Recommended reading

Factfulness: Ten reasons we’re wrong about the world, and why things are better than you think Hans Rosling, Ola Rosling, Anna Rosling Rönnlund
Everybody should read this. Rosling authoritatively dispels widely-held myths, explaining how the global birth-rate has now stabilised, why our ideas about the developing world are fifty years out of date and much more.

On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life Charles Darwin
It is astonishing just how little the theory of evolution has had to be updated since Darwin first formulated it 160 years ago, particularly as he knew nothing of the work of his contemporary, Gregor Mendel, on genetics and inheritance. It is also (like most of Darwin’s books) an entertaining read.

This is Going to Hurt Alan Kay
This is a true account based on the diaries of a junior doctor training to be an obsetrician. Reading it took me straight back to the same point in my own career, and anybody working in acute health care will be very familiar with the world it describes. Everyone else will probably regard it as a work of fiction, so far removed is it from Holby City or Casualty. Nevertheless, it is very readable, with its black humour and touching stories.

The Man who mistook his Wife for a Hat Oliver Sachs
In this fascinating book, neurologist Oliver Sachs tells the stories of some of his patients with strange neurological problems. He is somehow able to combine a clinical description of their diagnoses with vivid and touching accounts of who they are and how their lives are affected. And however strange they may seem, patients with many of these problems can be found in any hospital.