Dr. Kildare Books In Order

Publication Order of Dr. Kildare Books

The “Dr. Kildare” series is written by Max Brand, which was the pen name of prolific author Frederick Faust, and is from the medical genre. This series is about the many exploits of Dr. Kildare, who starts out the series as a medical intern as he works to try and become a doctor. You also get to see him and Mary’s romance. There are both novels and short stories to the series.

Max Brand created the character Dr. James Kildare after knowing a man named Dr. George Winthrop “Dixie” Fish, a college friend of Brand’s who later would become a surgeon in New York. Max Brand introduced the world to his popular character in a short story called “Internes Can’t Take Money” that was published in an issue of Cosmopolitan magazine in the year 1936. Both this story and “Whiskey Sour” show Kildare, who wants to be a surgeon and eventually leaves his parents’s farm to go to a big city hospital that was a fictional creation by Brand himself.

There are different characters found in the series besides Kildare himself. There are Dr. Stephen Kildare and his wife Martha, who are James Kildare’s parents; then there is Mary Lamont, a nurse and who is also Kildare’s girlfriend and later on in the series they get married. There is also Dr. Leonard Gillespie, who Dr. Kildare is supposed to answer to and be mentored by. James also goes by the name Jimmy and is an American.

At first, only stories from the series would be published in pulp magazines, but in 1940, “Calling Dr. Kildare” was released. The final novel in the series (which was called “Dr. Kildare’s Search”) saw publication in 1994, some fifty years after Brand died in 1944 while traveling on the Italian front with the United States’s soldiers, and came over twenty years since the last Kildare novel was released in 1972.

“Dr. Kildare’s Trial” by Max Brand is the fourth novel in the Dr. Kildare series that was released in 1941. Dr. Kildare has gone against the orders of his chief and the staff of Blair General Hospital. Not to mention the legal-medical code. But he did it for a good cause, it was to save the lives of a beautiful woman and a little boy.

Fans of the novel enjoy the characters, especially Kildare who takes charge and does not take any flak from anyone. They also like the commentary that Brand puts in the novel that still is important today. Fans loved the novel and cannot wait to get their hands on more. This novel is great for big fans of the series who have been reading them since the very first, and it is great for those who have seen the movies to finally read the source material.

Some did not like the language and simply how dated the novel is, finding that people in the novel are racist, sexist, and the novel is not politically correct for today’s world. Some found that unless you are a There is also Dr. Leonard Gillespie, who Dr. Kildare is supposed to answer to and be mentored by.white man, you will be talked to or about in a demeaning manor. For some, it was hard to figure out the slang they use, and some parts just felt funny because our minds are different now compared to then.

“Young Dr. Kildare” by Max Brand is the fifth novel in the Dr. Kildare series that was released in 1941. Dr. Kildare has graduated from college and returns to the small town where he was raised and where his parents (Martha and Steven) still live. Everyone thinks that Dr. Kildare will start work at his father’s practice now, even his childhood friend Alice Raymond.

Fans of the novel found Kildare’s exploits to fun to read about, and Brand does a good job of telling you about people’s medical problems without it sounding overly complicated. The novel is a gripping read about working in the medical field way back when and shows a lot of the technology from the time. Some felt that the novel really captures the mood and atmosphere of the time, the way period novels written now simply cannot. These novels are hard to put down, it is so much fun to read about the great Kildare as he works on his patients.

Some did not like that parts were confusing to them- there were sequences in the novel that sounded almost foreign to their ears, and that the novel is full of language that people do not use anymore, nor should they. The language is vulgar and offensive to some readers.

“Dr. Kildare’s Crisis” by Max Brand is the sixth novel in the “Dr. Kildare” that was released in 1942. This was the last novel in the series to come out before Brand’s death, as the next novel would not be released for thirty years. As Mary and James’s wedding day gets closer, Douglas (Mary’s brother) stops in for a visit. Douglas wants to see Mr. Chandler (who is wealthy) so that he can try to get the man to set up a foundation that can make three subsidized schools that will train workers without any skills. Kildare thinks that Doug might be epileptic because he hears sounds that are not there. Kildare does not want to impose on Chandler, even though he did save his daughter.

The stories from the series have served as the basis for many different adaptations over the years. After a film based off of “Internes Can’t Take Money” that was made by Paramount Films, MGM made a lot of films with the character. At one point, MGM acquired the rights to the character and made many films (ten total) about the character in from the late thirties and forties; some which were even co-written by Faust himself. This would end after seven films, and later films in the series would be written by other writers. In the MGM pictures, Kildare was played by Lew Ayres. Seven films were made with MGM. There was also a television series in the sixties (that was on the air from 1961 until 1966) and another in the seventies, and a fifties radio series.

2 Responses to “Dr. Kildare”

1. Bradley Schlieper: 3 years ago

   I just discovered I have all 7 of the Dr Kildare books written by Mr. Faust. I have been collection books since I was a teenager and have well over 300 of Frederick Faust’s books. They are under several different pen names of this prolific writer to include Peter Dawson, David Manning, George Challis, Walter C Butler, Frederick Frost, John Frederick, Even Evans, Max Brand, Frederick Faust and likely others too. One of them is autographed by Mr Faust I believe in 1922.
   I also have the 37 book set of the Walter J Black editions too. So many neat things in my collection.

   Reply
   • Graeme: 3 years ago

     That’s awesome that sounds like quite the collection 🙂

     Reply