For a premed student, reading will:
- Increase your reading speed and comprehension is to READ more (helpful for your admissions test)
- Keep you abreast of medical issues, medical advancements, policies that affect medicine, etc.

Suggested Readings:

Adams, Patch and Pamela Jacobs, Housecalls How We Can All Heal the World One Visit at a Time (176 pgs)

Arviso Alvord , Lori. The Scalpel and the Silver Bear

Asbell, B. & David Hartman. White Coat, White Cane: The Extraordinary Odyssey of a Blind Physician, 1978

Becker, Howard S. et al. Boys in White: Student Culture in Medical School, 1991

Belkin, Lisa. First Do No Harm, 1993

Bickel, Janet. Women in Medicine: Getting in, Growing, and Advancing

Bosk, Charles L. Forgive and Remember: Managing Medical Failure

Boulerice Lyons, Dianne. Planning Your Career in Alternative Medicine: A Guide to Degree and Certificate Programs in Alternative Healthcare

Brody, Howard. Stories of Sickness, 1988

Broyard, Anatole. Intoxicated by My Illness

Buckman, Robert. I Don't Know What to Say, 1989

Buckman, Robert. Not Dead Yet, 1999

Campo, Rafael. Landscape with Human Figure, 2002

Campo, Rafael. The Desire to Heal: A Doctor's Education in Empathy, Identity, and Poetry, 1998

Carson, Ben. Gifted Hands, the Ben Carson Story. 1990 (112 pgs)

Cassell, Joan. The Woman in the Surgeon's Body, 1998 (280 pgs)

Chekhov, Anton. Ward Six and Other Stories

Coles, Robert. A Robert Coles Omnibus,1993

Coles, Robert. The Call of Service: A Witness to Idealism Reprint 1994

Coles, Robert. The Call of Stories, Teaching and the Moral Imagination, 1990

Colgrove, Melba, Harold Bloomfield, & Peter McWilliams, How to Survive the Loss of a Love

Crichton, Michael. Five Patients: The Hospital Explained, 1989

Dan, Bruce. A Piece of My Mind: A Collection of Essays from JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association),1988

Daniel, Eileen. Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial Issues in Health and Society

Dans, Peter. Doctors in the Movies: Boil the Water and Just Say Aah

David, Hilfiker. Not all of us are Saints, Hill and Wang 1994 (276 pages)

Davis, Sampson. The Pact: Three Young Men Make a Promise and Fulfill a Dream (Riverhead Books, 2002) (131 pgs)

Drayer, Jeff. The Cost-Effective Use of Leeches and Other Musings of a Medical School Survivor

Duncan, David Ewing. Residents: The Perils and Promise of Educating Young Doctors

Elders, Joycelyn. From Sharecropper's Daughter to Surgeon General of the USA

Eliot, George. Middlemarch

Fadiman, Anne. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down

Fister, Jeffrey. The Plaque Makers, 1994

Foley, Denise & Eileen Necha. Unequal Treatment, What You Don't Know About How Women are Treated by the Medical Community

Former, Paul. Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights & the New War on the poor

Malcom, Andrew. Someday: The Story of a Mother and her Son, 1992

Frank, Arthur. At the Will of the Body: Reflections on Illness, 1992

Gage, Loretta. If Wishes Were Horses. 1995

Galanti, Geri-Ann. Caring for Patients from Different Cultures: Case Studies from American Hospitals

Garrett, Susan. Taking Care of Our Own: A Year in the Life of a Small Hospital, 1995

Gawande, Atul. Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science, 2002

Gerber, Lane. Married to their Careers: Career and Family Dilemmas in Doctors' Lives, 1983

Gevitz, Norman. Other Healers: Unorthodox Medicine in America, 1988

Gevitz, Norman. The D.O. as Osteopathic Medicine in America, 1982

Gibbs, Harlan and Alan Duncan Ross, The Medicine of ER, or How We Almost Die, Basic Books, 1996

Gorovitz, Samuel. Doctors' Dilemmas

Gorovitz, Samuel. Drawing The Line, Life, Death, and Ethical Choices in an American Hospital,1991

Haddad, Amy. Health Professional and Patient Interaction,5th Edition

Harvey, James. Young American Health Quackery: Collected Essays

Hawkins, Anne. Reconstructing Illness: Studies in Pathography, 1993

Herzig, Karen. What I Learned in Medical School: Personal Stories of Young Doctors (Students' struggles with their education) (230 pgs)

Heymann, Jody. Equal Partners, 1995

Hilfiker, David. Healing the Wounds: A Physician Looks at his Work, 1988

Humes, Edward. Baby ER, The Heroic Doctors and Nurses Who Perform Medicine's Tiniest Miracles (Humes is a winner of the Pulitzer Prize)

Hunter, Kathryn. Doctor as Stories: The Narrative Structure of Medical Knowledge, 1991

Iserson, M.D., Ken. Demon Doctors: Physicians as Serial Killers

Jinks, Martin. Health Care Systems Around the World: Characteristics, Issues, Reforms

Jones, Rosemary. Educational and Career Opportunities in Alternative Medicine (Pima Publishing, 1998)

Karesh, William. Appointment at the Ends of the World, a memoir

Kaysen, Susanna. Girl Interrupted, 1993 (167 pages)

Klass, Perri. A Not Entirely Benign Procedure, 1988 (288 pgs)

Klass, Perri. Baby Doctor,1993

Klawans, Harold. Toscanini's Fumble and Other Tales of Clinical Neurology (229 pgs)

