Dr. Lydia Kang is a prolific author and a practicing physician. She is also an associate professor of Internal Medicine at University of Nebraska Medical Center who has gained a reputation for helping fellow writers achieve medical accuracy in fiction. She has written adult fiction, young adult fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. Master storyteller meets scientist, her books combine the fascinating and dark histories of disease and cures in a way that’s both accessible and captivating.

Quackery: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything, co-authored with Nate Pederson and named a Best Science Book by NPR’s “Science Friday,” is a look at the dangerously wacky but true ways that humans have attempted to cure their ills through the ages. From leeches and mercury to strychnine (used in rat poison) and lobotomies, it explores the medical “treatments” that were predicated on a range of cluelessness, trial and error, and straight-up scams in the name of health.

Patient Zero: A Curious History of the World’s Worst Diseases is a page-turner on disease outbreaks throughout history. Medical stories of smallpox, Bubonic plague, polio, and HIV combine “Patient Zero” narratives, or the human stories behind outbreaks, with historical examinations of missteps, milestones, scientific theories, and more. A timely examination of epidemics—how they start, how they spread, the science that lets us understand them, and how we race to contain them.

Lydia Kang offers a wealth of information on all of these topics and can speak to both the medical community and laypeople.