New Books in Medicine

Latest Episodes:

Lina Pinto-García, "Maraña: War and Disease in the Jungles of Colombia" (U Chicago Press, 2025) May 31, 2025

Show notes

In Maraña: War and Disease in the Jungles of Colombia(University of Chicago Press, 2025),Lina Pinto-García delves into the relationship between war and disease, focusing on Colombian armed conflict and the skin disease known as cutaneous leishmaniasis. Leishmaniasis is transmitted through the bite of female sandflies. The most common manifestation, cutaneous leishmaniasis, is neither deadly nor contagious: it affects the skin by producing lesions of varying size and shape. In Colombia, the insect vector of the disease is native to the same forested environments that have served as the main stage for one of the longest and most violent civil wars in Latin American history. As a result, the populations most affected by leishmaniasis in Colombia are members of the state army and non-state armed groups.

Pinto-García explores how leishmaniasis and the armed conflict are inextricably connected and mutually reinforcing. Her title, Maraña, means "tangle" in Spanish but is also commonly used in Colombia to name the entangled greenery, braided lianas, and dense foliage that characterize the tropical forests where leishmaniasis typically occurs. Pinto-García argues that leishmaniasis and the war are not merely linked, but enmarañadas to each other through narratives, technologies, and practices produced by the state, medicine, biomedical research, and the armed conflict itself. She also uses the concept of desenmarañados (disentangled) to discuss how other attachments between leishmaniasis and society could be formed through different scientific programs, technological designs, healthcare practices, regulations, and social and cultural processes capable of challenging violence, suffering, and inequality. All told, Maraña is a passionate study of how war has shaped the production of scientific knowledge about leishmaniasis and access to its treatments in Colombia.

This episode is hosted by Elena Sobrino, a lecturer in the Science and Technology Studies Program at Tufts University. Her research explores volunteer work, union histories, and environmentalism in the Flint water crisis. She is currently writing about the politics of fatigue and crisis, and teaching courses on science and technology studies, ethnographies of crisis, and global racisms. You can read more about her work at elenasobrino.site.

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Jaap de Roode, "Doctors by Nature: How Ants, Apes, and Other Animals Heal Themselves" (Princeton UP, 2025) May 28, 2025

Show notes

Ages before the dawn of modern medicine, wild animals were harnessing the power of nature's pharmacy to heal themselves. Doctors by Nature: How Ants, Apes, and Other Animals Heal Themselves(Princeton University Press, 2025) reveals what researchers are now learning about the medical wonders of the animal world. In this visionary book, Jaap de Roode argues that we have underestimated the healing potential of nature for too long and shows how the study of self-medicating animals could impact the practice of human medicine.

Drawing on illuminating interviews with leading scientists from around the globe as well as his own pioneering research on monarch butterflies, de Roode demonstrates how animals of all kinds--from ants to apes, from bees to bears, and from cats to caterpillars--use various forms of medicine to treat their own ailments and those of their relatives. We meet apes that swallow leaves to dislodge worms, sparrows that use cigarette butts to repel parasites, and bees that incorporate sticky resin into their hives to combat pathogens. De Roode asks whether these astonishing behaviors are learned or innate and explains why, now more than ever, we need to apply the lessons from medicating animals--it can pave the way for healthier livestock, more sustainable habitats for wild pollinators, and a host of other benefits.

Doctors by Nature takes readers into a realm often thought to be the exclusive domain of humans, exploring how scientists are turning to the medical knowledge of the animal kingdom to improve agriculture, create better lives for our pets, and develop new pharmaceutical drugs.

Jaap de Roode is Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Biology at Emory University, where he is director of the Infectious Diseases across Scales Training Program, which trains graduate students in interdisciplinary science to study and control infectious disease.

Caleb Zakarin is editor at the New Books Network.

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Gina Leola Woolsey, "Fifteen Thousand Pieces" (Guernica Editions, 2023) May 27, 2025

Show notes

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with author Gina Leola Woolsey about her stunning biography, Fifteen Thousand Pieces(Guernica Editions, 2023).

