I've given it as gifts a few times.

I'm trying to think where I've heard of Duncan -- I think his name is just eerily similar to a writer whose work I like.

For medical, of course, Paul Farmer's work, but also:

Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science -- by Atul Gawande -- Gawande is a New Yorker writer, and this book is a collection of his essays, many of them originally printed in the New Yorker. It's delightful.

and one I'm forgetting the name of right now, but which is lovely. A doctor born in India emigrates to the U.S. and ends up on the leading edge of AIDS treatment in this little town in the midwest. There are these correlations between the isolation he feels as an Indian in the US, and that felt by his patients, most of whom are gay, in this little town. Damn, I wish I could remember the guy's name. I'll let you know if I do. It's really worth reading.

**edit: The book is My Own Country, by Abraham Verghese, and it's Tennessee, not the midwest. lol