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Henrietta Lacks was a young black woman whose cervical cancer cells became one of the most important factors in bringing about important scientific and medical advancements in the 20th century. Her family, however, did not know that researchers were using Henrietta's cells in their experiments until much later. When the family learned the truth, they endured turmoil and heartache in the decades that followed.
Tara Westover was 17 the first time she set foot in a classroom. Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, she prepared for the end of the world by stockpiling home-canned peaches and sleeping with her "head-for-the-hills bag". In the summer she stewed herbs for her mother, a midwife and healer, and in the winter she salvaged in her father's junkyard. Her father forbade hospitals, so Tara never saw a doctor or nurse. Gashes and concussions, even burns from explosions, were all treated at home with herbalism.
A hilarious, heartwarming, and heartbreaking memoir by the chief wildlife ranger in the number one most popular family vacation destination in the USA, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. For over 30 years, Kim DeLozier acted as a referee in the wild, trying to protect millions of park visitors from one of the densest populations of wild black bears in America - and the bears from tourists who get too close.
Before John Glenn orbited the Earth or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of dedicated female mathematicians known as "human computers" used pencils, slide rules, and adding machines to calculate the numbers that would launch rockets and astronauts into space. Among these problem solvers were a group of exceptionally talented African American women, some of the brightest minds of their generation.
One of the comedy world's fastest-rising stars tells his wild coming of age story during the twilight of apartheid in South Africa and the tumultuous days of freedom that followed. Noah provides something deeper than traditional memoirists: powerfully funny observations about how farcical political and social systems play out in our lives.
In order to bring its origin to light, Rebecca Skloot weaves together several narrative threads. One is primarily focused on Henrietta Lacks, the woman who, without her knowledge, became central to 20th century biomedical research. Another is the birth of modern biomedical research itself, and its roots in the American eugenics movement. Finally, there is the impact of this research, both of the Lacks Family and on society at large. Skloot divides the book into 3 parts: Life, Death, and Immortality.
Henrietta Lacks was a young black woman whose cervical cancer cells became one of the most important factors in bringing about important scientific and medical advancements in the 20th century. Her family, however, did not know that researchers were using Henrietta's cells in their experiments until much later. When the family learned the truth, they endured turmoil and heartache in the decades that followed.
Tara Westover was 17 the first time she set foot in a classroom. Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, she prepared for the end of the world by stockpiling home-canned peaches and sleeping with her "head-for-the-hills bag". In the summer she stewed herbs for her mother, a midwife and healer, and in the winter she salvaged in her father's junkyard. Her father forbade hospitals, so Tara never saw a doctor or nurse. Gashes and concussions, even burns from explosions, were all treated at home with herbalism.
A hilarious, heartwarming, and heartbreaking memoir by the chief wildlife ranger in the number one most popular family vacation destination in the USA, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. For over 30 years, Kim DeLozier acted as a referee in the wild, trying to protect millions of park visitors from one of the densest populations of wild black bears in America - and the bears from tourists who get too close.
Before John Glenn orbited the Earth or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of dedicated female mathematicians known as "human computers" used pencils, slide rules, and adding machines to calculate the numbers that would launch rockets and astronauts into space. Among these problem solvers were a group of exceptionally talented African American women, some of the brightest minds of their generation.
One of the comedy world's fastest-rising stars tells his wild coming of age story during the twilight of apartheid in South Africa and the tumultuous days of freedom that followed. Noah provides something deeper than traditional memoirists: powerfully funny observations about how farcical political and social systems play out in our lives.
In order to bring its origin to light, Rebecca Skloot weaves together several narrative threads. One is primarily focused on Henrietta Lacks, the woman who, without her knowledge, became central to 20th century biomedical research. Another is the birth of modern biomedical research itself, and its roots in the American eugenics movement. Finally, there is the impact of this research, both of the Lacks Family and on society at large. Skloot divides the book into 3 parts: Life, Death, and Immortality.
"This is your country, this is your world, this is your body, and you must find some way to live within the all of it." In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation's history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of "race", a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men.
William Stoner is born at the end of the 19th century into a dirt-poor Missouri farming family. Sent to the state university to study agronomy, he instead falls in love with English literature and embraces a scholar's life, far different from the hardscrabble existence he has known. And yet as the years pass, Stoner encounters a succession of disappointments.
Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis - that of white working-class Americans. The decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly disintegrating over 40 years, has been reported on with growing frequency and alarm but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck.
This is a thrilling historical account of the worst cholera outbreak in Victorian London and a brilliant exploration of how Dr. John Snow's solution revolutionized the way we think about disease, cities, science, and the modern world.
Meg Murry, her little brother Charles Wallace, and their mother are having a midnight snack on a dark and stormy night when an unearthly stranger appears at their door. He claims to have been blown off course and goes on to tell them that there is such a thing as a "tesseract", which, if you didn't know, is a wrinkle in time. Meg's father had been experimenting with time travel when he suddenly disappeared. Will Meg, Charles Wallace, and their friend Calvin outwit the forces of evil as they search through space for their father?
Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed. Soon afterward, his death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Protesters are taking to the streets in Khalil’s name. Some cops and the local drug lord try to intimidate Starr and her family. What everyone wants to know is: what really went down that night? And the only person alive who can answer that is Starr.
Ernt Allbright, a former POW, comes home from the Vietnam war a changed and volatile man. When he loses yet another job, he makes an impulsive decision: He will move his family north, to Alaska, where they will live off the grid in America’s last true frontier.
In 1518, in a small town in Alsace, Frau Troffea began dancing and didn't stop. She danced until she was carried away six days later, and soon 34 more villagers joined her. Then more. In a month more than 400 people had been stricken by the mysterious dancing plague. In late-19th-century England an eccentric gentleman founded the No Nose Club in his gracious townhome - a social club for those who had lost their noses, and other body parts, to the plague of syphilis for which there was then no cure.
When three-month-old Lia Lee arrived at the county hospital emergency room in Merced, California, a chain of events was set in motion from which neither she nor her parents nor her doctors would ever recover. Lia's parents, Foua and Nao Kao, were part of a large Hmong community in Merced, refugees from the CIA-run "Quiet War" in Laos.
A Gentleman in Moscow immerses us in an elegantly drawn era with the story of Count Alexander Rostov. When, in 1922, he is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, the count is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel's doors.
At the height of World War II, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, was home to 75,000 residents, consuming more electricity than New York City. But to most of the world, the town did not exist. Thousands of civilians - many of them young women from small towns across the South - were recruited to this secret city, enticed by solid wages and the promise of war-ending work. Kept very much in the dark, few would ever guess the true nature of the tasks they performed each day in the hulking factories in the middle of the Appalachian Mountains.
Memphis, 1939. Twelve-year-old Rill Foss and her four younger siblings live a magical life aboard their family's Mississippi River shantyboat. But when their father must rush their mother to the hospital one stormy night, Rill is left in charge - until strangers arrive in force. Wrenched from all that is familiar and thrown into a Tennessee Children's Home Society orphanage, the Foss children are assured that they will soon be returned to their parents - but they quickly realize the dark truth.
Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer whose cancer cells – taken without her knowledge – became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first ‘immortal’ human tissue grown in culture, HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the effects of the atom bomb; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions. Yet Henrietta herself remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave
Now Rebecca Skloot takes us on an extraordinary journey in search of Henrietta's story, from the ‘coloured’ ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s to East Baltimore today, where her children and grandchildren live, and struggle with the legacy of her cells. Full of warmth and questing intelligence, 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.
What did you love best about The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks?
I loved the layering of experience: the story of Henrietta herself, the utterly compelling narrative of the destiny of the HeLa cells, the story of Skloot's own search, and then the moving narrative of the descendants of Lacks.
What other book might you compare The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks to and why?
I also listened to The Help this year, and think there is something to be gleaned from these two extended works about the healing power of storytelling. While I often shrink back from white people telling black people's stories, both these books actually tackle this problem head on, exploring the problem of who is telling whose story and why. Restoration through narrative.
Have you listened to any of Cassandra Campbell???s other performances before? How does this one compare?
She was one of the narrators in The Help apparently (must have been that weird third person section?) Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed her reading.
If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?
