Inflamed

'A work of exhilarating scope and relevance ... a rare and powerful experience' - Naomi Klein, author of On Fire

'Health is not something we can attain as individuals, for ourselves, hermetically sealed off from the world around us. An injury to one is an injury to all.'

Inflamed journeys across the human body - through our digestive, endocrine, circulatory, respiratory, reproductive, immune, and nervous systems - illuminating the hidden relationships between our biological systems and the profound injustices of our political and economic systems. This boldly original book shows how inflammation is connected not just to the food that we eat and the air that we breathe, but is also linked to the traumatic events we experience, the stories we tell, and the arts of diagnosis that physicians practice - and fail to practice - every day.

Combining the latest scholarship on globalization and biology with the stories of patients in marginalized communities and the science of Indigenous groups, Inflamed points the way toward a deep medicine that has the potential to heal not only our bodies but the world.

About the Author

Rupa Marya is Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and a co-founder of the Do No Harm Coalition, a collective of health workers committed to addressing disease through structural change. A physician and activist, she is also a composer and musician whose music was described by legend Gil Scott Heron as 'Liberation Music.' Raj Patel is a research professor at the University of Texas at Austin's Lyndon B Johnson School of Public Affairs, a Research Associate at Rhodes University, South Africa, and a member of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems. He is the author of Stuffed and Starved, the New York Times bestselling The Value of Nothing and co-director of the forthcoming documentary The Ants and the Grasshopper.