The Curve of Binding Energy, by John McPhee

I was late to the sciences, struggling through basic requirements in high school and then completely ignoring them through college. After almost a decade in the working world I returned to school to become a physician. One of the premed requirements I had to take before even applying to medical school was physics - a counter intuitive exercise for me, at least in the beginning (a few early Saturdays were almost entirely spent trying to figure out the direction of forces, resultant acceleration, and so forth).  With time came a modicum of aptitude and I began to enjoy the subject - in particular, the section on subatomic particles. Rutgers (where I did my post baccalaureate premedical schooling) didn't go so for as to teach us how to build a nuclear reactor (or bomb, for that matter), and McPhee's book doesn't either, though it comes close. The book is really the story of Ted Taylor, a nuclear physicist of note who worked with the biggies at Los Alamos and other places in the decades after World War II. His contributions to both the development of the science (e.g. how to increase bomb yield while reducing the size of bombs) and the safeguarding of nuclear material are significant. McPhee's writing is vintage - crisp, lean and easy. As I tell my friends, and have probably scribed before, the guy could write about paint drying and make it interesting. No need here - an interesting topic unto itself. And, despite being written in the early 1970's, it still holds form today. Though I imagine the safeguarding of nuclear material is more secure now 40 years later.

A Walk in the Woods, by Bill Bryson

It was an advertisement for the movie that moved me to read this, finally. Though I've known of the book for years and listened to Deb (wyf) wax poetically about its humor and though I've hiked many a mile on the Appalachian Trail myself it's taken some time to get around to reading it. I liked it. Not as much for the humor, there's plenty a funny moment, but for the description of the varying degrees of misery one encounters while humping a 40 pound pack up and down rocky trails. Rocky trails are what the Appalachian Trail does best - it's a mountain range, after all - and an old one at that (400 million years, give or take). I've hiked out west on some lovely smooth packed dirt trails - they have nothing on the AT. I'm keenly aware of how miserable one can get on the trail. On my first foray into the woods (22 years old, pemigewassat wilderness and Mt. Garfield in NH) I was still a pack a day smoker and thought it prudent to carry canned food in my pack. You may imagine how successful I was. Bryson is excellent at pacing a narrative and weaving in the past; the sections on the history of the trail are particularly enjoyable and I have to wonder if he has a personal gripe against the National Park Service - about which he has few good things to say. There's a funny sequence where he thinks a bear invades his camp one night. This resonated with me because I, too, have been awoken in the middle of the night in the woods by a horrific noise that scared the living !&%$ out of me and my fellow hiker (MG will know of which I speak) - it just turned out to be two "through hikers" who heard someone down the trail snoring and, thinking it was a bear, made quite the racket to scare it off. Walking in the woods is one my very favorite pastimes - I'm glad I read this book.

Born to Run, by Christopher McDougall

I read this in the spring of 2015 on a recommendation from a co-worker at Waterbury Hospital. It's the best running book I've ever read - that's not saying much since I've only read a few. Nevertheless, it's a great adventure-type read, irrespective of your views on running. From a timing standpoint it coincides with the barefoot craze (you know those runners with the five toe slip-on glove-like shoes?). I'm not a barefoot runner but the tips I picked up have helped my foot tendinitis tremendously. 

The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt

I muscled through this in July 2015 while on vacation in Maine. Typically I stop reading books when I lose interest. In this case I didn't, hoping that the story and prose would gain traction.  And for about 200 pages two thirds of the way through there was some promise - good solid prose and moments of real art (well, at least in my mind, for whatever that's worth). However, the tale disappointingly ends in a 30 page stream of consciousness on something about love, child-parent relationships, time, art and immortality - hard to make sense of what the protagonist was trying to tell me. Your time would be better spent reading Mark Helprin.

The Origins of Aids, by Jacques Pepin

If you think that the AIDS pandemic began with a promiscuous French airline attendant in the early 1980's you would be wrong.  Though our cultural awareness begins here I think.  HIV, the causative agent of AIDS, has been around quite a long time in humans (at least as far back as the first decades of the 20th century - well documented by analysis of archival specimens and DNA analysis of mutation rates of existing strains of HIV) and in chimps as nearly genetically identical SIV for many thousands of years before that.  Pepin, a microbiologist and researcher, does an exhausting job outlining the origins of AIDS from its beginnings in the jungles of central Africa to its global spread.  His theory, and I would argue that the preponderance of evidence moves it out of the hypothesis stage to theory, is that the virus jumped to humans from chimps (the common chimp, pan troglodytes) from incidental contact during hunting (a human hunter butchers a chimp with a machete and gets contaminated by chimp blood).  This hunter either makes his way to a city that rapidly urbanized during 20th century colonization (e.g. Leopoldville), sleeps with a prostitute and disseminates the virus in this manner, exponentially, for the prostitute sleeps with many others, or remains in the rural areas of the Congo and gets treated parenterally (e.g. intravenously) for Yaws, sleeping sickness or another tropical disease, contaminates the syringes, which are reused frequently without proper sterilization, and launches the exponential spread of the virus in this manner.  Either way, the exponential spread of the virus was enabled by colonization and subsequently spread globally by international trade and travel.  Pepin's work is scholarly and exhaustive in detail, documenting epidemiological data for central Africa mind numbingly at times.  Too much for the lay reader and sometimes even for me (I'm a pathologist).  Nevertheless, if you are interested in the true origins of HIV, or even certain aspects of 20th century central African colonization by Belgium and France, it is well worth your time.

Under the Skin, by Michel Faber

Not sure how I stumbled across this. I probably read it in an online review of another book. Like most good stories, the reader's perspective/feelings/orientation to the world changes with the telling. For me, the real strength of this tale is how Faber inexorably pulls you into a different place from where you started - the simple, taught, style of the narrative, along with its brooding milieu. A bit weaker is the thinly veiled social commentary; I suppose it reduces the story to allegory. Nevertheless, it is nicely crafted and worth the effort.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz

A great read, I would argue, on its own with its humor, pace, rich character development and craftmanship. Yet, even better is that almost every other page has some vague reference to a Tolkein tale or sci-fi adventure, both of which I am a fan. And much of the story takes place in NJ, my home for 35+ years, with a good swath in my own college town of New Brunswick (Rutgers). How nostalgic did I feel when Diaz placed Oscar in some geek-sponsored club meeting in the river dorm basement classrooms?

The Social Transformation of American Medicine, by Paul Starr

One of my colleagues gave me this book to read after tiring of listening to me kvetch about the complex, sometimes idiotic, and irrational structure of our health care system. Idiocy seeming to impact everything from hospitals and their push/pull relationships with providers to government regulation and payment systems (really? cost-based pricing?); not to mention the operational inefficiencies that seem to be such an ingrained part of every (well, maybe not every) hospital. I'm still baffled by it all, but it certainly makes more sense now that I've read this encyclopedic journey through the evolution of health care in the U.S. I don't suppose most people would find it terribly interesting and, admittedly, it really gets into the weeds at times - but for me, a physician and business person, it sure helps me frame my world a little better.