A story of science that comes from the heart.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful
I found this a very interesting history about the people involved in changing the face of biology as we know it. From the family and their experiences of being involved in the process to the scientists. Ethical practices have changed over time and it is interesting to consider whether the same thing could happen today.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful
What a great book. There were several times I got emotional, hands to Rebecca. Thank you
just wait the first chapters, it don't get to the bottom of it. then it gets exciting!
A bit academic, but a great listen. I may have given up if reading it as quite a lot of technical bits.
I do like an interesting factual book, occasionally.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful
This is unlike anything else I have read. It is hugely enjoyable and the narration superb. Read it and enjoy.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful
loved the book and the narration. it has really opened my eyes about research. a must read.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful
I was really moved by this book. I had heard of HeLa cells before, having studied and worked in medical science for most of my career, but I had never heard the real story behind them. Apart from being a great read the book raises a lot of questions about bioethics, fairness and the injustices of the past. Definitely a story that needed to be told!
2 of 2 people found this review helpful
I went into this having read many positive reviews, and I expected a in depth story into the scientific breakthroughs which resulted from the discovery of HeLa cells.
Instead what I got was an in depth story of how the writer of this book struggled to research the history of the person from whom these cells were drawn - Henrietta Lacks. It's incredibly self indulgent, and spends literally hours on how diligent the author was. The rest is all about the life (and death) of Henrietta and her family. Aside from her remarkable cells, the life of Henrietta was unremarkable in the extreme (for the time), and this book could have simply been a general history of the lot of poor, ultra religious African Americans in the deep south in the 1940s and 50s.
There is virtually no science in this book at all, so if science is what interests you, this book will not. I also found the narrator extremely irritating, as she spends much of her time either attempting (and failing horribly) to do deep south African American accents, or adding quivers and shakes to her voice during emotional moments in the text. It's one of the worst readings of a book I've yet encountered on Audible, and I've listened to a lot of audiobooks.
12 of 17 people found this review helpful
I enjoyed the book on the whole. I found the science and the story of Henrietta really interesting. I have to say I did find the story of the author and her involvement with the family a bit self indulgent and tedious at times. I think the interesting story makes up for the negatives and I would recommend reading it.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
Any additional comments?
The story is fascinating in and of itself, but it seems that the author cannot really decide whether to go for good story-telling or scientific accuracy. The result is an enjoyable, but somewhat wobbly book. The real problem herr lies in the narrator. Far too grating and un-nuanced a voice for my taste.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful
What an amazing story
Outstanding book , crucially important peace of history !
Worth every minute of the long years spent on making it happen .
Thank you Rebecca Skoolt
I was wondering after I had downloaded this after being recommended it, if I would like it. A factual science book! Not the sort of thing I usually read or enjoy. Wow, I couldn’t have been more surprised. Utterly beautiful, interesting, sad, enlightening. I listened as much as I could and finished in a few days. Brilliant. The science was fascinating. At the end of this book you will be glad you know the name Henrietta Lacks.
A great story, well read. It makes you consider many interesting and often thorny topics.
I was surprised by this book. I thought the author did an amazing job of pulling all the detail together to create a really interesting true story that had you there to the end. The most impressive thing about it was the author - I got to really like her for her compassion, resilience and creativity. It took 10 years, but definitely worth it. Added bonus, I now have a much deeper understanding of cell research and the ethical issues around it. It actually made me cry a couple of times, and certainly had me laughing. Well done! I'm really glad I read it.
really interesting story. what am amazing thing to dedicate your life to. privacy & consent issues definitely ongoing & something to be aware of. fantastic writing.
This is an excellent page turner. A touching human story that challenges readers to think about many aspects of morality in our modern society. Medical ethics, racism, poverty, religion, capitalism.....
Love this book I found it to be so well written and the science was easy to understand. Plus a great human story sewn together by brilliant writer.
whether you're a scientist, a doctor, a patient or the public this is a fantastic insight into the amazing world of medicine, medical ethics and the lives of the people who disappear in history. fantastic insight but someone who acts well as an unbiased third party.
A sensitively handled true story. The author's intent, as described in her afterward, is evident throughout. What a journey.
Such an amazing story - just when you thought you knew what the story was about it changed and became something else. An amazing journey and discovery of one family and 2 women.