Spinal Cord Injury Books & Gifts

Below are you will find inspirational and resource books and other publications pertaining to spinal cord injuries. Most of the books are affiliated with, and can be purchased at Amazon.com. They make great caregiver references or gifts for those with a spinal cord injury. Most of these books are 30% off and ship free on orders over $25.

More books and pamphlets will be added as I come across them. Please contact me if you know of a good resource not listed here.

Hover your mouse over the following links for pricing and additional information.

Books

• Self-Help, Health, Sex, Mind & Body
• Biographies, Memoirs, & Inspirational
• Medical, Rehabilitation & Nurses Aids

= Recommended   = Under $20
 

Self-Help, Health, Sex, Mind & Body

• Caregivers and Personal Assistants: How to Find, Hire and Manage the People Who Help You (Or Your Loved One!)
  A fantastic resource for people in managing their care.
• Choices: A Guide to Sex Counseling With Physically Disabled Adults
• Enabling Romance; A Guide to Love, Sex, and Relationships for People with Disabilities (And the People Who Care about Them)
  Covers shattering sexual stereotypes; building self-esteem; creative sexual variations; reproduction and contraception for people with disabilities; specific information on different physical and sensory disabilities, including SCI.
• Endless Struggle: Spinal Cord Injury
• Female Sexuality Following Spinal Cord Injury
• How to Live With a Spinal Cord Injury
• Illustrated Manual of Sex Therapy
  Manual of illustrative techniques used in counseling for different sexual problems.
• Life on Wheels: A Guide for the Active Wheelchair User
  By: Gary Karp. Covers medical issues, such as paralysis, circulation, respiration, rehab, cure research; day-to-day living, such as exercise, skin, bowel and bladder, home access, sexuality, wheelchair maintenance; and social issues, such as self-image, adjustment, friends, family, cultural attitudes, and activism.
• New Horizons: A Guide to Sexuality After Spinal Cord Injury
• New Opportunities
  A children's book written to educate children through adults about spinal cord injury.
• Personal Health History: Spinal cord injury
  A workbook that tracks medical information in an organized and concise way. It covers general medical topics as well as areas that are specific to the unique needs of spinal cord injury patients. 
• Sexuality of After Spinal Cord Injury: Answers to Your Questions
  Resource for people with SCI and the people who love them. The material covers male and female sexuality issues in a question & answer format.
• Spinal Cord Injury: A Guide for Living
  A Johns Hopkins Press Health Book. Designed to help those with spinal cord injuries, their families, and friends, during the rehabilitation process. Reviews the challenges that may be encountered throughout their lives.
• The Spinal Cord Injury Handbook for Patients and Their Families  
  An A-Z book when in comes to spinal injuries. Covers everything from what a spinal cord injury is to diagnosis and treatment; skin care; rehab; bladder and bowel management and caregiver relief.