On Wednesday, September 2nd, 1998, an international flight carrying 229 souls crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Nova Scotia. There were no survivors. By Friday, Sept 4th, thousands of dismembered body parts had come through Dr. John Butt's makeshift morgue in Hangar B at the Shearwater military base. The Chief Medical Examiner faced the most challenging and grisly task of his career. Five years prior to the plane crash, John had lost his prestigious job as Alberta’s Chief Medical Examiner. After 14 years of marriage, John began to think of himself as gay, but remained closeted professionally. Then, after serving a handful of years as Nova Scotia's Chief Medical Examiner, the devastating crash in Nova Scotia cracked his carefully constructed façade. Fifteen Thousand Pieces explores one man's journey to accept his true nature and find his place in the world. Chapters alternate between the fast-paced story of the crash, and the history of the man in the making. It is both fast-paced and introspective; gruesome and touching. Ultimately, it is the story of how death teaches us to live.

About Gina Leola Woolsey:

CBC Award-winning author Gina Leola Woolsey tugs at your heartstrings with written portraits of people striving to find love, self-acceptance, and belonging in an ever-changing world. She left her corporate career mid-life to pursue an education in creative writing, earning a BFA from the University of British Columbia and an MFA from the University of King’s College. She lives wherever the narrative takes her. Currently, her time is split between small-town Alberta, downtown Montreal, and her hometown of Vancouver.

About Hollay Ghadery:

Hollay Ghadery is an Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, was released with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024. Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, is due out with Palimpsest Press in 2026, and her children’s book, Being with the Birds, with Guernica Editions in 2027. Hollay is a co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also a book publicist, the Regional Chair of the League of Canadian Poets and a co-chair of the League’s BIPOC committee, as well as the the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. Learn more about Hollay at www.hollayghadery.com.

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Nicole C. Nelson, "Model Behavior: Animal Experiments, Complexity, and the Genetics of Psychiatric Disorders" (U Chicago Press, 2018) May 16, 2025

Show notes

Mice are used as model organisms across a wide range of fields in science today--but it is far from obvious how studying a mouse in a maze can help us understand human problems like alcoholism or anxiety. How do scientists convince funders, fellow scientists, the general public, and even themselves that animal experiments are a good way of producing knowledge about the genetics of human behavior? In Model Behavior: Animal Experiments, Complexity, and the Genetics of Psychiatric Disorders(U Chicago Press, 2018), Nicole C. Nelson takes us inside an animal behavior genetics laboratory to examine how scientists create and manage the foundational knowledge of their field.

Behavior genetics is a particularly challenging field for making a clear-cut case that mouse experiments work, because researchers believe that both the phenomena they are studying and the animal models they are using are complex. These assumptions of complexity change the nature of what laboratory work produces. Whereas historical and ethnographic studies traditionally portray the laboratory as a place where scientists control, simplify, and stabilize nature in the service of producing durable facts, the laboratory that emerges from Nelson's extensive interviews and fieldwork is a place where stable findings are always just out of reach. The ongoing work of managing precarious experimental systems means that researchers learn as much--if not more--about the impact of the environment on behavior as they do about genetics. Model Behavior offers a compelling portrait of life in a twenty-first-century laboratory, where partial, provisional answers to complex scientific questions are increasingly the norm.

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Edward L. Jones III, "Medication, Mental Illness, and Murder: What Really Killed the Crespi Twins?" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2025) May 06, 2025

Show notes

While Kim Crespi was getting a haircut, her husband David murdered their five-year-old twin daughters during a game of hide and seek. In the aftermath, family, friends, and even David have more questions than answers.

In 2005, Kim Crespi had what she later described as "the perfect life." She and her husband, David--a gentle giant of a man, devoutly religious, a loving father, and a proven star in the world of finance--had five healthy, happy children. No one, least of all Kim, ever suspected that the life the Crespis had lovingly woven together could be destroyed in less than forty minutes.
In Medication, Mental Illness, and Murder, author Edward L. Jones III chronicles David Crespi's struggles with insomnia and depression, the role SSRI antidepressants may have played in the killings, and Kim's unimaginable journey of trauma, suffering, and eventual forgiveness as documented by her journal entries.
Using letters and other forms of personal communications with David, plus excerpts from scholarly articles and more, Jones takes readers on a journey into the dark heart of psychosis, of North Carolina's penal and mental health systems, and of Big Pharma.

