Maureen Mylander is best known for the story of Patch Adams and for her seminal critique of military leadership in The Generals: Making It Military-Style.
Maureen Mylander majored in journalism at The George Washington University, which led to a career as a writer/editor for the U.S. Army Medical Service and the National Institutes of Health. She has since published an array of well regarded books and, for fun, she plays in a ukulele band.
Gesundheit!
Bringing Good Health to You, the Medical System, and Society through Physician Service, Complementary Therapies, Humor, and Joy, by Patch Adams M.D. with Maureen Mylander.
The story that inspired the hit movie, Patch Adams, starring the late Robin Williams, Gesundheit! seeks wellness through humor, imagination, creativity, old-fashioned fun, and a new kind of doctor-patient relationship in today’s high-tech medicine. Patch tackles a universal taboo in an essay on “Fun Death,” and kindles hope of healing a U.S. health care system in pain.
Gesundheit! also explores world peace via nasal diplomacy as it shows Patch and his troupe of healers, attired in clownwear and red rubber noses, touring Russia in 1985. Published by Inner Traditions and Healing Arts Press, 1993, 1997.
The Generals:
Making It, Military-Style.
Maureen Mylander’s classic study of the military career system explores a world of warriors the public admires but knows little about. She reveals how men–and a few women–enter the inner elite of the U.S. Army and, indeed, all the nation’s military services.
From leadership failures in Vietnam, to lapses in professional ethics, to paradoxes of power and powerlessness, The Generals dares to name names.
A Washington Post reviewer predicted, “This book is headed for controversy. Certainly it will be read by every ambitious officer . . .”
The Generals has been widely read, photocopied, and taught over the years at military service academies, command and staff schools, and war colleges.
The index remains the most widely read part of the book, published by Dial Press in 1974.
Brass Ceiling:
#ME-ilitary Too
While women await another chance to break the Nation’s ultimate glass ceiling, they continue to face disrespect, discrimination, and sexual violence in the home, workplace, media, and especially–as this fact-based novel recounts–in the U.S. military.
Maureen Mylander’s novel, Kindle Direct Publishing, 2019, received many five-star Amazon reviews. Among them:
“I was blown away by the depth and scope of Ms. Mylander’s research—into medicine the military, and Afghanistan . . . . I couldn’t put it down–until I had about 50 more pages to read, and then I was reluctant to get to the end. I sincerely hope she is writing another . . .”
The Great American Stomach Book:
How Your Stomach Works
& What To Do When It Doesn’t
An army travels on its stomach and, therefore, must treat it well.
“Still true today” says author Maureen Mylander. And, chances are, footsoldiers, generals, civilians, all of us have quibbles, or even raging battles, with that much-assaulted organ and its digestive cohorts from time to time. We tend–when our stomach tries to tell us something is wrong–to tell it to shut up!
In 1982 publisher Ticknor and Fields described The Great American Stomach Book as “ . . . comprehensive, authoritative, humorous, and, best of all, reassuring on a subject we would all do well to learn more about.” It still is, even with scientific advances in gastroenterology.
Mylander points to the large number of digestive ills caused by what you eat, or what eats at you.
As a reviewer for the Society of Gastrointestinal Assistants said, “Your spectacularly, hysterically funny book is long overdue . . . . cover graphics not so good, though.”
The Healthy Male:
A Comprehensive Health Guide for Men (And the Women Who Care About Them)
Q. Why is a woman writing a book about men’s health?
A. Why do women continue to live longer than men?
Is it because of biological differences between men and women, or does it have to do with behavior?
“Definitely behavior,” says Maureen Mylander, author of The Healthy Male, and of numerous books and articles about health for the layperson.
From heart disease to hangovers, this complete health guide explores healthy lifestyles and diseases of men. The goal: narrow a longevity gap in which nearly every leading cause of death kills men at higher rates than women. And the third leading cause, accidents, hardly affects women at all. So: definitely behavior.
Armed with the lifestyle information The Healthy Male provides, men who have invested so heavily in families and careers can now invest in themselves in search of fitness, health, and–above all–living longer and better. Published by Little, Brown, 1987.
Currently Unavailable on Amazon
Salesman Surgeon:
The Incredible Story of an Amateur in the Operating Room.
When the authorities called on orthopedic device salesman William MacKay to testify about how he sold his wares, his revelations made headlines across the country.
MacKay, with only an eighth grade education, admitted to performing numerous surgeries in numerous states at the request of orthopedists, surgical supervisors, and hospitals. And patients did well when he scrubbed in.
As this medical-style great imposter told Maureen Mylander, “I’m a bone carpenter, not a doctor!” Together they told this true story and McGraw-Hill published it in 1978. It was reviewed in Time, Newsweek, New York Post, New York Daily News,and serialized in Newsday.