RaveThe GuardianIn The Butchering Art, Lindsey Fitzharris delves into the perilous world of 19th-century surgery, revealing how Lister struggled to determine the basis of infection and to establish his pioneering antiseptic system in the face of furious opposition. The result is not for the faint-hearted ... She paints a compelling portrait of a man of conviction, humour and, above all, humanity – the latter beautifully captured in the touching relationship between Lister and his father ...Fitzharris explores the intersection of Lister’s life, the development of antiseptic surgery, and the horrors of the wards with an almost surgical precision ... thoroughly enjoyable, tapping into the morbid pleasure of rubbernecking at the horrors of the past – safe in the knowledge that wounds today are not packed with damp earth.
Jim Al-Khalili
PositiveThe Guardian... a brilliantly sharp collection of short essays ... Aliens doesn’t shy away from the complexity of trying to find out whether extraterrestrial life exists, or its mirror conundrum of how life on Earth began, or indeed the difficulty of what is meant by 'life' in the first place, when we only have the one model by which to test it. But the brevity of the chapters, though beguiling, is, at times, too restrictive for the topic ... Despite its limitations, Aliens does an excellent job of capturing the sliding scale of optimism with which the chance of extraterrestrial life is viewed, be it in the form of intelligent life, or microbes.
James Gleick
PositiveThe GuardianThe consummate temporal tour guide, Gleick deftly navigates the twists and turns of our fascination with time travel, investigating its evolution in literature, exploring scientific principles that have hinted at or scotched the idea, and teasing apart the curious spell it cast across society with its suggestion of immortality ... In probing the role of imagination and memory, Gleick also gives space to the concept of mental time travel, the phenomenon which allows us to immerse ourselves in our past and muse upon what the future might hold ... Time Travel is intoxicating, but that is only in part down to Gleick’s execution. Much of this is well trodden ground, our enduring fascination with the notion sown long ago by many adroit hands. At times, Gleick seems to get lost in his own, sometimes opaque, musings. Parts of the book are frustratingly repetitive, while his practice of paraphrasing obscure time travel stories before analysing their finer points too often feels like the dinner party anecdote that rather feebly concludes Well, you had to be there really. Exasperations aside, Time Travel reminds us that our relationship with the slippery concept of time is far from static.
