![]() Įditor's note: The original headline on this article mischaracterized Rebecca Skloot's selections. Intimate in feeling, astonishing in scope, and impossible to put down, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks captures the beauty and drama of scientific discovery, as well as its human consequences. Rebecca Skloot is the author of the best-selling book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. I finished it and said to myself, "I want to write like that guy." The first piece I read by Shilts was a follow-up essay to the book. Published in 1987, it changed the way AIDS was understood and treated in the U.S., and did so by combining powerful investigative journalism with beautiful storytelling. ![]() Martin's, $22).Īnd the Band Played On is up there with Silent Spring as one of the most influential pieces of science writing. He transports himself and his readers into the minds and lives of his patients, reminding us that there are always human beings behind the scientific mysteries.Īnd the Band Played Onby Randy Shilts (St. I love anything by Sacks, but especially this collection of essays about his patients and their fantastical array of neurological ailments. Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. Listen to this episode from Bookey App 30 mins Book Summaries Knowledge Notes and More on Spotify. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks (Touchstone, $16). It's an essential chapter of American history that we should never forget. I devoured this meticulously footnoted story of scientists who hoped to "improve" the human race by eliminating minorities, "immorality," and "inferiors," by means of selective breeding and much worse. It's a dramatic and important story that Fadiman tells without demonizing either the doctors or the family, and it was an early model for me as I wrote The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. In an incredible story of cultural miscommunication and of a tragic clash between scientists and nonscientists, a girl born to a Hmong refugee family in California meets a heartbreaking fate. ![]() The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $15). But The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks succeeds despite itself: it is a fascinating, harrowing and necessary book, marred only slightly by the fact that the author wishes to be considered a.
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