Reading at Bookends & Beginnings

Join Jonathon Gleason to celebrate the release of his award-winning Field Guide to Falling Ill. Followed by a book signing.

Join us for an evening with Jonathon Gleason, author of Field Guide to Falling Ill, a riveting exploration of illness and medicine that imagines a more humane form of care.

“What was wrong with them? That’s what we wanted to know.” So begins Jonathan Gleason’s prizewinning collection of essays on the human lives behind the corporate, legal, and cultural practices that shape disease. Drawing on his experiences as a medical interpreter and patient, Gleason illuminates a stunning range of topics, including the racial dimensions of organ donation, the past and present of the AIDS crisis, and the troubled relationship between state violence and mental illness. With sharp analysis and boundless empathy, Gleason shows how medicine is shaped by cultural narratives, historical contexts, and the complicated people who practice it.