Showing results for "The Science Book" in History & Commentary

The Brittle Self is a history of one of the oldest fears a mind can hold: that the self is fragile, that it can be seen through, broken, switched off, or shown to be unreal. Across six hundred years the fear holds steady while its costume keeps changing, and the book follows that single dread from a medieval palace to a present-day clinic. It begins in 1393, when Charles the Sixth of France forbade his court to touch him, certain his body had turned to glass and would shatter at a careless hand.

"A real jewel of science history...brims with suspense and now-forgotten catastrophe and intrigue...Wadman’s smooth prose calmly spins a surpassingly complicated story into a real tour de force."—The New York Times “Riveting . . . [The Vaccine Race] invites comparison with Rebecca Skloot's...