Kleinman, Arthur. The Illness Narratives

Konner, M.D., Melvin. Becoming a Doctor: A Journey of Initiation in Medical School

Lapierre, Dominique. Beyond Love

Laster, M.D. Leonard. Life After Medical School, Thirty-two Doctors Describe How They Shaped Their Medical Careers

LeBaron, Charles. Gentle Vengeance (272 pgs)

Lerner Rothman, Ellen. White Coat: Becoming a Doctor at Harvard Medical, 1999 (352 pgs)

Lewis, Sinclair. Arrowsmith

Lightman, Alan. The Diagnosis, 2000

Lorde, Audre. The Cancer Journals, 1980

Ludmerer, Kenneth. Time to Heal (544 pgs)

Lundberg, George D. Severed Trust: Why American Medicine Hasn’t Been Fixed—and What We Can Do About It

Marion, Robert. Learning to Play God: The Coming of Age of a Young Doctor, 1991

Marion, Robert. The Intern Blues

Marshall, Catherine. Christy

Martin, Emily. Flexible Bodies: Tracking Immunity in American Culture from the Days of Polio to the Age of AIDS, 1994

Martin, Emily. The Woman in the Body: A Cultural Analysis of Reproduction, 1987

McCrum, Robert. My Year Off, Recovering Life After a Stroke, 1998

McPhee, John. Heirs of General Practice, 1988

Miller, Judith. Germs: Biological Weapons and America’s Secret War

Moore, Stuart. Chiropractic in American: The History of a Medical Alternative, 1993

Mullan, Fitzhugh. Big Doctoring in America: Profiles in Primary Care. 2002 A collection of 15 oral histories from primary care practitioners (12 physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistant and NP-PA) across the country

Nesse, Randollph M. & George C. Williams, Why We Get Sick: The New Science of Darwinian Medicine, 1996

Nielsen MD, Jerri. Ice Bound: A Doctor's Incredible Battle for Survival at the South Pole (377 pgs)

Nuland, Sherwin B. Doctors

Nuland, Sherwin B. How We Die

Nuland, Sherwin B. Lost in America: a Journey with My Father (244 pgs)

Nuland, Sherwin B. The Biography of Medicine

Nuland, Sherwin B. The Mysteries Within: A Surgeon Explores Myth, Medicine, and the Human Body, 2001 (288 pgs)

Ofri, Danielle. Singular Intimacies: Becoming a Doctor at Bellevue

Oz, Mehmet et al, Healing from the Heart, the Power of Complementary Medicine, 1998

Pence, Gregory E. Classic Cases in Medical Ethics: Accounts of Cases that Have Shaped Medical Ethics with Philosophical, Legal, and Historical Background

Preston, Richard. The Hot Zone: A Terrifying True Story

Price, Reynolds. A Whole New Life, 1994

Radner, Gilda. It's Always Something, 1990

Remen, Rachel Naomi. Kitchen Table Wisdom

Rosenbaum, Edward. A Taste of My Own Medicine (When the Doctor is the Patient), 1988

Rosenbaum, Edward. Doctor, 1991

Roth, Philip. Patrimony: A True Story, 1991

Rothman, Sheil. Living in the Shadow of Death: Tuberculosis and the Social Experience of Illness in American History, 1994

Sacks, Oliver. A Leg to Stand On, 1984 (224 pages)

Sacks, Oliver. Awakenings

Sacks, Oliver. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for A Hat: And Other Clinical Tales (256 pgs)

Sacks, Oliver. Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood (352 pgs)

Salmon, J. Warren editor, The Corporate Transformation of Health Care: Perspectives and Implications

Savett, Laurence A. The Human Side of Medicine: Learning What It's Like to be a Patient and What It's Like to be a Physician (ISBN 0-86569-319-6)

Sawicki, Stephen. Animal Hospital, 1997

Schweitzer, Albert. Out of My Life and Thought (296 pages)

Selzer, Richard. Letters to a Young Doctor, 1982 (205 pages)

Shem, Samuel. House of God

Sontag, Susan. Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and its Metaphors, 1991

Spiro, Howard et al. (eds.): Empathy and the Practice of Medicine, Beyond the Pill and Scapel, 1993

Starr, Paul. The Social Transformation of American Medicine

Irvine Loudon, Editor, Western Medicine, an Illustrated History, 1997

Stone, Jim. In the Country of Hearts: Journeys in the Art of Medicine, 1992

Stryon, William. Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness, 1990 (96 pages)

Syahn, David. (Editor), MD from writings collected by Alan Kozak, MD, Let Me Listen to Your Heart (a compilation of remarkably moving writings by third year medical students)

Thomas, Lewis. The Youngest Science: Notes of a Medicine-Watcher

Verghese, Abraham. My Own Country: A Doctor’s Story (448 pages)

Weil, Andrew. Health and Healing, 1988

Williams, Carlos. The Doctor Stories, 1984 (142 pages)

Young, Harvey. The Medical Messiahs, a Social History of Health Quackery in Twentieth-Century America, 1967

Zazove, Philip. When the Phone Rings, My Bed Shakes: Memoirs of a Deaf Doctor, 1993

Recommended Periodicals:

The New York Times (particularly the Tuesday and Sunday editions)

The Wall Street Journal

American Medical News

The New Physician (a magazine published by AMSA)

Scientific American

Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA)

The New England Journal of Medicine (weekly journal)

Journal of the American Academy of Optometry for optometry