Michael Crichton

Wow, shockingly Michael Crichton died of cancer yesterday at the age of 66.

When I was in my teens, Crichton was one of my favorite authors and over the years I have frequently enjoyed re-reading his works.

Of his many books, the medical thriller A Case of Need was the one I liked the most -- even more than Jurassic Park, The Lost World, Disclosure, The Great Train Robbery (my second favorite Crichton book), The Andromeda Strain, or any of his other best sellers.

What I always found so interesting about A Case of Need was that Crichton originally published it under a pseudonym (Jeffrey Hudson) when he was still a 26-year-old Harvard medical student (in 1968). After it won an Edgar Allen Poe Award in 1969, it gave Crichton the confidence he needed to leave medicine and his prestigious fellowship at Jonas Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, CA.

I think what I loved about Crichton's books was that they filled you with a sense of wonder about science -- and as a math and science geek I appreciated that.

Now I'd like more than ever to read Crichton's State of Fear (by the way, I recently learned that Crichton was a Visiting Writer at MIT in 1988).

The Cure Within: A History of Mind-Body Medicine by Anne Harrington

I've been reading The Cure Within: A History of Mind-Body Medicine by Anne Harrington and have found it fascinating!

I first heard about this book in Jerome Groopman's New York Times article "Faith and Healing" published January 2008.

Harrington, a professor at Harvard, was the editor for The Dalai Lama at MIT which I would also like to read. I saw the Dalai Lama in 2004 when he visited MIT for a Mind & Life Institute Conference and found him to be intelligent, compassionate, and humorous.

Western science has not been able to fully explain or debunk Eastern medicine and I enjoy reading about studies and experiments that provide definite proof in either direction.

Looking forward to reading more of this book!