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Caitlin Killian, "Understanding Reproduction in Social Contexts" (Bloomsbury, 2025) Apr 28, 2025

Show notes

In today's post-Roe v. Wade world, U.S. maternal mortality is on the rise and laws regarding contraception, involuntary sterilization, access to reproductive health services, and criminalization of people who are gestating are changing by the minute. Today I’m joined by Dr. Caitlin Killian, the editor of and one of the contributors to a new book from Bloomsbury Academic, Understanding Reproduction in Social Contexts: A Reader. I’m also pleased to host two of the chapter authors, Drs. Nancy Hiemstra and Jaya Keaney.

Using a reproductive justice framework, Understanding Reproduction in Social Contexts walks students through the social landscape around reproduction through the life course. Chapters by cutting-edge reproductive scholars, practitioners, and advocates address the social control of fertility and pregnancy, the promises and perils of assisted reproductive technologies, experiences of pregnancy, miscarriage, abortion, and birth, and how individuals make sense of and respond to the cultural, social, and political forces that condition their reproductive lives. The book takes an intersectional approach and considers how gender, sexuality, fatness, disability, class, race, and immigration status impact both an individual's health and the healthcare they receive. The reader includes timely topics such as increased legal limitations on abortion, transpeople and reproduction, and new developments in assisted reproduction and family formation. The book can support undergraduate and graduate courses on families, gender, public health, reproduction, and sexuality – and I’m pleased to have contributed a chapter.

Dr. Caitlin Killian is a Professor of Sociology at Drew University specializing in gender, families, reproduction, and immigration. We featured her book, Failing Moms: Social Condemnation and Criminalization of Mothers (Polity 2023) previously on New Books Network. Her articles have appeared in Contexts magazine and The Conversation, as well as numerous academic journals, and she has done work for the United Nations on sexual and reproductive health and rights and on Syrian refugee women

Dr. Nancy Hiemstra is a political, cultural, and feminist geographer and Associate Professor in the Department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Stony Brook University. Her scholarship focuses on how border and immigration policies shape patterns and consequences of human mobility. Her 2019 book Detain and Deport: The Chaotic U.S. Immigration Enforcement Regime examined the U.S. detention and deportation system, and her forthcoming book (with Deirdre Conlon) Immigration Detention Inc: The Big Business of Locking Up Migrants scrutinizes how profit making goals drive the expanding use of detention.

Dr Jaya Keaney is Lecturer in Gender Studies in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne. She writes, researches, and teaches in the fields of feminist technoscience, queer and feminist theory, and cultural studies. Her research across these fields explores reproduction, racism, and queer feminist practices of embodiment and inheritance. Jaya is the author of Making Gaybies: Queer Reproduction and Multiracial Feeling (Duke University Press, 2023), which was a finalist for the 2024 Rachel Carson Prize. Her writing has also appeared in journals such as Body and Society, Science Technology & Human Values, and the Duke University Press edited collection Long Term: Essays on Queer Commitment (2021).

Mentioned:

Susan’s interview with Caitlin on Failing Moms: The Social Condemnation and Criminalization of Mothers (Polity, 2024).

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Howard Chiang, "After Eunuchs: Science, Medicine, and the Transformation of Sex in Modern China" (Columbia UP, 2018) Apr 23, 2025

Show notes

Howard Chiang’s new book is a masterful study of the relationship between sexual knowledge and Chinese modernity. After Eunuchs: Science, Medicine, and the Transformation of Sex in Modern China (Columbia University Press, 2018) guides readers through the history of eunuchs in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the techniques of visualization that helped establish the conditions that produced sex as an object of empirical knowledge, the rise of sexology in the 1920s, the discourse of “sex change” in the press from the 1920s to the 1940s, and a famous case of the “first” Chinese transsexual in 1950s Taiwan. It is a must-read for anyone interested in the history of sexuality in China, and will be of special interest for readers who are interested in bringing Foucault-inspired analyses to the craft of history.

Carla Nappi is the Andrew W. Mellon Chair in the Department of History at the University of Pittsburgh. You can learn more about her and her work here.

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Daniel A. Rodriguez, "The Right to Live in Health: Medical Politics in Postindependence Havana" (U North Carolina Press, 2020) Apr 21, 2025

Show notes

Daniel A. Rodriguez's history of a newly independent Cuba shaking off the U.S. occupation, The Right to Live in Health: Medical Politics in Postindependence Havana (University of North Carolina Press, 2020), focuses on the intersection of public health and politics in Havana.

