The Icepick Surgeon: Murder, Fraud, Sabotage, Piracy, and Other Dastardly Deeds Perpetrated in the Name of ScienceSam Kean “…when we sacrifice morals for scientific progress, we often end up with neither.” Scientific research and testing has brought us incredible knowledge about everything from biodiversity to treating and curing disease. But dig through the notebooks or…
Tag: Historical Fiction
What I read: August 2024
The Monster’s Bones: The Discovery of T. rex and How It Shook Our WorldDavid R. Randall “The T. rex, the king of our prehistoric world, played an outsized role in the making of the modern one…Rather than a mirror into the past, the creature proved to reflect the concerns of the present.” With the discovery…
What I read: April 2024
The Making of Home: The 500-Year Story of How Our Houses Became HomesJudith FlandersNon-fiction, paperback “…the woman’s ability to keep house became central: it reflected her value. It was no longer simply a matter of was the house adequately cleaned, scrubbed, polished? It was how the upkeep had been achieved, which measured not hygiene, but…
What I read: February 2024
A Lady’s Guide to Fortune-HuntingSophie IrwinFiction, audiobook “They paused there for a beat, looking at each other with mutual calculation. It occurred to them both, then – though of course they did not know it – that they might equally have agreed to pistols at dawn.” Kitty Talbot has three months to catch a wealthy…
What I read: December 2023
The QuickLauren OwenFiction, hardback, library book “There were owls in the nursery when James was a boy.” When James Norbury moves to London after his graduation from Oxford, he tells his sister Charlotte that it’s with the intention of becoming a writer. Soon, however, he finds himself pulled away from his efforts by a charming…