My 2025 Book Review

I love to read. While I will occasionally read a fiction book, non-fiction is my jam. These days it feels like the most wholesome way to get our information. These were my favorite books I read in 2025!

The Invention of Surgery

A History of Modern Medicine

From the Renaissance to the Implant Revolution

By David Schneider, MD

When I first started this book, my partner had just finished reading it. Within the first few pages I declared “this is like the worst patriarchal version of medical history I’ve ever read” etc. etc. We had a good laugh about that.

After I had calmed down, I proceeded to read the whole book for whatever knowledge I could glean. Turns out there are some really entertaining bits, some of which I will offer you here. Backstory: many, many men especially of European and American descent were quite attached to the naming and claiming of their contributions. The women who supported these endeavors aren’t mentioned, but we know that they were there. These men tended to be more than quirky, teetering on the edge of maniacal and obsessive. In the 1840’s, William Morton had been working on the anesthesia front, but other colleagues were being given credit for work he felt was his, and there were several contenders in the race to “end pain”. Fast forward to today, I’m not sure how far we’ve gotten, but here we go. Here’s what happened according to a newspaper article of the time. 

“At the age of 48, after losing yet another legal battle over recognition of his ‘invention’ of ether anesthesia, Morton killed himself during a summer heat wave in New York City. On an impulse, he decided to take his wife Elizabeth on a cooling buggy-ride through Central Park. Without warning, he suddenly jerked the horse to a stop, leaped out of the wagon, and plunged his head into the tepid water of the lake. Obviously disturbed, he was urged back into the buggy, but had driven only a short while longer when he precipitously vaulted from the rig, threw his body over a nearby fence, and fell to the ground on the other side, unconscious, dying from a cerebral hemorrhage.”

Wow. I mean, way to stay at it. 

Some other highlights of this book were the blatant discreditation of any other types of medicine, including folk medicine: 

“Thousands of years of tinkering with flowers, herbs, and alcohol had resulted in genuine impotence in the face of pain.” Ok, well, not quite true but I’ll give it to you that ether was a game changer.

“The antibiotic revolution, building on the breakthroughs of the understanding of the organ and cellular basis of disease, and the founding of bacteriology meant for the first time ever that it was worth going to a doctor when you were sick. Pathetic treatments with [Dr. Rush’s] heavy- metal laxatives (so called ‘thunder bolts’), snake oil patent medicines, arsenic poisoning, toxic industrial solvents, noxious animal feces, and lethal plant material were in their twilight by mid-century.” Pathetic. Choice word! Where does the animal feces come into play?

Circa 1840, Samuel Hahnemann’s breakthrough concept of “similia similibus curantor” (like vs. like), “now appreciated as a pseudoscience” (wow, nice dig with that word appreciated as sarcasm), held that a substance that causes the symptoms of disease in a healthy person would cure symptoms in a sick patient. For example, if one were suffering from diarrhea, the homeopathic intervention would be to take a laxative, forcing even more diarrhea. Unbelievably, there are still subscribers to this crackpot mentality.” (this is very far from truth)

“It is no accident that the greatest surgeons were cultivated in centers where pathology was most warmly embraced (ok, weird); surgeons have never been ‘wellness’ professionals (god forbid) but are instead mercenaries called upon in the face of catastrophe and therefore, by necessity, must be nurtured in environments where disease and traumatic injuries are investigated and explained.”

One of my favorite passages describes medical students experimenting with cocaine around 1844. “Halstead had secured a 4% cocaine solution and began injecting students in his Madison Square home office. The injecting parties that ensued must have been sensational. When the medicine was deposited adjacent to the nerve, numbness ensued down the limb in an anatomic distribution. Within days, it was obvious that regional anesthesia was not just a conceptual dream, it was a reality. Many of the students experienced a rush of energy, with occasional nausea, flushing, palpitations, and dizziness”. And, so goes it, many of them became addicted. 

Ether, cocaine, and opium were amazing, though. Still are really. 

Women in medicine throughout this version of history are virtually invisible. So, yeah, all that midwifing and cooking and herbal bullshit were unmatched supposedly by the male virility that brought us to modern medicine today. 

Born

A History of Childbirth

By Lucy Inglis

I learned so much from this book. The author has tracked any source information about women giving birth from as far back as we know humans existed. There is not much information to be gleaned in the early years, mainly which objects women were buried with and how old they were. Also how old babies were when they died. It was common practice in many cultures that male babies were more prized than female ones, and if you were a woman that had a female baby you were to leave them out in the elements to die. It is this type of thing that makes me feel very, very fortunate to live in the time and place that we do.

Here’s a good story:

"In 1722, a woman living in Surrey, England caused a national sensation when she convinced doctors that she was giving birth to rabbits. She had, in fact, packed them into her vagina.”

When is the day you wake up and think, “this is a good plan”?.

Have you ever heard of stone babies? Me either!

