Compelling reads about the practice of medicine

I've recently read a few gripping selections about how we train doctors, do medicine, and think about what it means to take care of ourselves and each other. I've been inspired to read in this area partly by the experience of witnessing my mother's last days with lung cancer. Conversations with my kid brother also figure into my curiosity about the subject. Douglas is an ER tech at Baylor, a teaching hospital in Dallas, Texas. He also oversaw Mom's care when she became unable to do so herself. These two personalities, and their stories, have loomed large in my understanding of what I have read.

With concerns about the future of health practices in our country so close to the front of our minds, there are a number of new books out on the subject. Many are partisan polemic and contribute little to our understanding of what the issues and risks really are. In the books listed here, no one is equated to a Nazi for suggesting that government should step in where insurers have feared to tread--but neither do the authors uphold the absolute right of any patient to have any treatment, at any time, regardless of its efficacy. Nuanced, graceful, personal, compassionate, these are the kinds of books that may help us have a civilized public discourse about health, medicine, life, and dying.