Medical History – Cannonball Read 17

“New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common”.- John Locke

The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister’s Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine by Lindsey Fitzharris

May 5, 2025 by bjornsnipe Leave a Comment

You have to love a book that starts with a (possibly apocryphal) story of an operation with a 300% mortality rate and ends with the invention of Listerine and the founding of Johnson & Johnson. This biography/medical history tells the life story of Dr. Joseph Lister, pioneer of antiseptic surgery and preventive healthcare, considered the “father of modern surgery”. Building off of Louis Pasteur’s then-novel germ theory of fermentation, Lister was one of the first doctors to start sterilizing operating theaters and surgical instruments before […]

Not for bedtime reading or the faint of heart or stomach

The Icepick Surgeon Murder Fraud Sabotage Piracy and Other Dastardly Deeds Perpetrated in the Name of Science by Sam Kean

January 29, 2023 by CoffeeShopReader 2 Comments

The Icepick Surgeon is not bedtime reading, unless you want really weird dreams. I enjoy popular science reading, especially when there’s some narrative, and this book is both those things. Basically it’s a review of mostly the past 275 years of medical history and the ugly things people have done and tried to justify in the name of science or helping people in the future. There’s a lot of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century piracy and grave robbing involved, a good bit of slavery and racial history, […]

Blueberry Muffin Brains and lots of other stuff

The Body A Guide for Occupants by Bill Bryson

December 30, 2022 by CoffeeShopReader 1 Comment

I started The Body A Guide for Occupants about a year ago; I had kind of a pattern starting the year off with a science book of some sort. This year, I guess I’m also ending with one. This book is on the one hand pretty readable since the science is explained in some detail without getting too technical; my last biology class was well over a decade ago. On the other hand, it’s also incredibly dense, making it sort of hard to read for […]

History is Made by Persistence and Knowing the Right People

A Woman of Valor: Clara Barton & the Civil War by Stephen B. Oates

September 12, 2022 by Ale Leave a Comment

Clara Barton is one of those historical figures that sits as a vaguely understood fact in my mind. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know about her existence, but beyond being the founder of the American Red Cross, she never bore much significance to me. But then I wrote a little article about visiting small historical sites and the “Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Office” came up in my search. A cursory perusal of the website had me fascinated, and I needed to know […]

A Few Things Get Lost in Translation from Podcast to Book

Sawbones: the Horrifying, Hilarious Road to Modern Medicine by Dr. Sydnee McElroy, Justin McElroy

January 3, 2021 by CoffeeShopReader Leave a Comment

So the question for this first review of 2021 was do I review the book I started (and finished) in 2021 first, or the one I started in 2020 and finished in 2021 first? I have decided to review Sawbones: The Book first, because I’m pretty sure I started 2020 with Will My Cate Eat My Eyeballs? (which I greatly enjoyed) and there are some strong similarities, both being medical in nature, as well as presented by an expert (one of the co-authors of Sawbones […]

More work to be done

The Black Cabinet: The Untold Story of African Americans and Politics During the Age of Roosevelt by Jill Watts

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

December 19, 2020 by teresaelectro 2 Comments

The Black Cabinet: The Untold Story of African Americans and Politics During the Age of Roosevelt by Jill Watts was our Mocha Girls Read book club selection in June. It became a very timely selection after the horrible death of George Floyd, which shone a brighter light on Black Lives Matter activism in America. As a Black woman, I was suffering from emotional exhaustion during that time. This history book actually helped put so many current things in perspective. We have come a long way, […]

Zirza on A Gothic Classic for a ReasonIt's one of those wish-you-could-read-it-again-for-the-first-time books. I loved it.
Emmalita on “It came to something when you found yourself hoping that the footsteps you heard were ghosts.”I loved the ending! I don’t think it’s been out long enough to talk about why though.
Dixie on Track Her Down by Melinda LeighI am just starting Track Her Down and I have read them all in order till now and thought I...
Roland of Gilead on How can you give us the gift of a crazy character named Rando Thoughtful and then just as suddenly take that gift away? We need to talk, Uncle Stevie.I came across this randomly years after it was written because I was searching "Random Thoughtful. But I have the...
Emmalita on “Only you, Em, would refer to heartbreak as a distraction. I think I would have a more sympathetic response if I asked to marry a bookcase.”Oh my goodness, Gallifrey was beautiful. I’m sure her mittens were gloriously murdery.

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