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LoveReading Says
Featured on The TV Book Club show on 20 Feb 2011.
Winner of the Wellcome Trust Book Prize 2010.
In 1951, a young woman from Baltimore died of cancer. Her death changed medical science for ever. Her name was Henrietta Lacks. Rebecca Skloot takes us on an extraordinary journey in search of Henrietta's story. Full of warmth and questing intelligence, astonishing in scope and impossible to put down, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks captures the beauty and drama of scientific discovery, as well as its human consequences. A graceful, deeply felt book.
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The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks Synopsis
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a fascinating mix of memoir and science, telling the story of how one woman's cells have saved countless lives. Now an HBO film starring Oprah Winfrey & Rose Byrne.
'No dead woman has done more for the living . . . A fascinating, harrowing, necessary book.' - Hilary Mantel, Guardian
Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. Born a poor black tobacco farmer, her cancer cells - taken without her knowledge - became a multimillion-dollar industry and one of the most important tools in medicine. Yet Henrietta's family did not learn of her 'immortality' until more than twenty years after her death, with devastating consequences . . .
Rebecca Skloot's fascinating account is the story of the life, and afterlife, of one woman who changed the medical world forever. Balancing the beauty and drama of scientific discovery with dark questions about who owns the stuff our bodies are made of, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is an extraordinary journey in search of the soul and story of a real woman, whose cells live on today in all four corners of the world.
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Press Reviews
Rebecca Skloot Press Reviews
'A fascinating, harrowing, necessary book' - Hilary Mantel, Guardian.
'A fine book...a gripping read...The book has deservedly been a huge bestseller in the US. It should be here, too' - Bryan Appleyard, Sunday Times.
'A remarkable and moving book… an important work of immersive non-fiction... Long fascinated by HeLa’s contribution to science, Rebecca Skloot set out a decade ago to give a human face to the woman who made it possible. That she has achieved with verve, creating a vivid portrait of Lacks that should be as abiding as her cells' The Times
'One of the most graceful and moving non-fiction books I've read in a very long time... The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks floods over you like a narrative dam break, as if someone had managed to distil and purify the more addictive qualities of Erin Brockovich, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and The Andromeda Strain... Packed with memorable characters... It has brains and pacing and nerve and heart, and it is uncommonly endearing' New York Times
Author
About Rebecca Skloot
Rebecca Skloot is an award-winning science writer whose articles have appeared in The New Yourk Times Magazine, O, The Oprah Magazine, Discover, Columbia Journalism Review, and elsewhere. She is contributing editor for Popular Science magazine and has also been a correspondent for NPR and PBS. A former vice president of the National Book Critics Circle, she is on the faculty of the University of Memphis, where she teaches creative nonfiction, and she blogs at Culture Dish, hosted by Seed Magazine's blogs, Skloot has an undergraduate degree in biomedical science from Colorado State University and an MFA in nonfiction writing from the University of Pittsburgh. She lives in Memphis, Tennessee.
Author photo © Manda Townsend
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