In My TBR Stack:

Death is But a Dream: Finding Hope and Meaning at Life's End
by Christopher Kerr, MD, PhD
Avery Books
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Christopher Kerr is a hospice doctor. All of his patients die. Yet he has cared for thousands of patients who, in the face of death, speak of love and grace. Beyond the physical realities of dying are unseen processes that are remarkably life-affirming. These include dreams that are unlike any regular dream. Described as “more real than real,” these end-of-life experiences resurrect past relationships, meaningful events and themes of love and forgiveness; they restore life’s meaning and mark the transition from distress to comfort and acceptance. 

Drawing on interviews with over 1,400 patients and more than a decade of quantified data, Dr. Kerr reveals that pre-death dreams and visions are extraordinary occurrences that humanize the dying process. He shares how his patients’ stories point to death as not solely about the end of life, but as the final chapter of humanity’s transcendence. Kerr’s book also illuminates the benefits of these phenomena for the bereaved, who find solace in seeing their loved ones pass with a sense of calm closure.

Beautifully written, with astonishing real-life characters and stories, this book is at its heart a celebration of our power to reclaim the dying process as a deeply meaningful one. Death Is But a Dream is an important contribution to our understanding of medicine’s and humanity’s greatest mystery.

In My TBR Stack:

Ending Back Pain: 5 Powerful Steps to Diagnose, Understand, and Treat Your Ailing Back
by Jack Stern, M.D., Ph.D.
Avery Books
Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

Virtually every American will suffer from back pain at some point. Dr. Jack Stern, a neurosurgeon and professor at Weill Cornell Medical College, brings relief to these millions of sufferers (including himself) who literally ache for help. Based on the latest scientific data, Dr. Stern developed a five-step solution with a multidisciplinary, holistic perspective that’s been missing from conventional back pain wisdom: 

• Step One: Unlock your back’s unique pain code
• Step Two: Prepare to work with health care professionals
• Step Three: Ensure proper diagnosis
• Step Four: Embrace various pathways to healing
• Step Five: Live a life that supports a strong, healthy back

Engagingly written and chock-full of enlightening case studies, Ending Back Pain finally shares the program that’s already helped more than 10,000 grateful patients.

On My Radar:

Trump on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President
by Justin A. Frank, MD
Avery Books
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

No president in the history of the United States has inspired more alarm and confusion than Donald Trump. As questions and concerns about his decisions, behavior, and qualifications for office have multiplied, they point to one primary question: Does he pose a genuine threat to our country? The American Psychiatric Association’s Goldwater Rule constrains psychiatrists from offering diagnoses on public figures who are not patients and who have not endorsed such statements. But in Trump on the Couch Clinical Professor of Psychiatry Justin A Frank invokes the moral responsibility that compels him to speak out and present a full portrait of a man who presents us with a clear and present danger.

Using observations gained from a close study of Trump’s patterns of thought, action, and communication, Dr. Frank uncovers a personality riddled with mental health issues. His analysis is filled with important revelations about our nation’s leader, including disturbing insights into his childhood, his family, his business dealings, and his unusual relationship with alternative facts, including how

  *  The absence of a strong maternal force during childhood has led to Trump’s remarkable lack of empathy and disregard for women’s boundaries;
  *  His compulsion to polarize America has grown out of the way he perceives the world as full of deceitful and destructive persecutors;
  *  His inability to tolerate the pain of frustration has triggered his belief that omnipotence will finally remove it;
  *  His idiosyncratic use of language points to larger issues than even his tweets might suggest.

With our country itself at stake, Dr. Frank calls attention to the underlying narcissism, misogyny, deception, and racism that drive the President who endangers it. A penetrating examination of how we as a nation got here and, more important, where we are going, Trump on the Couch sounds a call to action that we cannot ignore.