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This biography reveals the little-known story of medically qualified research physiologist and biochemist, John Macleod (1876-1935). A child of a Free Kirk minister in rural Perthshire, Macleod was educated at the Grammar School and University in Aberdeen. Rapid career progress in Leipzig, Aberdeen and London culminated in his appointment as Professor of Physiology in Cleveland, Ohio aged only 27. He moved on to similar positions in Toronto then back in Aberdeen. In Cleveland he became an expert on carbohydrate physiology; in Toronto in 1922, he led the four-man team that discovered the world’s first clinically useful insulin. The following year, he was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology for this life-saving scientific breakthrough, together with colleague, Frederick Banting. The latter unfairly claimed that Macleod had stolen credit for the work.

In a 1982 book, The Discovery of Insulin, Canadian historian Michael Bliss gave a new, detailed interpretation of what had happened in Macleod’s department, concluding that history had underestimated Macleod’s magnificent contributions. Aberdeen-based diabetologist, Michael Williams, went on to produce this detailed account of Macleod’s life and work, originally published in 1993. This refreshed edition, J. J. R. Macleod: Co-discoverer of insulin, adds a description of several interventions over recent years to restore Macleod’s reputation as a scientist whose work contributed to saving hundreds of millions of lives.

Just Care is Akemi Nishida’s thoughtful examination of care injustice and social justice enabled through care. The current neoliberal political economy has turned care into a business opportunity for the healthcare industrial complex and a mechanism of social oppression and control. Nishida analyzes the challenges people negotiate whether they are situated as caregivers, receivers, or both. Also illuminated is how people with disabilities come together to assemble community care collectives and bed activism (resistance and visions emerging from the space of bed) to reimagine care as a key element for social change.

The structure of care, Nishida writes, is deeply embedded in and embodies the cruel social order—based on disability, race, gender, migration status, and wealth—that determines who survives or deteriorates. Simultaneously, many marginalized communities treat care as the foundation of activism. Using interviews, focus groups, and participant observation with care workers and people with disabilities, Just Care looks into lives unfolding in the assemblage of Medicaid long-term care programs, community-based care collectives, and bed activism. Just Care identifies what care does, and asks: How can we activate care justice or just care where people feel cared affirmatively and care being used for the wellbeing of community and for just world making?