Amazon Best Books of the Month, February 2010: From a single, abbreviated life grew a seemingly immortal line of cells that made some of the most crucial innovations in modern science possible. And from that same life, and those cells, Rebecca Skloot has fashioned in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks a fascinating and moving story of medicine and family, of how life is sustained in laboratories and in memory. Henrietta Lacks was a mother of five in Baltimore, a poor African American migrant from the tobacco farms of Virginia, who died from a cruelly aggressive cancer at the age of 30 in 1951.
A sample of her cancerous tissue, taken without her knowledge or consent, as was the custom then, turned out to provide one of the holy grails of mid-century biology: human cells that could survive--even thrive--in the lab. Known as HeLa cells, their stunning potency gave scientists a building block for countless breakthroughs, beginning with the cure for polio. Meanwhile, Henrietta's family continued to live in poverty and frequently poor health, and their discovery decades later of her unknowing contribution--and her cells' strange survival--left them full of pride, anger, and suspicion.
For a decade, Skloot doggedly but compassionately gathered the threads of these stories, slowly gaining the trust of the family while helping them learn the truth about Henrietta, and with their aid she tells a rich and haunting story that asks the questions, Who owns our bodies? And who carries our memories? --Tom Nissley
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks [Hardcover] Reviews
2 Reviews For The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks [Hardcover]
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Monday, 14, Mar, 2011
Reviewed by : Nelly Marlene
This is hand's down one of the best books I've study in years and that i really wish i could give it much more superstars. It will be a challenge to capture precisely what can make this book so exceptional and so fascinating, but I'm going to give it my greatest chance.
First of all I want to say I am Surprised that this is actually the author's very first book. She has poured ten years of her coronary heart, soul, thoughts and her lifetime generally in this book. What she's provided delivery to in that long period of labor is worthy of her sacrifice and respects Henrietta Does not have and her loved ones.
Other reviews have because of the outline of this amazing tale. What I want to tension is that Microsoft. Skloot has sailed the difficult terrain of respecting Mrs. Does not have and her loved ones, whilst nevertheless informing their tale in an exceedingly intimate, comprehensive, informative method. What visitors may not know is that the Does not have loved ones isn't only a "subject" that the author researched. This is a actual loved ones with actual heartaches and actual problems in whose lives she applied for for a lengthy season. The Lacks' loved ones has truly benefitted in the author's involvement in their life and that's some thing I am really appreciative of. I believe that Microsoft. Skloot could give Henrietta's child, Deborah, a genuine sense of recovery, deliverance, peace and identification that she had been trying to find her whole life...that tale on it's own would have created the book for me.
It might have been super easy for the author to encounter as condescending or patronizing or even as being exploitive as she wrote about a loved ones that is bad and misleading. Rather the story is implanted with empathy and patience as she not just takes the household along with her on the trip to understand their current situation and also the ancestor in whose existence was so full of legacy but bad in payment she trains the household along the way. I get the sense that the author grew to really love Henrietta and her loved ones. I am in amazement of this level of commitment.
The author has were able to clarify the complicated medical info in a manner that anyone can comprehend and become fascinated by. The author's informing from the technology on it's own and also the trip of Henrietta's immortal tissue (HeLa) would have created the book a worthy study by itself. Microsoft. Skloot and Henrietta captured me from the first page all the way to the last page from the book. I just read it in a single move and that i didn't want it to finish.
The author manages to superbly inform multiple stories and evolves all of individuals stories so nicely that you can't assist but be eaten through the book. This is the tale of Henrietta. It is the tale of her sweet and decided child, Deborah. It is the tale from the prolonged Does not have loved ones and their history. It's a tale of race/lower income/lack of knowledge and people who take advantage of that regrettable trifecta. It's a tale about technology and integrity. It's a tale which should make all of us think about the surrender produced by person people and creatures which have permitted us to benefit a lot from "modern" medication. It's a tale about wish and determination. It's a tale about love and recovery.
I can't imagine an individual I understand who wouldn't love this book and take advantage of reading through it. I will be purchasing the last duplicate from the book and am looking forward to reading through the book once again.
Monday, 27, Jun, 2011
Reviewed by : Guest
This is without question the best non-fiction book I've read in years.
Skloot's debut is thrilling, original and refuses to be shoehorned into
anything as trivial as a genre. Equal parts popular science, historical
biography and detective novel, it reads as evocatively as any work of
fiction.Skloot repeatedly appears as a character in her own book, narrating
her journey from first hearing about HeLa cells in a classroom to her
attempts to contact and support the Lacks family.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks [Hardcover] Reviews
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks [Hardcover] Reviews
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