The Best Medicine History Audiobooks of All Time

By John M. Barry (Claim your award badge)

John M. Barry is a prize-winning and New York Times best-selling author whose books have won several dozen awards. In 2005 the National Academies of Science named The Great Influenza: The story of the deadliest pandemic in history, a study of the 1918 pandemic, the year’s outstanding book on science or medicine. In 1998 Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America, won the Francis Parkman Prize of the Society of American Historians for the year’s best book of American history. His latest book is Roger Williams and The Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty, which has been named a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, to be awarded late spring 2013. His writing has received not only formal awards but less formal recognition as well. In 2004 GQ named Rising Tide one of nine pieces of writing essential to understanding America; that list also included Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address and Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” His first book, The Ambition and the Power: A true story of Washington, was cited by The New York Times as one of the eleven best books ever written about Washington and the Congress. His second book The Transformed Cell: Unlocking the Mysteries of Cancer, coauthored with Dr. Steven Rosenberg, was published in twelve languages. He has had considerable influence on both pandemic policy and flood protection. Both the Bush and Obama administrations sought his advice on influenza preparedness and response, and he was a member of the original team which developed plans for non-pharmaceutical interventions to mitigate a pandemic. The National Academies of Science asked him to give the keynote speech at its first international scientific meeting on pandemic influenza, and he was the only non-scientist on a federal government Infectious Disease Board of Experts. In the area of water resources, he has been equally active. In 2006 he became the only non-scientist ever to give the National Academies annual Abel Wolman Distinguished Lecture, a lecture which focuses on some aspect of water. After Hurricane Katrina, the Louisiana congressional delegation asked him to chair a bipartisan working group on flood protection, and he now serves on the board overseeing levee districts in metropolitan New Orleans and on the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, which is responsible for the state's hurricane protection. Barry has worked with state, federal, United Nations, and World Health Organization officials on influenza, water-related disasters, and risk communication. Barry sits on advisory boards at M.I.T’s Center for Engineering Systems Fundamentals and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health as well as on the board of the Society of American Historians and American Heritage Rivers. He has also been keynote speaker at such varied events as a White House Conference on the Mississippi Delta and an International Congress on Respiratory Viruses, and he has given talks in such venues as the National War College, the Council on Foreign Relations, Harvard Business School, and elsewhere. He is co-originator of Riversphere, a $100 million center being developed by Tulane University; it will be the first facility in the world dedicated to comprehensive river research. His articles have appeared in such scientific journals as Nature and Journal of Infectious Disease as well as in lay publications ranging from Sports Illustrated to The New York Times, The Washington Post, Fortune, Time, Newsweek, and Esquire. A frequent guest on every broadcast network in the US, he has appeared on such shows as NBC's Meet the Press, ABC's World News, and NPR's All Things Considered, and on such foreign media as the BBC and Al Jazeera. He has also served as a consultant for Sony Pictures and contributed to award-winning television documentaries. Before becoming a writer, Barry coached football at the high school, small college, and major college levels. Currently Distinguished Scholar at the Center for Bioenvironmental Research of Tulane and Xavier Universities, he lives in New Orleans.

By Kyle Harper (Claim your award badge)

Kyle Harper is a historian of the classical world at the University of Oklahoma. His books include 'The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire' and 'From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity.'

By Frank M. Snowden (Claim your award badge)

Frank M. Snowden is Andrew Downey Orrick Professor Emeritus of History and History of Medicine at Yale University. His previous books include The Conquest of Malaria: Italy, 1900–1962 and Naples in the Time of Cholera, 1884–1911.