I love the history of science and medicine. I also love voyeuristic gruesomeness about horrible things happening to people who are long dead, especially if it includes all the gooey details. They're skeletons by now, regardless of what happened to them, so I don't feel bad about it.
Tag: biology
The Tangled Tree (2018), by David Quammen
This text is the last in my most recent plunge into popular science/non-fiction texts. I have very mixed feelings about it, which can be considered in three categories: broadly, the science itself was terrific; some of the writing decisions were not quite to my taste; and there was a deeply disturbing undercurrent of blind spots … Continue reading The Tangled Tree (2018), by David Quammen
The Emperor of All Maladies (2010), by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Continuing in my recent trend of superb non-fiction about gushy ways to die, I was gobsmacked by how good this enormous tome is. And I'm not the only one. As my library's copy's cover proudly proclaimed, it won the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction in 2011, and I think it richly deserved it. The main text … Continue reading The Emperor of All Maladies (2010), by Siddhartha Mukherjee
The Great Plague (2002), by Stephen Porter
So, given my surprised appreciation of Daniel Defoe's desccription of the Great Plague of London in 1665, I decided to delve a little bit deeper into the history, this time drawing on modern scholarship. I was—I won't deny it—hoping for some more gruesome discussions of the biology of the disease, but unfortunately this book is … Continue reading The Great Plague (2002), by Stephen Porter
A Journal of the Plague Year (1722), by Daniel Defoe
In my continuing personal journey through nonfiction books focusing on icky ways to die*, I decided that my life is incomplete without a bit of wallowing in bubonic plague. This book (which I got for free on Project Gutenberg) is presented as a personal reminiscence of someone who lived through the great outbreak in London … Continue reading A Journal of the Plague Year (1722), by Daniel Defoe
I Contain Multitudes (2016) by Ed Yong
This is a fabulous example of the sort of popular science writing I like best: It is rigorously researched, explaining the experiments and findings at a level appropriate for an interested general reader, while still maintaining scientific rigor, and with excellent endnotes and references to ensure that I can track down any primary source and … Continue reading I Contain Multitudes (2016) by Ed Yong
Damp Skunk 