About Book Marks
Recent Reviews
Rebecca Schwarzlose
Positive The New York Times Schwarzlose, a neuroscientist at Washington University in St. Louis, writes with the zeal of an enthusiastic teacher yearning to share her passion with her students. For the most part she succeeds. Her prose is lively. She jettisons scientific jargon ... The most engaging chapters are in the second half. The stories get quirkier. Also, Schwarzlose dives into the uses and potential abuses of technologies prompted by this mind-field of discoveries ... I was also irked that within this well-researched book, she added a few dubious claims gleaned from single studies.Still, these quibbles are trivial in a book that travels into rich terrain, charted by a smart and eager tour guide.
Sarah DiGregorio
Rave The New York Times Book Review Early opens like a medical thriller ... the heart of DiGregorio’s illuminating book isn’t just about her family’s journey; it’s an expansive examination of the history and ethics of neonatology ... DiGregorio, a food editor and writer, is such a beautiful storyteller, I found myself underlining passages, turning corners of pages and keeping track of the page numbers at the back of the book until I had a hodgepodge of numbers scribbled on top of each other.
Rebecca M Jordan-Young and Katrina Karkazis
Positive Nature Karkazis and Jordan-Young strive to comprehend how scientific practice around testosterone unfolds, and explore how the results \'circulate and morph in the world\' ... Jordan-Young and Karkazis challenge murky definitions ... By setting the record straight, the authors build on their past record ... Although often academic in tone, the book is leavened by a welcome informality ... An authorized biography, they note, \'sweeps away all kinds of details and smooths over contradictions\'. Theirs intends to pull back a veil that has obscured the field. Still, I sometimes wanted more ... Moreover, although Jordan-Young and Karkazis are lively storytellers, every now and then an anecdote doesn’t jibe with the chapter’s content ... These quibbles, however, are minor in a deeply researched and thoughtful book that adds a fresh perspective to a growing body of work aiming to debunk myths about hormones.
Sandeep Jauhar
Rave The New York Times Book Review His gripping new book, Heart: A History, had me nearly as enthralled with this pulsating body part as he seems to be. The tone — a physician excited about his specialty — takes a sharp turn from his first two memoirs ... Jauhar hooks the reader of Heart in the first few pages by describing his own health scare — an exam showed obstruction in the main artery feeding his heart ... Most chapters launch with a riveting scene: a patient in the thick of getting a heart transplant, say, or having open-heart surgery. You feel as if you’re watching an episode of a medical television drama ... strange and captivating ... Fun facts are sprinkled throughout ... Heart is chock-full of absorbing tales that infuse fresh air into a topic that is often relegated to textbooks or metaphors about pumps, plumbing or love.