Biographies, Memoirs, & Inspirational

• A Matter of Courage: the Story of One Man's Determination and One Family's Commitment
• Able Lives: Women's Experience of Paralysis
• Another Fine Mess You've Gotten Us Into: The Life and Adventures of a Quad
  A one-of-a-kind emotional experience of a quadriplegic as he journeys through more than forty years of life with a severe spinal cord injury.
• Be Not Afraid: Ben Peyton's Story
  A seventeen-year-old hockey player's fight to overcome a devastating injury.
• Care Packages: Letters to Christopher Reeve from Strangers and Other Friends by Dana Reeve
• Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot
  By: John Callahan. An autobiography of a quadriplegic cartoonist is by turns hilarious, sad, sick, inspiring and illustrated with the funniest cartoons since The Far Side.
• Eleven Seconds: A Story of Tragedy, Courage & Triumph
  The Travis Roy biography. A book for hockey lovers, players, fans, or anybody who likes to read about triumph in the face of tragedy.
• The Fire Within
  The life of Chazz DeMeyer from his childhood, through the explosive 60’s when the music revolution engulfed him, and on through a life journey filled with excitement, success, tragedy and love.
• Fourth and Long: The Kent Waldrep Story
  A football players, and his loved ones' ordeals in adjusting to paralysis.
• From Where I Sit, From Where You Stand: A Roll Through Life
  The journey of Marshall Wall, which includes more than fifty years in awheelchair, is presented in a topical display in chapters on different arenas of life.
• Genesis: A Portrait of Spinal Cord Injury
  By: Stephen Thompson. Memoir sharing his many tribulations as he experiences new beginnings, both physical and spiritual, as he strives to walk again.
• Hannah from Loam Hill
  Inspired by true events, a compelling tale of resilience and one girl's relentless search for true love.
• Inside the Halo and Beyond: The Anatomy of a Recovery
  Pulitzer prize winning poet Maxine Kumin chronicles a period of nine months, from her accident that left her with a 5% chance of survival.
• Journey to Well: Learning to Live after Spinal Cord Injury
  Margie Williams suffered a severe SCI at the age of 53. She presents a close-up view of what life is like during and after such an incident.
• Living With Spinal Cord Injury
• Looking Upward: Facing and Reaching Beyond Spinal Cord Injury
  Memoir tells of becoming spinal cord injured at age 22, struggling to deal with this dramatic life change physically, psychologically and socially, and eventually overcoming through faith, determination and personal growth obstacles and challenges faced.
• Lucky Man: A Memoir
  By: Michael J. Fox. Covers the self-indulgent days as a young star through his denial and hiding of his illness to his final acceptance and then advocacy for Parkinson's sufferers.
• Meaning of a Disability: The Lived Experience of Paralysis
  Albert Robillard, a sociology professor paralyzed as a result of motor-neuron disease, explores his daily life from a different perspective.
• Miracles Happen: One Mother, One Daughter, One Journey
  Brooke Ellison paralyzed from the neck down at 11overcame seemingly insurmountable odds to become the first quadriplegic to graduate from Harvard. Brooke and her mother tell her story from injury, recovery, and eventual triumph.
• Moving Violations: War Zones, Wheelchairs, and Declarations of Independence
  Journalist for National Public Radio and ABC News recounts the challenges he has faced as a paraplegic at home and abroad, from the dangers of war-torn Iraq and Jerusalem to discrimination at home.
• Some Things Are Unbreakable
  by: Kate Willette. Her account of the first year after her husband near-fatal spinal cord injury on a snowy mountainside. A story of love, loyalty, faith, and of outcomes possible only when luck, courage, and medical technology combine.
• My Soul Purpose: Living, Learning, and Healing
  By: Hedi Von Beltz. An often funny account by one of California's golden girls who, paralyzed from the neck down after a car crash, prevailed over predictions that she faced life as nothing more than a ``talking head'' and death within five years.
• Nothing Is Impossible: Reflections on a New Life
  By: Christopher Reeve. Published on the eve of both his fiftieth birthday and the seventh anniversary of his spinal cord injury.
• On Eagle's Wings
  A story of survival against all odds, enduring faith, and intense determination.
• Rescuing Jeffrey: A True Story
  By: Richard Galli. A painful situation a father finds himself facing after his son Jeffrey was paralyzed after a freak accident in a swimming pool. This account is a heartfelt, painfully honest description of the first ten days after the accident.
• Roll Models: People Who Live Successfully Following Spinal Cord Injury And How They Do It by Richard Holicky
• Staring Back: The Disability Experience from the Inside Out
  Andre Dubus, Stanley Elkin, and Adrienne Rich, confront what it means to be disabled in our society.
• "Still Me"
  By: Christopher Reeve. A good, honest story of Reeve's struggles and hope.
• "Still Me"
  By: Christopher Reeve - book-on-tape. Narrated by Reeves.
• Take Back Your Life!
  Takes you through the powerful journey of Rosemarie Rossetti. Contains her affirming life lessons learned while coping with tremendous change and dealing with overwhelming adversity.
• The Body Silent
  By: Robert F. Murphy. A paraplegic at a late age, after having enjoyed a long, brilliant career as a professor at Columbia and an anthropologist.
• Waist-High in the World: A Life Among the Nondisabled
  Personal reflections about disability, embodiment, marriage, religion, and lots of other things, but fundamentally about the possibility of honestly acknowledging all the pain and confusion in our lives while living fully and joyously.
• Will the Real John Callahan Please Stand Up?: A Quasi Memoir
  John Callahan's humor, and his spirit, have apparently known no bounds. This definitive autobiography of the cartoonist ranges wide and weird.
• May You Have an Interesting Wife! A Story of Disability, Love and World Travel
  A tale of the adventures and misadventures of a paraplegic woman who goal is to visit 100 countries.

