The introduction of new medicines has dramatically improved the quantity and quality of individual and public health while contributing trillions of dollars to the global economy. In spite of these past successes—and indeed because of them—our ability to deliver new medicines may be quickly coming to an end. Moving from the twentieth century to the present, A Prescription for Change reveals how changing business strategies combined with scientific hubris have altered the way new medicines are discovered, with dire implications for both health and the economy.

To explain how we have arrived at this pivotal moment, Michael S. Kinch recounts the history of pharmaceutical and biotechnological advances in the twentieth century, relating stories of the individuals and organizations that ushered in the modern era of translational medicine. He shows that an accelerating cycle of acquisition and downsizing is cannibalizing the very infrastructure that had fostered the introduction of innovative new medicines. As Kinch demonstrates, the dismantling of the pharmaceutical and biotechnological research and development enterprises could also provide opportunities to innovate new models that sustain and expand the introduction of newer and better breakthrough medicines in the years to come.

If you have a child in school, you may have heard stories of long-dormant diseases suddenly reappearing–cases of measles, mumps, rubella, and whooping cough cropping up everywhere from elementary schools to Ivy League universities because a select group of parents refuses to vaccinate their children.

Between Hope and Fear tells the remarkable story of vaccine-preventable infectious diseases and their social and political implications. While detailing the history of vaccine invention, Michael Kinch reveals the ominous reality that our victories against vaccine-preventable diseases are not permanent–and could easily be undone. In the tradition of John Barry’s The Great Influenza and Siddhartha Mukherjee’s The Emperor of All Maladies, Between Hope and Fear relates the remarkable intersection of science, technology, and disease that has helped eradicate many of the deadliest plagues known to man.

For the first time since a fifth-century Greek physician gave the name “cancer” (karkinos, in Greek) to a deadly disease first described in Egyptian Papyri, the medical world is near a breakthrough that could allow even the most conservative doctors and pragmatic patients to use the other “c word”–cure–in the same sentence as cancer. A remarkable series of events has brought us to this point, thanks in large part to a new ability to more efficiently harness the extraordinary power of the human immune system. The End of the Beginning is a remarkable history of cancer treatment and the evolution of our understanding of its dynamic interplay with the immune system. Through Michael Kinch’s personal experience as a cancer researcher at Washington University and the head of the oncology program at a leading biotechnology company, we witness the incredible accumulation of breakthrough science and its rapid translation into life-saving technologies that have begun to dramatically increase the quality and quantity of life for cancer patients. Expanding upon Kinch’s own remarkable projects to encompass the vaccines being deployed to eliminate cervical cancer and the development of cancer-specific “smart bombs” in the form of monoclonal antibodies, cellular therapies, and checkpoint inhibitors, The End of the Beginning reveals the incredible transformation of cancer treatment happening today.