Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Putting ideas about the past to the test

Dinner with King Tut by Sam Kean

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CBR 17 BINGO: TBR, because whenever Sam Kean comes out with a new book, I add it to my TBR BINGO: Play, Purple, TBR, Diaspora, Culture In the introduction to Dinner with King Tut, Kean confesses that he always found archaeology to be a bit dry. It should be thrilling, discovering the secrets of past civilizations, but he usually finds archaeological sites to be a letdown, with “scores of sunburned men and women sprawled in the dirt, dusting off broken pot shards with toothbrushes.” But […]

From Mummies to Tattoos to Eunuchs

Dinner With King Tut: How Rogue Archaeologists are Re-Creating the Sights, Sounds, Smells, and Tastes of Lost Civilizations by Sam Kean

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Sam Kean also loved the idea of archeology, but never the actually practice; all that digging for a couple of pot shards was not his idea of a good time. Then he discovered experimental archeology: people attempting to recreate the foods, clothing, weapons, architecture, and medicine of ancient civilizations. This book is the record of his foray into the field, organized chronologically from 75,000 years ago in Africa with a spear hunter to the 1500s in Mexico with an enemy of the Aztecs assisting the […]

Being smart doesn’t make them good

The Icepick Surgeon by Sam Kean

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My husband’s brother gave him a paperback copy of The Icepick Surgeon: Murder, Fraud, Sabotage, Piracy, and other Dastardly Deeds Perpetrated in the Name of Science (2021) by Sam Kean. My husband read the book and enjoyed it, and it looked interesting. It was in my mind as a to-read book, but–as often happens–there was always something else to read and I kept putting it off. However, once Bingo got going, I was sure I could use it for something, which finally pushed me into reading it. […]

The darker side of science

The Icepick Surgeon: Murder, Fraud, Sabotage, Piracy, and Other Dastardly Deeds Perpetrated in the Name of Science by Sam Kean

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CBR15 BINGO: Violence, for murder, icepick lobotomies, cruelty, and general skulduggery described in this book The Icepick Surgeon is the latest book by Sam Sean, my favorite science writer. If you haven’t read any of his books (like this one, or this one, or this one, or this one), they delightfully balance science with history in a series of true-life tales. As the the title indicates, The Icepick Surgeon explores the darker side of science, citing examples of how humankind has benefited from some really reprehensible […]

Not for bedtime reading or the faint of heart or stomach

The Icepick Surgeon Murder Fraud Sabotage Piracy and Other Dastardly Deeds Perpetrated in the Name of Science by Sam Kean

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The Icepick Surgeon is not bedtime reading, unless you want really weird dreams. I enjoy popular science reading, especially when there’s some narrative, and this book is both those things. Basically it’s a review of mostly the past 275 years of medical history and the ugly things people have done and tried to justify in the name of science or helping people in the future. There’s a lot of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century piracy and grave robbing involved, a good bit of slavery and racial history, […]

True life is often much more interesting than fiction

The Bastard Brigade: The True Story of the Renegade Scientists and Spies Who Sabotaged the Nazi Atomic Bomb by Sam Kean

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In the author’s note to The Bastard Brigade, Sam Kean responds to the question, why has he never written a book about physics before? His previous books (which are all fabulous and highly recommended by me) focus on genetics, chemistry, neuroscience, and the atmosphere, even though the author studied physics in college. He explains, “What I really love doing is telling stories, and when I’m planning a book, I look for rip-roarin’ stories first and foremost. I want heroes and villains, conflict and drama, plot twists […]



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