The Family That Couldn't Sleep

A Medical Mystery

By: D.T. Max

Narrated by: Grover Gardner

Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins

Publisher's summary

For 200 years, a noble Venetian family has suffered from an inherited disease that strikes their members in middle age, stealing their sleep, eating holes in their brains, and ending their lives in a matter of months. In Papua New Guinea, a primitive tribe is nearly obliterated by a sickness whose chief symptom is uncontrollable laughter. Across Europe, millions of sheep rub their fleeces raw before collapsing. In England, cows attack their owners in the milking parlors, while in the American West, thousands of deer starve to death in fields full of grass.

What these strange conditions, including fatal familial insomnia, kuru, scrapie, and mad cow disease, share is their cause: prions. Prions are ordinary proteins that sometimes "go wrong", resulting in neurological illnesses that are always fatal. Even more mysterious and frightening, prions are almost impossible to destroy because they are not alive and have no DNA. And the diseases they bring are now spreading around the world.

In The Family That Couldn't Sleep, essayist and journalist D. T. Max tells the spellbinding story of the prion's hidden past and deadly future. Through exclusive interviews and original archival research, Max explains this story's connection to human greed and ambition, from the Prussian chemist Justus von Liebig, who made cattle meatier by feeding them the flesh of other cows, to New Guinean natives whose custom of eating the brains of the dead nearly wiped them out.

The biologists who have investigated these afflictions are just as extraordinary. They include Daniel Carleton Gajdusek, a self-described "pedagogic pedophiliac pediatrician" who cracked kuru and won the Nobel Prize, and another Nobel winner, Stanley Prusiner, a driven, feared self-promoter who identified the key protein that revolutionized prion study.

©2006 D.T. Max (P)2006 Tantor Media, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Very timely and compellingly written." (Booklist)

A pleasure to hear

This book is a wonderful piece for people interested in the medical field. It offers a wonderfully accessible explanation of prion diseases combined with a human touch and a fabulous narrator voice. Highly recommended!

Interesting, scary

I learned a lot of prion from this book. The story is good and the writer tries to entangle the other kinds of prion disease. It's not just about the family that couldn't sleep. I hope that there will be a cure for prions soon.

Very Interesting

Well written story that delves into a topic that I had seen only in headlines and brief descriptions. This book dives into the history and scientific understanding of prions. I would highly recommend this book.

A great scientific mystery

This has become one of my favorite non-fiction books on audible. If you enjoyed "Splendid Solution", "The Great Influenza" or "Germs" you will love this one. It may not have the humor or entertainment value of "The Omnivore's Delimma" but the author does a fine job of weaving personal stories with science to create a fascinating story. This is a great introduction to Mad Cow and other prion diseases, and also provides a distrubing account of how governments bumble their way through such outbreaks.

Grover Gardner also performs another excellent reading. In my opinion, Gardner is by far the top narrator for any material that has any scientific or technical content. His voice moves gracefully over the text - always with the right nuance and pronunciation - allowing the listener to become quite captivated by the story.

Prion Drama

It is surprising how fascinating a medical mystery can be. I was hanging on every word. I was terrified, but still could not stop listening.

Wow a whole new issue to be aware of

Sneaky the way this author gets us into the world of virus disease, but persuasive.

fascinating book.

It is so intriguing. this book perfectly ties everything together to explain different people around the world throughout history to explain prions. I wanted to keep listening. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Very interesting!!!

Who doesn't love a great prison disease adventure! Was thoroughly engaged throughout, and would definitely recommend to laypeople interested in medical mysteries. The author is delightful, and Grover Gardner knocks it out of the park with his narration (as always, he's such a treasure <3)

Zombie science

I picked this right after starting the short-story anthology Zombies vs. Unicorns (zombie fiction sometimes blames prions) on Kindle. Fun connection. As to this book, it was a great story, interesting science, kept a good pace, and gave me pause (yet again) about eating factory-farm meat...

a fatal insomnia

Where does The Family That Couldn't Sleep rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

among the top books i have listened to on audible

What other book might you compare The Family That Couldn't Sleep to and why?

epigenetics

What about Grover Gardner’s performance did you like?

well researched, up to date, and narratives that bring you to understand the lives affected by those afflicted with prion disease.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

a fatal insomnia

Any additional comments?

a unique historical perspective on a rare inherited genetic disorder that strikes its victims with symptoms of a lethal insomnia in their most productive years. Also, tied into this narrative of the familial disease, is its link to the prion disease of mad cow, or CJD. The research documented by D.T. Max, brings to light cases of individuals affected by CJD that has occurred in the U.S. and the U.K. which can only be explained prions from contaminated beef. That the threat still exists, and human cases are being suppressed by the USDA, should make anyone concerned about the potential impact of circulating prions in our beef supply.