Improbable Books is reorganizing and has delayed until 2013 publication of our next book, tentatively titled “Mom and Pop in Crisis: A Family Advocate Confronts Hospital Perils, Doctor Blunders, and Other Healthcare Calamities.” Written by a savvy advocate for aged parents, this energetic memoir deals up-close and personally with the often hazardous-to-your-health pitfalls in our dysfunctional healthcare system. “Mom and Pop in Crisis” will open your eyes, jump-start your resolve, and inspire you to speak up! Please check back with us for updates about the manuscript’s progress.

In the meantime, we invite you to explore our website to learn about our first book, “Starting with Serotonin: How a High-Rolling Father of Drug Discovery Repeatedly Beat the Odds,” a biography-history by Ann G. Sjoerdsma about her trailblazing scientist-physician father. Dr. Albert Sjoerdsma launched his innovative 40-year career at the National Institutes of Health in 1950s, when he set out to discover a drug that would control high blood pressure. 

The frontier for heart-disease research was vast and unexplored then. Dr. Sjoerdsma not only succeeded: He created a new medical discipline called clinical pharmacology, which joined the bedside with the bench, in rationally designed research. No more throwing old plant-derived drugs at “the wall” and hoping something stuck!

“Starting with Serotonin” (2008) won multiple publishing awards, including the 2009 Independent Publisher Book Awards’ Gold Medal for biography, and received critical raves from The New England Journal of Medicine and other prominent medical journals. You will find a detailed overview of the book, chapter excerpts, reviews, and commentaries, as well as news archives and special reports related to “Starting with Serotonin” and Dr. Sjoerdsma’s breakthroughs, by clicking on the links above.

An autographed copy of “Starting with Serotonin” is now available at a discount price of $25.00. Just click on Purchases.

Dr. Sjoerdsma was guided in his pioneering work by a philosophy he called “The Probability of the Improbable.” He explains:

The Probability of the Improbable has to do with being able to see Significance with a capital “S,” when something is important and when it’s not. It’s a matter of being able to perceive and then extrapolate from it, of recognizing the unexpected and knowing how to take advantage of it.

When we published “Starting with Serotonin,” we knew we were publishing an improbable book. We knew we were preserving in print Significance that others may not have realized or known. We wanted to enhance knowledge and enrich lives. We plan to do the same next year with “Mom and Pop in Crisis.”

We hope you will bookmark us and stay tuned. Thank you for visiting.

—The Editors

“Man can believe the impossible, but can never believe the improbable.”
—OSCAR WILDE (1856-1900)

“I never did anything in a straight line.”
—ALBERT SJOERDSMA, M.D., Ph.D. (b. 1924)

To contact us, you may write to
P.O. Box 919, Alexandria, Virginia 22313;
call (301) 585-1601; or email:

info@improbablebooks.com (for general inquiries)

publicity@improbablebooks.com (for media inquiries)

Improbable Books is a North Carolina-based publisher with offices in the Washington, D.C., area.
All original material on this website is ©2008-12, Improbable Books.