As smallpox ravages Europe in the 1700s, Russia's Catherine the Great not only submits to inoculation but publicizes the treatment so her subjects will accept it in this gripping story of Enlightenment ideals, female leadership, and the fight to promote science over superstition. | Full title: The Empress and the English Doctor: How Catherine the Great Defied a Deadly Virus

Rudolph Vrba, a Slovakian Jew, did the unthinkable: he escaped from more than one WWII concentration camp. After escaping from Auschwitz, having witnessed the importance of secrecy for the success of the Nazi operation, he didn't rest until he'd told the world what was happening there. | Full title: The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World

A gripping story of the Texas Gulf Coast fishing community in the late 1970s. Oil companies were polluting the water, white fishermen blamed the Vietnamese refugees who had recently arrived, and racist violence erupted. And the fight for justice landed in federal court. | Full title: The Fishermen and the Dragon: Fear, Greed, and a Fight for Justice on the Gulf Coast

With the engaging simplicity of a great teacher and the metaphors of a poet, oncologist Mukherjee once again illuminates how the body (and life itself) works, this time with a history of cells and the evolving human understanding of them. | Full title: The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human