Recommendations based on Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospitalby Sheri Fink

* statistically, based on millions of data-points provided by fellow humans

  1. Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness

    by Susannah Cahalan
    A journalist's journey of survival and recovery from a rare autoimmune disorder.

    An award-winning memoir and instant New York Times bestseller that goes far beyond its riveting medical mystery, Brain on Fire is the powerful account of one woman’s struggle to recapture her ... (Goodreads)

  2. Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End

    by Atul Gawande
    An exploration of the human experience of mortality and the importance of end-of-life care.

    In, Being Mortal, author Atul Gawande tackles the hardest challenge of his profession: how medicine can not only improve life but also the process of its ending Medicine has triumphed in modern ... (Goodreads)

  3. Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity

    by Katherine Boo
    Explores the lives of the people living in Mumbai's slums and the harsh realities they face.

    From Pulitzer Prize-winner Katherine Boo, a landmark work of narrative nonfiction that tells the dramatic and sometimes heartbreaking story of families striving toward a better life in one of the ... (Goodreads)

  4. Orange Is the New Black

    by Piper Kerman
    A memoir of a woman's experiences in prison, exploring the effects of incarceration.

    With her career, live-in boyfriend and loving family, Piper Kerman barely resembles the rebellious young woman who got mixed up with drug runners and delivered a suitcase of drug money to Europe over ... (Goodreads)

  5. The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration

    by Isabel Wilkerson
    An exploration of the life-changing journeys of the millions of African-Americans who migrated from the South to the North, Midwest, and West from 1915 to 1970.

    In this epic, beautifully written masterwork, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Isabel Wilkerson chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black ... (Goodreads)

  6. Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

    by Susan Cain
    An exploration of the power of introversion, examining the implications of modern society's emphasis on extroversion.

    The book that started the Quiet Revolution, At least one-third of the people we know are introverts. They are the ones who prefer listening to speaking; who innovate and create but dislike ... (Goodreads)

  7. The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League

    by Jeff Hobbs
    A poignant biography of a man's rise and fall, caught in the crossfire of economic and social inequality.

    An instant, New York Times, bestseller, named a best book of the year by, The New York Times Book Review, Amazon, and, Entertainment Weekly, among others, this celebrated account of a young ... (Barnes & Noble)

  8. One of Us: The Story of Anders Breivik and the Massacre in Norway

    by Åsne Seierstad
    Tragic account of the life of a mass murderer and the terror he inflicted on Norway.

    A harrowing and thorough account of the massacre that upended Norway, and the trial that helped put the country back together On July 22, 2011, Anders Behring Breivik detonated a bomb outside ... (Goodreads)

  9. Seabiscuit: An American Legend

    by Laura Hillenbrand
    An inspiring story of the rise of champion racehorse Seabiscuit and his unlikely jockey.

    There's an alternate cover edition, here, Seabiscuit was one of the most electrifying and popular attractions in sports history and the single biggest newsmaker in the world in 1938, receiving more ... (Goodreads)

  10. Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery

    by Robert Kolker
    The true story of the unsolved murders of five young women in Long Island, and the societal issues that contributed to their deaths.

    Award-winning investigative reporter Robert Kolker delivers a humanizing account of the true-life search for a serial killer still at large on Long Island and presents the first detailed look at the ... (Goodreads)

  11. Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal

    by Mary Roach
    A journey through the digestive system, exploring its secrets and mysteries.

    The irresistible, ever-curious, and always best-selling Mary Roach returns with a new adventure to the invisible realm we carry around inside. “America’s funniest science writer” ( Washington Post ) ... (Barnes & Noble)

  12. Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI

    by David Grann
    Exposé of a series of murders of the Osage Nation in 1920s Oklahoma and the FBI's investigation.

    In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Indian Nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, the Osage rode in chauffeured automobiles, ... (Goodreads)

  13. The Good Nurse: A True Story of Medicine, Madness, and Murder

    by Charles Graeber
    The true story of a nurse who killed hundreds of patients, and the detectives who worked tirelessly to bring him to justice.

    After his December 2003 arrest, registered nurse Charlie Cullen was quickly dubbed "The Angel of Death" by the media. But Cullen was no mercy killer, nor was he a simple monster. He was a favorite ... (Barnes & Noble)

  14. American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst

    by Jeffrey Toobin
    A riveting account of the notorious Patty Hearst kidnapping and trial.

    On February 4, 1974, Patty Hearst, a sophomore in college and heiress to the Hearst Family fortune, was kidnapped by a ragtag group of self-styled revolutionaries calling itself the Symbonese ... (Goodreads)

  15. The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics

    by Daniel James Brown
    An inspiring story of a rowing crew battling against the odds to win gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

    This novel is about the University of Washington eight-oared crew that represented the United States in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, and narrowly beat out Italy and Germany to win the gold medal. The ... (Wikipedia)

  16. Men We Reaped

    by Jesmyn Ward
    A memoir examining the death of five young African-American men, and the societal issues that contributed to their demise.

