For those who received an e-reader or an iPad for a holiday gift, here are three great books about health and health care you might want to read.

I highly recommend The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. Although not about health care reform or health care per se, this is a great “must read” for 2012. It's the true story of the family of Henrietta Lacks, who unknowingly gave her cervical cells to a medical researcher who was able to grow them in culture, thus making all sorts of medical discoveries possible. The cells became the HeLa cells, they were sent on missions to space, used to find the vaccine for polio, and influential in HIV research among other things. Henrietta died of cervical cancer at age 31 in 1951, leaving behind five small children. Yet her family, a poor African American family, never knew or benefited from this major medical discovery. It is a gripping tale, and not overly dense. There is a lot in this book about growing up black and poor in America, but most importantly, it is a story about lack of medical informed consent. Like The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks talks about the lack of understanding—the culture clash—between medical providers who mean well and Lacks's family, and the chasm of understanding between classes in America. Henrietta Lacks's family never had access to health care, although their mother and grandmother's contribution to medical science was so large.

Another good book for after holiday reading is T.R. Reid's The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care. In very readable form, the author goes around the world looking for relief for his sore shoulder and finds a great metaphor for our broken health care system in the US. He goes to a spa in India, receives acupuncture in Taiwan, is told to live with his pain in Great Britain, and receives steroid injections in Japan. He compares all these countries on a macro level to see how the US might learn from them. He includes an afterward called Obamacare Explained, and in 8 pages boils it down in clear, unadorned form. As the title implies, the afterward does seem like an afterthought to the whole book, but it was a nice explanation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) with no editorializing. The book itself is a good, quick, fun read and highly informative. T.R. Reid gives the reader a lot to think about as he flies around the world looking at how other countries get it right (or wrong) and how we might benefit.

A book more directly about “Obamacare” or the PPACA is Landmark: The Inside Story of America's New Health Care Law and What It Means for Us All by the staff of the Washington Post. I gave this book to my 79-year-old mother to also review. We both found it fascinating from a historical perspective. The introduction was about FDR and every other president who couldn't get a health care bill passed. Then it devolves into an inside-the-beltway log of what happened to whom and when. Maybe in 5 years I'll think this is interesting. But from the perspective of right now, it just didn't have the same consequence as looking back at what happened in the Reagan years (“trickle down economics”) or the Clinton years (“no one died when Clinton lied”). My mother, who hails from far left of center, also found it a bit too “us” liberals versus “them” conservatives. For an opportunity to feel smug about being a liberal, there are better reads than this. Did the PPACA go far enough or too far? What will happen to the Obama presidency—will it result in a failed re-election? Will the bill make no difference in our daily lives at all? Give this book to your favorite Washington inside health care economics wonks and they will love you. Otherwise, we can all just wait and see what happens and read the Washington Post for our insider information.

Jennifer Coombs, PhD, PA-C, is an assistant professor in the University of Utah PA program in Salt Lake City. This blog post expresses her personal views and does not express or represent the views or policies of AAPA.