The Icepick Surgeon - Sam Kean - 2021
Murder, Fraud, Sabotage, Piracy, and Other Dastardly Deeds Perpetrated in the Name of Science
By: Sam Kean
Narrated by: Ben Sullivan
Length: 11 hrs and 45 mins
Unabridged Audiobook
Release date: 07-13-21
Language: English
Categories: Biographies & Memoirs, True Crime
Publisher: Little, Brown & Company
Format: mp3 64/48 stereo
From New York Times best-selling author Sam Kean comes the gripping, untold history of science's darkest secrets, “a fascinating book [that] deserves a wide audience” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).
Science is a force for good in the world - at least usually. But sometimes, when obsession gets the better of scientists, they twist a noble pursuit into something sinister. Under this spell, knowledge isn’t everything, it’s the only thing - no matter the cost. Best-selling author Sam Kean tells the true story of what happens when unfettered ambition pushes otherwise rational men and women to cross the line in the name of science, trampling ethical boundaries and often committing crimes in the process.
The Icepick Surgeon masterfully guides the listener across 2,000 years of history, beginning with Cleopatra’s dark deeds in ancient Egypt. The book reveals the origins of much of modern science in the transatlantic slave trade of the 1700s, as well as Thomas Edison’s mercenary support of the electric chair and the warped logic of the spies who infiltrated the Manhattan Project. But the sins of science aren’t all safely buried in the past. Many of them, Kean reminds us, still affect us today. We can draw direct lines from the medical abuses of Tuskegee and Nazi Germany to current vaccine hesitancy, and connect icepick lobotomies from the 1950s to the contemporary failings of mental-health care. Kean even takes us into the future, when advanced computers and genetic engineering could unleash whole new ways to do one another wrong.
Unflinching, and exhilarating to the last word, The Icepick Surgeon fuses the drama of scientific discovery with the illicit thrill of a true-crime tale. With his trademark wit and precision, Kean shows that, while science has done more good than harm in the world, rogue scientists do exist, and when we sacrifice morals for progress, we often end up with neither.
©2021 Sam Kean (P)2021 Little, Brown & Company
Critic Reviews
"Kean is a gifted raconteur...[in The Icepick Surgeon] you’ll find a series of gripping stories about evil scientific deeds, corrupt rivalries and skulduggery - with real skulls." (John Schwartz, New York Times Book Review)
"Delightful, highly readable.... Kean takes his readers on an engrossing - and sometimes horrifying - historical tour of the many ways the search for knowledge can go wrong.... Written with the flair of a beach thriller and the thoughtfulness of philosophy, the pages explode with a wealth of information and juicy details, all held together with virtuoso storytelling.” (Lucinda Robb, Washington Post)
"The Icepick Surgeon has its gems of phraseology.... We cringe at the ghastly work of grave robbers and surgeons in blood-stiff aprons, and laugh at the comical fights among paleontologists bent on destroying one another’s careers.... As each chapter compounds, it becomes more difficult to condemn and smirk without seeing the systemic ways that early sins have crept into the heart of science and medicine today.... It takes honesty and integrity to make good science; we ignore this at our peril.” (Brandy Schillace, Wall Street Journal)
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