It used to be that the only books I ever read were fictional novels. Nothing wrong with that, I love fiction! Happily, however, my husband gradually began turning me on to some great non-fiction texts he was reading, and now I’m hooked. In the last year, I have read many books, but my three absolute favorites are Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal, Daniel James Brown’s The Boys in the Boat, and Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.

All three of these books were bestsellers, so many of you have read one or more of them, I’m sure. However, for those of you, like me, who tend towards losing yourself in a fictional story, I highly recommend giving one of these a try.

Brown’s The Boys in the Boat is the story about the University of Washington’s eight-man crew team who won the gold medal in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. I never would have picked this book, except that I grew up in Seattle and would regularly swim off the  dock right next to their crew house. Being more concerned with my tan than the powerful legacy hidden inside that rickety building, I missed out on the auspicious quality of the place. (I grew up on the top of the hill across the water at the left in the picture below)

The narrative of The Boys in the Boat centers on Joe Rantz, one of the oarsman who struggles through poverty and family abandonment during the Great Depression. In his chapters about the crew program at the University of Washington, Brown has an amazing way of bringing the complex aspects of crew to life. He zeros in on the coaches, the boat builder, and the psychology of what makes everyone tick – and that’s all before they even get to the hair-raising race in Berlin.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is about a poor, African American woman in the 30’s and 40’s whose cells were taken without her knowledge by doctors who were treating her for cancer. Her cells were used in scientific research that helped in developing the polio vaccine, cloning, gene mapping, and more. Her own family had no idea any of this was happening and never received any financial benefits from the medical establishment that was making millions off their discoveries. Skloot does an amazing job of discussing the tension between ethics, race, and medicine in this book. A real eye-opener.

I absolutely loved Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal. Gawande, himself a physician, looks at the way modern medicine and our society is often at odds with helping people age and die with dignity. I read this book cover-to-cover on the plane trip back East for my grandfather’s memorial. It couldn’t have been better timing. My grandfather was two weeks shy of 101, had a full, healthy life, and died at home. Even so, I was struck at how hard it was for him to die when it was clear that his quality of life near the end was not what he would have wanted. Gawande looks at all aspects of how medicine and end-of-life care gets in the way of allowing people to control their healthcare choices and living environment as they become less able to care for themselves. He writes with such compassion and frankness. I can’t recommend this book enough. I gave a copy of it to both of my parents and asked that we all have a discussion about their wishes after they read it.