Howard Markel
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Howard Markel

Biographies & Memoirs | Health & Wellness
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Howard Markel, M.D., Ph.D., an award-winning and New York Times bestselling author, is the George E. Wantz Distinguished Professor of the History of Medicine and Director of the Center for the History of Medicine at the University of Michigan. He also holds professorial appointments in Psychiatry, Public Health, History, English Literature and Language, and Pediatrics and Communicable Diseases. He was born in Detroit, Michigan on April 23, 1960 and grew up in Oak Park and Southfield, Michigan. Educated at the University of Michigan (A.B., 1982, summa cum laude; M.D., 1986, cum laude) and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Hospital (Intern, Resident and Fellow in General Pediatrics, 1986-1993 and Ph.D, in the History of Medicine, Science and Technology, 1994), he joined the University of Michigan faculty in 1993. A critically acclaimed social and cultural historian of medicine, Dr. Markel is the author, co-author, or co-editor of ten books including the award winning Quarantine! East European Jewish Immigrants and the New York City Epidemics of 1892 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997; paperback, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999) and When Germs Travel: Six Major Epidemics That Have Invaded America Since 1900 and the Fears They Have Unleashed (Pantheon Books/Alfred A. Knopf, 2004; paperback Vintage/Random House, 2005). His most recent book, An Anatomy of Addiction: Sigmund Freud, William Halsted, and the Miracle Drug Cocaine (Pantheon Books/Alfred A. Knopf) was published in July, 2011 and was a New York Times Best Seller, a San Francisco Chronicle Best Seller, an ABA IndieBound Best Seller, and a New York Times Book Review "Editor's Choice". From 2005 to 2006, Professor Markel served as a historical consultant on pandemic influenza preparedness planning for the United States Department of Defense. From 2006 to the present, he serves as the principal historical consultant on pandemic preparedness for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. From late April 2009 to February 2011, served as a member of the CDC Director's "Novel A/H1N1 Influenza Team B", a real-time think tank of experts charged with evaluating the federal government's influenza policies on a daily basis during the outbreak. In collaboration with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, he is Editor-in Chief of The 1918-1919 American Influenza Pandemic: A Digital Encyclopedia and Archive. Funded by grants and contracts from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the CDC, the digital encyclopedia is at www.influenzaarchive.org. Working with the CDC and a team of historians at the Center for the History of Medicine, Professor Markel currently directs a research team of medical historians at work on documenting the social history of the 2009 H1N1 Influenza pandemic. The second edition of the 1918-1919 Influenza Pandemic: A Digital Encyclopedia and Archive 2.0 was released in Fall of 2016. Dr. Markel was a contributing writer and columnist for The Journal of the American Medical Association from 2007-2014. From 2010 to 2012, he was the "on-air" frequent contributor to National Public Radio's Science Friday; his monthly segment, "Science Diction," discussed the history, evolution and meaning of scientific words. Since 2012, he has written a monthly column for PBS NewsHour.org. From 2013 to 2017, he was editor-in-chief of The Milbank Quarterly, a public health policy and population health peer-reviewed journal. In addition, Dr. Markel has contributed over 350 articles to scholarly publications and popular periodicals, from The New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association, American Journal of Public Health, and The Lancet to The New York Times, Harper's Magazine, The Atlantic, The Baltimore Evening Sun, The New Republic, International Herald Tribune, and The Wall Street Journal. He has appeared on numerous national radio and television news broadcasts and film documentaries about the history of medicine and public health for NPR (All Things Considered, Morning Edition, Talk of the Nation, Science Friday, Here and Now, Tell Me More, and Market Place), ABC's Good Morning America and World News Tonight, PBS (Nova, Frontline, NewsHour), BBC The World, CNN, MSNBC, and the History Channel. Most recently, he appeared in the Ken Burns-Siddhartha Mukherjee PBS documentary, "Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies." Professor Markel's work has been recognized with numerous grants, honors and awards. In 1996, he received the James A. Shannon Director's Award of the National Institutes of Health and the Burroughs-Wellcome Trust 40th Anniversary History of Medicine Award. In 1998, he was named a Centennial Historian of the City of New York and was an inaugural fellow at the Center for Scholars and Writers of the New York Public Library from 1999-2000; in 2003 he received the Arthur Viseltear Award from the American Public Health Association. In 2007, he received the Theodore Woodward Award from the American Clinical and Climatological Association and the Robert Wood Johnson Health Investigator's Health Policy Award. In 2008, in recognition of his scholarly accomplishments, Dr. Markel was elected as a Member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, which in July of 2015 was renamed the National Academy of Medicine (of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. In 2015, he was named a Guggenheim Fellow by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation for "demonstrating exceptional capacity for productive scholarship." In 2016, Markel was elected to the Johns Hopkins University Society of Scholars and was awarded the Distinguished Alumnus Service Award from the University of Michigan Medical School. In 2017, he was awarded an academic writing residency at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio (Italy) Center. On August 8, 2017, Pantheon Books (a division of Alfred A. Knopf/Penguin Random House) published his book, The Kellogg's: The Battling Brothers of Battle Creek, which garnered superb reviews and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Best Biography of 2018. On September 21, 2021, W.W. Norton and Co., will publish Professor Markel's latest, and most ambitious, book, The Secret of Life: Rosalind Franklin, James Watson and Francis Crick's Discovery of DNA's Double Helix. For the academic year of 2021-2022, he will be a Visiting Fellow at Clare Hall, Cambridge University.
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  • The Secret of Life Audiobook By Howard Markel cover art

    • The Secret of Life

    • Rosalind Franklin, James Watson, Francis Crick, and the Discovery of DNA's Double Helix
    • By: Howard Markel
    • Narrated by: Donald Corren
    • Length: 15 hrs and 5 mins
    • Release date: 09-21-21
    • Language: English
    • 4.5 out of 5 stars 81 ratings

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  • The Kelloggs Audiobook By Howard Markel cover art

    • The Kelloggs

    • The Battling Brothers of Battle Creek
    • By: Howard Markel
    • Narrated by: David Colacci
    • Length: 16 hrs and 22 mins
    • Release date: 08-08-18
    • Language: English
    • 4 out of 5 stars 61 ratings

    Regular price: $25.79 or 1 credit

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  • Origin Story Audiobook By Howard Markel cover art

    • Origin Story

    • The Trials of Charles Darwin
    • By: Howard Markel
    • Narrated by: Mike Cooper
    • Length: 7 hrs and 49 mins
    • Release date: 06-11-24
    • Language: English
    • 4 out of 5 stars 4 ratings

    Regular price: $20.00 or 1 credit

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  • When Germs Travel Audiobook By Howard Markel cover art

    • When Germs Travel

    • Six Major Epidemics That Have Invaded America and the Fears They Have Unleashed
    • By: Howard Markel
    • Narrated by: Steven Jay Cohen
    • Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
    • Release date: 08-17-21
    • Language: English
    • 4.5 out of 5 stars 2 ratings

    Regular price: $17.19 or 1 credit

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