Medical, Rehabilitation & Nurses Aids

• Aging With Spinal Cord Injury
  Craig Hospital focuses on different body systems, how a person with SCI, and how SCI may modify the aging process.
• Back and Neck Disorders Sourcebook
  Basic information about disorders and injuries of the spinal cord and vertebrae, including facts on chiropractic.
• Basic and Clinical Anatomy of the Spine, Spinal Cord, and ANS
  Textbook on the anatomy of the spine, spinal cord, and autonomic nervous system, for students in chiropractic, osteopathy, or physical therapy.
• Catastrophic Injuries in High School and College Sports (Hk Sport Science Monograph Series, V. 8)
  Discusses the results of a 10-year study of serious injury among young athletes, providing recommendations for reducing catastrophic injuries, preventing deaths, and making sports programs safer.
• Childhood Brain & Spinal Cord Tumors: A Guide for Families, Friends & Caregivers
• Diagnosis and Management of Disorders of the Spinal Cord
  Review of current clinical literature for neurologists of spinal cord disorders.
• Early Management of Acute Spinal Cord Injury
• Functional Electrical Rehabilitation: Technological Restoration After Spinal Cord Injury
  Development over the past decade of functional electrical rehabilitation. It shows how paralyzed muscle can be stimulated to perform in the physical reconditioning of an afflicted person.
• Functional Electrical Stimulation: Standing and Walking After SCI
  Covers the fundamental knowledge and principles of functional electrical stimulation as applied to the spinal cord injured patient.
• In Search of the Lost Cord: Solving the Mystery of Spinal Cord Regeneration
  Presents a history of research and provides insight into current developments that may offer the paralyzed hope for the future.
• Management of Spinal Cord Injuries: A Guide for Physiotherapists
  For students and junior physiotherapists with little experience in the area of spinal cord injury and a general understanding of the principles of physiotherapy. Also a useful tool for experienced clinicians.
• Management of Spinal Cord Injury
  Textbook for rehabilitation nurses and other rehabilitation specialists. A "Must read" for nurses working in Spinal Cord Injury areas - acute or rehab.
• Neurobiology of Spinal Cord Injury (Contemporary Neuroscience)
  Covers the major areas of basic science research in which progress is currently being made in the battle against the problem of spinal cord injury.
• Nursing Practice Related to Spinal Cord Injury and Disorders: A Core Curriculum
  A comprehensive tool for educating a broad audience of nurses in areas ranging from emergency nursing to rehabilitation.
• Nursing Spinal Cord Injuries
  Composed of articles written by trained spinal cord injury nurse practitioners, offers valuable insights and practical information on the rehabilitation period and its critical aspects. A reference and teaching tool for victims and their families as well as to medical professionals.
• Outcome After Head, Neck and Spinal Trauma: A Medicolegal Guide
  Text on the principles and clinical assessment of cranio-spinal trauma. For physicians who must provide medical reports or act as expert witnesses for possible outcomes/prognoses of injury.
• Pharmacological Approaches to the Treatment of Brain and Spinal Cord Injury
• Spinal Cord Injuries in Children
• Spinal Cord Injury: A Guide to Functional Outcomes in Occupational Therapy The Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago Publication Series explains spinal cord injuries in great detail.
• Spinal Cord Injury: Clinical Outcomes from the Model Systems
  University of Alabama, Birmingham. Clinical research on the rehabilitation of spinal cord injury drawn from the Model Systems Uniform Database.
• Spinal Cord Injury: Concepts and Management Approaches
• Spinal Cord Injury: Functional Rehabilitation (2nd Edition)
  Clinical and basic research developments and includes strategies for delivering quality rehabilitative services.
• Spinal Cord Injury: Medical Management and Rehabilitation
  Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, Illinois. Manual for the physicians, nurses, and physical or occupational therapists on the spinal cord injury team on maximizing the outcome potential of the spinal cord injury patient.
• Spinal Cord Medicine: Principles and Practice
• The Child With a Spinal Cord Injury
  Provides 68 sections on etiology and prevention, management, medical issues, orthopedic problems, upper extremity management, rehabilitation, discharge and transition, habilitation, research and technological applications, and special considerations.
• The Management of Persons With Spinal Cord Injuries
• The Quest for Cure: Restoring Function After Spinal Cord Injury
  Published by Paralyzed Veterans of America, Research & Education Department.

Pamphlets & Manuals

Point of Care, Team-based Information System
An online manual/handbook providing valuable information on spinal cord injury and traumatic brain injury rehabilitation issues for health care providers, patients and patients families.

Spinal Cord Injury - For Your Information (SCI-FYI)
A downloadable PDF resource directory by Santa Clara Medical Center. Contains local and national spinal cord injury resource information for distribution to any individual that requests it.