Leading the Way ─ A History of Johns Hopkins Medicine

The first comprehensive history of Hopkins Medicine in more than twenty years, Leading the Way not only recounts the exceptional achievements of Hopkins physicians, researchers, teachers, and students since 1889 but chronicles the extraordinary expansion and accomplishments of Hopkins Medicine over the past two decades.

Within the last twenty years, dozens of multidisciplinary research institutes and centers have been created to expand the frontiers of research in such wide-ranging fields as genetic medicine, biomedicine, cell engineering, cardiovascular care, ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease), and patient safety. In addition, a completely new medical school curriculum was formulated; four hospitals—two in Maryland, one in Washington, D.C., and one in Florida—joined the Hopkins Medicine family; and Johns Hopkins Medicine International was founded, expanding Hopkins’ global influence exponentially.

Hopkins Medicine has endured and overcome significant challenges and crises while still maintaining its status as the best-known health care institution in the world—with the Johns Hopkins Hospital alone being named the nation’s best by U.S. News & World Report for an incredible twenty-one consecutive years. Hopkins Medicine has been the subject of award-winning television programs and best-selling books, and its faculty continues to garner recognition for outstanding achievements, including MacArthur Foundation "genius" awards, National Medals of Science, Presidential Medals of Freedom, and Nobel Prizes.

Lavishly illustrated with more than four hundred photographs, most in color, Leading the Way provides all those interested in the story of Johns Hopkins Medicine—even just the advances in medicine itself over the past twenty years—a lively and riveting account of how Hopkins remains in the forefront of medical education, research, and patient care.

Neil A. Grauer is assistant director of editorial services in the Johns Hopkins Medicine Office of Marketing and Communications. A third-generation graduate of the Johns Hopkins University, his freelance writings have appeared in American Heritage, Smithsonian, the Baltimore Sun, the Washington Post, and many other publications. Among his seven books are Remember Laughter: A Life of James Thurber; Centuries of Caring: The Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center Story; Wits and Sages; and Lacrosse: Technique and Tradition (coauthored with Hopkins’s lacrosse coach David Pietramala), the latter two also published by Johns Hopkins.