    Named one of the Best Books of the Century by, New York, Magazine, Two-time National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward (,Salvage the Bones, Sing, Unburied, Sing,) contends with the deaths of five young ... (Barnes & Noble)

  17. Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

    by Irin Carmon
    Celebrating the life and legacy of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

    New York Times Bestseller Featured in the critically acclaimed documentary, RBG, "It was beyond my wildest imagination that I would one day become the 'Notorious RBG." — Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 2019 She ... (Barnes & Noble)

  18. Twelve Years a Slave

    by Solomon Northup
    A man's journey of survival and resilience after being kidnapped and sold into slavery in the antebellum South.

    Twelve Years a Slave, sub-title: Narrative of Solomon Northup, citizen of New-York, kidnapped in Washington city in 1841, and rescued in 1853, from a cotton plantation near the Red River in ... (Goodreads)

  19. Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

    by Erik Larson
    Exploration of Lusitania's fateful voyage and its lasting impact on World War I.

    #1 New York Times Bestseller,From the bestselling author and master of narrative nonfiction comes the enthralling story of the sinking of the, Lusitania, On May 1, 1915, with WWI entering its tenth ... (Barnes & Noble)

  20. Between the World and Me

    by Ta-Nehisi Coates
    A letter to his son, exploring the realities of racism in America.

    “This is your country, this is your world, this is your body, and you must find some way to live within the all of it.” In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American ... (Goodreads)

  21. Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime

    by John Heilemann
    A behind-the-scenes look at the 2008 US Presidential Election and the people who ran it.

    “It’s one of the best books on politics of any kind I’ve read. For entertainment value, I put it up there with Catch 22 .” — The Financial Times “It transports you to a parallel universe in which ... (Goodreads)

  22. We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families

    by Philip Gourevitch
    True story of the 1994 Rwandan genocide and its aftermath, told through the eyes of survivors.

    In April of 1994, the government of Rwanda called on everyone in the Hutu majority to kill everyone in the Tutsi minority. Over the next three months, 800,000 Tutsis were murdered in the most ... (Goodreads)

  23. In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom

    by Yeonmi Park
    A young woman's harrowing escape from North Korea and her struggle to survive and thrive in a new country.

    Human rights activist Park, who fled North Korea with her mother in 2007 at age 13 and eventually made it to South Korea two years later after a harrowing ordeal, recognized that in order to be ... (Goodreads)

  24. Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void

    by Mary Roach
    Exploring the science, technology and culture of human space travel.

    The best-selling author of Stiff and Bonk explores the irresistibly strange universe of space travel and life without gravity. From the Space Shuttle training toilet to a crash test of NASA’s new ... (Goodreads)

  25. Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide

    by Nicholas D. Kristof
    Examining the global struggle of women and how to empower them in the face of oppression.

    From two of our most fiercely moral voices, a passionate call to arms against our era’s most pervasive human rights violation: the oppression of women and girls in the developing world. With Pulitzer ... (Goodreads)

  26. Waiting to Be Heard: A Memoir

    by Amanda Knox
    Amanda Knox's memoir of her wrongful conviction and imprisonment for the murder of her roommate in Italy.

    In the fall of 2007, twenty-year old college coed Amanda Knox left Seattle to study abroad in Perugia, Italy for one year. But that November 1, her life was shattered when her roommate, British ... (Goodreads)

  27. The World As It Is: Inside the Obama White House

    by Ben Rhodes
    A memoir of Ben Rhodes' time as a speechwriter and foreign policy advisor in the Obama administration.

    This is a book about two people making the most important decisions in the world. One is Barack Obama. The other is Ben Rhodes. The World As It Is tells the full story of what it means to work ... (Goodreads)

  28. Columbine

    by Dave Cullen
    Investigation into the 1999 Columbine High School massacre, exploring the perpetrators and the aftermath.

    "The tragedies keep coming. As we reel from the latest horror . . . " So begins a new epilogue, illustrating how Columbine became the template for nearly two decades of "spectacle murders." It is a ... (Goodreads)

  29. Zeitoun

    by Dave Eggers
    A man's struggle to survive and reunite with his family amidst the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

    Abdulrahman Zeitoun grew up in Syria. After a few years of apprenticeship in the Syrian port city of Jableh , Zeitoun spent twenty years working at sea as a muscleman, engineer and fisherman. During ... (Wikipedia)

  30. The World's Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette's, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family

    by Josh Hanagarne
    A memoir of a librarian with Tourette's syndrome, who finds solace in books and strength in his family.

    An inspiring story of how a Mormon kid with Tourette's found salvation in books and weight-lifting. Josh Hanagarne couldn't be invisible if he tried. Although he wouldn't officially be diagnosed with ... (Goodreads)