“A stone baby is known as a lithopaedion, which occurs when the mother’s body coats the fetus in calcified deposits to shield herself from infection. Stone babies have been documented throughout history (and also have been discovered in livestock and hares), including an incredibly rare incidence of lithopaedion twins in Burla, India, in 2007, when a 40-year-old-woman was admitted with abdominal pain. She had carried the stone twins for eight years. A subsequent study revealed that one in 11,000 pregnancies is extrauterine and that, of those pregnancies, 1.5-1.8 percent result in a stone baby. Astonishingly, the lengths of ‘gestation’ for these stone babies varied from five years to over 60 years.”

Ok, one more! For some reason this male midwife in the late 1700’s had forbidden a newborn baby to nurse, “On Monday, Dr. Fordyce forbid the child’s having the breast, and we therefore procured puppies to draw off the milk. This occasioned some pleasantry of Mary with me and the other attendants…These were the amusements of persons in the very gulf of despair.”

No Walls and the Recurring Dream

A memoir by Ani Difranco

This was a page turner for me as this woman is a force in art and music and feminism. I love her music, and I love watching the evolution of her expression. By age fifteen, Ani is pretty much an independent kid figuring out school and living situations and subsequently moves to NYC from Buffalo at age sixteen. By this time she had been playing music and writing songs since she was ten. One of my favorite passages of this book has to do with reproductive justice and one that I would want my daughter to read someday. Overall the joy, devotion, and life force that Ani gives to her art and presence is inspiring. 

Hagitude

Reimagining the Second Half of Life

By Sharon Blackie

I’ve been hearing about this book for years and I’m grateful for having read it. Parts of if I can identify with; the reimagining part, for sure. I, too, am finding myself at a crossroads; rewriting my story and creating the life that I believe in. Sharon, having chosen not to be a mother herself, left me wanting more of a mothering perspective. Still, I loved the ways she described the feelings about her life in Scotland and learning about how she navigated them. The mythologies she delves into are intriguing and pertinent. Overall, the wisdom that I gained is that in later life women are more likely to have the time and impetus to recreate their lives on their terms. One grasps the tendency for women at this stage to desire solitude, particularly a small corner of the world where they only need to tend to their own wants and needs without compromising with partners or children. The image of her good friend setting up a small caravan in the orchard of her land and taking refuge there after all the men and children have been cared for, ignited many daydreams for me. MUST READ FOR SURE.

Ring of Salt

A memoir by Betsy Cornwall

Talk about a book that inspires hope…I loved the candidness that Betsy writes with. Poetic, true, and fine tuned, this memoir encapsulates much of what I hope for women kind in the world that we live in. After living through having a child with a man she was totally in love with and realizing that he is actually a dark soul who takes his wounds out on his family, she creates a life in which women are supporting each other in miraculous ways. I won’t give away what happens, because you just really should read this book. It is beautiful.

The Indifferent Stars Above

The Harrowing Saga of the Donner Party

By Daniel James Brown

I have a fascination with pioneers, of all kinds; people who take brave steps that transform their lives in ways they never could’ve imagined. It is hard to fathom the hardships that many of the American pioneers moving towards the west endured. This story is incredible and is written so well. A band of families who decide to follow the directions of a trickster trying to lure them into his own burgeoning town end up so lost and hungry and cold, and most wagons were carrying small children. They have to abandon the supplies they took so much pain in packing, they end up eating their livestock, building earthen shelters in which to weather the incredible storms in the Sierra Rockies, eating their shoes and shoelaces boiled until finally enough of them die that cannibalism takes hold. In one scene taken from a primary source the group that strikes out to find shelter have to feed upon the dead to keep going, in order to save themselves and their families. They mutually agree that they will divide themselves by fire circles and not be made to eat their direct relatives. Holy shit y’all. That’s some serious consensus decision making in a famished state.

The Scavengers Guide to Haute Cuisine

By Steven Rinella

We have a friend who has the original copy of the Escoffier cookbook. Escoffier was a cook for the French army during the Franco-Prussian war and made due with ingredients like horse and snapping turtle meat. The recipes offer a wide variety of ingredients we would not likely have at hand, but Steven makes it a point to have a twelve course dinner for his friends made from these recipes. After a year of hunting adventures to source these ingredients he has fun trying them out on his friends. Turns out that snapping turtle soup is a real bitch to make and not a crowd pleaser. 

Among my most favorite of these stories is an in depth account of capturing and raising pigeons for specific dishes. The whole book is full of these types of odd hunting stories and I found it quite enjoyable. 

More than a body

The Body as an Instrument and Not an Ornament

By Lindsay and Lexie Kite

REVOLUTIONARY IN FEMINIST LITERATURE! This book helped me to realize how internalized our fucked up diet and body image culture had become in my own body. I now understand that seeing myself as a desirable object is a social construct that no longer serves me. There are so many passages in this book that stand out, you will just have to read it. And have your daughters and nieces read it, too. Once we cease to see our body as a mere commodity we can we can free up a bunch of energy we didn’t even know we were expending. “Comparison is the death of joy” (Benjamin Franklin). And if we are comparing ourselves to impossible beauty standards, we can’t take our power back. 

Thanks for Reading!

-Emma