Blood - by Douglas Starr (Paperback)

About the Book

Named one of the best books of 1998 by "Publishers Weekly, Booklist" and "Library Journal, " the award-winning definitive history of the essence of life itself--blood--returns in trade paperback.

Book Synopsis

Powerfully involving narrative and incisive detail, clarity and inherent drama: Blood offers in abundance the qualities that define the best popular science writing. Here is the sweeping story of a substance that has been feared, revered, mythologized, and used in magic and medicine from earliest times--a substance that has become the center of a huge, secretive, and often dangerous worldwide commerce.

Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Blood was described by judges as "a gripping page-turner, a significant contribution to the history of medicine and technology and a cautionary tale. Meticulously reported and exhaustively documented."

Review Quotes

Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize"A gripping page-turner, a significant contribution to the history of medicine and technology and a cautionary tale."--Los Angeles Times Book Prize judges' citation"[A] cast-of-thousands continent-spanning saga, complete with heroic physicians and dastardly entrepreneurs. . . . Starr's history . . . inspires a more profound appreciation for a substance we sometimes take for granted."--"Houston Chronicle"Riveting. . . . A fascinating history. . . . A rich story admirably told."--Richard Bernstein, "New York Times"This rewarding book, filled with sharp science, has everything from a brief survey of bloodletting to an account of the massive mobilization of donated blood for the Allied invasion of Normandy. But its real subject is the postwar rise of the ?blood-services complex, ' which controls the global market for blood products."--"The New Yorker"Reads like a thriller. Starr is a wonderful storyteller as well as a sober historian."--"Dallas Morning News""Blood is a story of human frailty and courage, a book from which any reader could learn."--"New England Journal of Medicine"Starr's lively history . . . courses with greed, altruism, and woozily vivid detail."--"Entertainment Weekly (?A? rating)"Meticulously researched, elegantly told."--"Newsday"Starr writes like a wildly enthusiastic high school biology teacher who arrives each day bristling with excitement, leaping about before the chalkboard, cracking jokes, and zealously banging his fist on his desk. Even the most indifferent brats pay attention, and so too will readers. . . . Starr has created what amounts to a history of the human race perceived through the filter of blood as medicalproduct."--"Village Voice Literary Supplement""Blood should be included in all first- and second-year medical curricula."--"Scientific American"Thoroughly researched and often shocking."--"Washington Post Book World