In her memoir of a life lived in physical pain, Karen Engle asks whether and how language can capture what it’s like to be in a body that appears to work from the outside, when its internal systems operate through an ad hoc assemblage of garbled messaging, reroutings, and shaky foundations.
A practical and occasionally provocative look at the state of spinal surgical care.
In Wired for Music, Adriana Barton sets out to discover what music is really for, combing through medical studies, discoveries by pioneering neuroscientists, and research from biology and anthropology.
While seeking his own answers to the death dilemma, Bigham generously brings readers along for the ride. Skillfully written and well-researched, Death Interrupted offers a thought-provoking read.
A writer’s witty and surprisingly optimistic account of learning to live with Parkinson’s disease.
A searching, self-deprecating memoir of a man on his way to eating himself to death before discovering the anxiety and fulfillment of distance running.
When Genevieve Chornenki escapes a brush with blindness, things never looked better-city pigeons, people, stainless steel pots. But questions about her experience linger: Who was responsible for her close call? Can she safeguard other people’s eyesight? How do our eyes work, anyway, and why do they give so much pleasure?
A Womb in the Shape of a Heart is the intimate story of Gallant’s journey through miscarriage and motherhood, holding space for the complicated paradoxes of grief and gratitude, of life and death, and the impenetrable depths of a mother’s love.
Author Brian Owens looks at the conflicts that exist in recognizing, diagnosing and treating Lyme disease, and the failed human vaccine.
As an experienced psychiatrist, Dr. Manuel Matas is very familiar with the science of the human brain—as well as the possibilities that exist beyond the known borders of consciousness. He has never been a classic rationalist, as he himself has experienced phenomena that defy logic and the explanations of Western medicine.
In Transplanted, author Allison Watson describes her life with Cystic Fibrosis (CF) and her lung’s long, slow decline to the point where only a double-lung transplant can save her life. As of this book, she is four years post-transplant and is doing well.
About Face: Essays on Addictions, Recovery, Therapies, and Controversies seeks to broaden the conversation around addiction in Canada.