While medical policies were often used to further American colonial power, in Cuba, Rodriguez argues, they evolved into important expressions of anticolonial nationalism as Cuba struggled to establish itself as a modern state.

A younger generation of Cuban medical reformers, including physicians, patients, and officials, imagined disease as a kind of remnant of colonial rule. These new medical nationalists, as Rodriguez calls them, looked to medical science to guide Cuba toward what they envisioned as a healthy and independent future. Rodriguez describes how medicine and new public health projects infused republican Cuba's statecraft, powerfully shaping the lives of Havana's residents. He underscores how various stakeholders, including women and people of color, demanded robust government investment in quality medical care for all Cubans, a central national value that continues today.

On a broader level, Rodriguez proposes that Latin America, at least as much as the United States and Europe, was an engine for the articulation of citizens' rights, including the right to health care, in the twentieth century.

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Tiffany D. Joseph, "Not All In: Race, Immigration, and Health Care Exclusion in the Age of Obamacare" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2025) Apr 04, 2025

Show notes

Despite progressive policy strides in health care reform, immigrant communities continue to experience stark disparities across the United States. In Not All In: Race, Immigration, and Health Care Exclusion in the Age of Obamacare(Johns Hopkins UP, 2025), Tiffany D. Joseph exposes the insidious contradiction of Massachusetts' advanced health care system and the exclusionary experiences of its immigrant communities.

Joseph illustrates how patients' race, ethnicity, and legal status determine their access to health coverage and care services, revealing a disturbing paradox where policy advances and individual experiences drastically diverge. Examining Boston's Brazilian, Dominican, and Salvadoran communities, this book provides an exhaustive analysis spanning nearly a decade to highlight the profound impacts of the Affordable Care Act and subsequent policy shifts on these marginalized groups.

Not All In is a critical examination of the systemic barriers that perpetuate health care disparities. Joseph challenges readers to confront the uncomfortable truths about racialized legal status and its profound implications on health care access. This essential book illuminates the complexities of policy implementation and advocates for more inclusive reforms that genuinely cater to all. Urging policymakers, health care providers, and activists to rethink strategies that bridge the gap between legislation and life, this book reminds us that in the realm of health care, being progressive is not synonymous with inclusivity.

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Womanist Bioethics: Social Justice, Spirituality, and Black Women's Health Apr 03, 2025

Show notes

Black people, and especially Black women, suffer and die from diseases at much higher rates than their white counterparts. The vast majority of these health disparities are not attributed to behavioral differences or biology, but to the pervasive devaluation of Black bodies. Womanist Bioethics: Social Justice, Spirituality, and Black Women’s Health (NYU Press, 2025), by Dr. Wylin D. Wilson, addresses this crisis from a bioethical standpoint. It offers a critique of mainstream bioethics as having embraced the perspective of its mainly white, male progenitors, limiting the extent to which it is positioned to engage the issues that particularly affect vulnerable populations. This book makes the provocative but essential case that because African American women—across almost every health indicator—fare worse than others, we must not only include, but center, Black women’s experiences and voices in bioethics discourse and practice.

Womanist Bioethics develops the first specifically womanist form of bioethics, focused on the diverse vulnerabilities and multiple oppressions that women of color face. This innovative womanist bioethics is grounded in the Black Christian prophetic tradition, based on the ideas that God does not condone oppression and that it is imperative to defend those who are vulnerable. It also draws on womanist theology and Black liberation theology, which take similar stances. At its core, the volume offers a new, broad-based approach to bioethics that is meant as a corrective to mainstream bioethics’ privileging of white, particularly male, experiences, and it outlines ways in which hospitals, churches, and the larger community can better respond to the healthcare needs of Black women.

Our guest is: Dr. Wylin D. Wilson, who is associate professor of theological ethics at Duke Divinity School. Her work lies at the intersection of religion, gender, and bioethics. Her academic interests also include rural bioethics and Black church studies. Prior to joining Duke Divinity School in 2020, she was a teaching faculty member at the Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics and a senior fellow at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School. She is the theologian-in-residence for the Children's Defense Fund and is a member of the American Academy of Religion’s Bioethics and Religion Program Unit Steering Committee. Among her publications is her book, Economic Ethics and the Black Church.

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is the creator and producer of the Academic

Life podcast.

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