Books like Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder

After graduating college, journalist Jon Krakauer traces the true story of Christopher McCandless, a young adventurer who abandoned possessions, took the name Alexander Supertramp, and ventured into Alaska’s wilderness, where he met his untimely death.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks follows the story of Henrietta Lacks, a poor black tobacco farmer whose cancer cells were taken in 1951 without her consent and later became the first immortal human cell line, HeLa, driving major scientific breakthroughs while raising questions of ethics, race, and medical exploitation.

Neurosurgeon Paul Kalanithi’s poignant memoir chronicles his battle with stage IV metastatic lung cancer and his reflections on life, medicine, and mortality.

Greg Mortenson’s true story of building fifty‑five schools in remote Pakistan and Afghanistan, focusing on girls’ education and humanitarian aid amid conflict.

A charming and clever women detective, Precious Ramotswe, solves mysteries in Botswana's small town of Midsomin, South Africa, from 1986 to 1997, facing dangers and love in the process. The novel is beloved by readers worldwide for its clever dialogue and characters who are as flawed as the rest of us. The book is a bestseller and has been translated into 45 languages, including Polish, German, and Japanese, among others. It was also voted one of the International Books of the Year and the Millennium by the Times Literary Supplement.

First pub. 1933. The remarkable story of a truly great man, who achieved success as a musician, philosopher, theologian, and doctor and left it all to found a hospital in Africa where he could devote his talents to relieving suffering among five tribesmen.

Robert Macfarlane examines why humans are drawn to mountaineering, blending personal climbs with cultural history and psychological analysis of our fascination with peaks.

Lawrence Anthony, a South African wildlife conservationist, accepts a sanctuary for a herd of rogue elephants, risking his reserve to give the animals a second chance at life.

A powerful true story of a Syrian refugee’s desperate survival at sea, holding two infants in an inflatable ring while her life and hope are threatened by a wrecked ship and hostile waters.

The moving, inspiring memoir of one of the great women of our times, Shirin Ebadi, winner of the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize and advocate for the oppressed, whose spirit has remained strong in the face of political persecution and despite the challenges she has faced raising a family while pursuing her work. Best known in this country as the lawyer working tirelessly on behalf of Canadian photojournalist, Zara Kazemi -- raped, tortured and murdered in Iran -- Dr. Ebadi offers us a vivid picture of the struggles of one woman against the system. The book movingly chronicles her childhood in a loving, untraditional family, her upbringing before the Revolution in 1979 that toppled the Shah, her marriage and her religious faith, as well as her life as a mother and lawyer battling an oppressive regime in the courts while bringing up her girls at home.Outspoken, controversial, Shirin Ebadi is one of the most fascinating women today. She rose quickly to become the first female judge in the country; but when the religious authorities declared women unfit to serve as judges she was demoted to clerk in the courtroom she had once presided over. She eventually fought her way back as a human rights lawyer, defending women and children in politically charged cases that most lawyers were afraid to represent. She has been arrested and been the target of assassination, but through it all has spoken out with quiet bravery on behalf of the victims of injustice and discrimination and become a powerful voice for change, almost universally embraced as a hero.Her memoir is a gripping story -- a must-read for anyone interested in Zara Kazemi's case, in the life of a remarkable woman, or in understanding the political and religious upheaval in our world.From the Hardcover edition.

"Pathologies of Power uses harrowing stories of life - and death - in extreme situations to interrogate our understanding of human rights. Paul Farmer, a physician and anthropologist with twenty years of experience working in Haiti, Peru, and Russia, argues that promoting the social and economic rights of the world's poor is the most important human rights struggle of our times. With passionate eyewitness accounts from the prisons of Russia and the beleaguered villages of Haiti and Chiapas, this book links the lived experiences of individual victims to a broader analysis of structural violence. Farmer challenges conventional thinking within human rights circles and exposes the relationships between political and economic injustice, on one hand, and the suffering and illness of the powerless, on the other."--BOOK JACKET.

A compelling look at the rise and fall of the Fox sisters and the birth of Spiritualism in America, blending historical narrative with supernatural elements.

Tommie Bass was a pivotal figure in the changing landscape of American herbalism and an inspiration to a whole generation of younger herbalists. Tommie practiced what he preached, living a life true to his beliefs, creating an archetype whose influence transcended the Appalachian area of north Alabama where he lived. The time-tested techniques and pharmacopoeia of Appalachian fold medicine form a component of traditional Western fold medicine that embodies American self-reliance and creativity, which is still evolving today. This book presents, often in his own words, the living legacy that Tommie left us of plants and their healing powers.

Dr. Margaret Phillips, an English medical missionary, spent 43 years in China, founding teaching hospitals, fighting tuberculosis, and caring for sick children while witnessing the collapse of the Empire, civil war, Japanese invasion, and Communist rise.

Graphic novel biography of Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to earn a medical degree in the United States.