Biologist Steven Austad, Distinguished Professor and Endowed Chair in Healthy Aging Research at the University of Alabama, recommends a range of books that give insight into longevity.
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1
Letter on Corpulence, Addressed to the Public
by William Banting -
2
Pure, White, and Deadly: How Sugar Is Killing Us and What We Can Do to Stop It
by John Yudkin -
3
The F-Plan Diet: Lose Weight Fast and Live Longer
by Audrey Eyton -
4
The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted
by T. Colin Campbell & Thomas M. Campbell II -
5
The Fast Diet: Lose Weight, Stay Healthy, and Live Longer with the Simple Secret of Intermittent Fasting
by Michael Mosley
Diet Books, selected by Tim Spector
Diet Books, selected by Tim Spector
Fad diets have been with us for generations, but the truth is that any regime that focuses on excluding whole food groups should be approached with caution, says Tim Spector, Professor of Genetic Epidemiology at King’s College London and author of the bestselling books The Diet Myth and Spoon-Fed. For this reason, he says, intermittent fasting (also known as the 5:2 diet) is the only weight-loss diet he’d truly recommend.
The best books on Medicine and Literature, recommended by Gavin Francis
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.
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1
Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice
by Shunryu Suzuki -
2
The Life of Milarepa
Translated by Lobsang P Lhalungpa -
3
Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism
by Chogyam Trungpa -
4
The Bodhicaryāvatāra
by Śāntideva -
5
One Robe, One Bowl: The Zen Poetry of Ryōkan
by Ryōkan
Meditation Books, recommended by Andy Puddicombe
Meditation Books, recommended by Andy Puddicombe
Two decades ago Andy Puddicombe was ordained as a Buddhist monk. Now back in lay life, he tries to teach the benefits of meditation to the rest of us—most notably through the Headspace app, but also by writing books. Here he chooses some of the books that inspired him, from Japanese poetry to Tibetan philosophy. Not all are meditation books but they are his “old favorites.”
The best books on Sex, recommended by Susan Quilliam
Sex: it’s all around us, but many of us still have questions. Relationship coach and author Susan Quilliam, who updated the 1970s classic, The Joy of Sex, talks us through the best sex guides and also some of the groundbreaking books that broke taboos and paved the way to more open-minded sexual attitudes.
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1
Polio: An American Story
by David Oshinsky -
2
Vaccine: The Controversial Story of Medicine's Greatest Lifesaver
by Arthur Allen -
3
The Cutter Incident: How America's First Polio Vaccine Led to the Growing Vaccine Crisis
by Paul Offit -
4
Microbe Hunters
by Paul de Kruif -
5
The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic
by Steven Johnson
The Best Vaccine Books, recommended by Seth Mnookin
The Best Vaccine Books, recommended by Seth Mnookin
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.
The best books on Ageing, recommended by Kathleen Taylor
Old age. We all hope to reach it, but there are big differences between a ‘good’ old age and one beset by dementia or Alzheimer’s. Neuroscientist and science writer, Kathleen Taylor, talks us through the latest science on ageing and the literary works that can give us a clearer picture of what it’s all about.
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1
Ganong's Review of Medical Physiology
by Kim Barrett et al -
2
Harper's Illustrated Biochemistry
by Victor Rodwell et al -
3
Reactivity of a monoclonal antibody with human ovarian carcinoma
by Bob Bast et al -
4
78 Papers on p53
by Various -
5
An Introduction to R
by W N Venables and D M Smith and the R Core Team
Ovarian Cancer: a reading list, recommended by Ahmed Ahmed
Ovarian Cancer: a reading list, recommended by Ahmed Ahmed
While survival rates for many types of cancer have improved dramatically in recent decades, progress in ovarian cancer has remained more elusive. Leading ovarian cancer researcher, Ahmed Ahmed, talks us through some of the books and articles that inspired him as he tries to get to the bottom of this ‘very, very enigmatic disease.’