Patricia D. Cornwell's Kay Scarpetta may rule the roost of fictional pathologists but, in the real world, Wecht is lord of the morgue. Here, the past president of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences presents a compelling casebook of his forays, often as an expert defense witness, into some of the most controversial deaths of our time. Wecht offers a meticulous rundown of the forensic evidence in each death and what it indicates, beginning with his longtime passion, the JFK killing: ``My opinion of the Warren Commission report: it is absolute nonsense!'' Wecht, in fact, is the man who dubbed the Commission's stance ``the magic bullet'' theory and who discovered that JFK's brain was missing from the autopsy files (it's still missing). His run-through of the evidence seeds no new theories, though he does reveal that the KGB's official report on the killing fingered Oswald as a CIA informant and assumed a conspiracy. More prickly is his next summation, on the death of RFK: ``It was not Sirhan Sirhan who killed Senator Robert Kennedy''—a conclusion Wecht reached after reviewing autopsy files (``I knew the bullet that entered behind the senator's right ear was shot from behind or beside him...Sirhan was at all times in front of him''). In like vein, Wecht sifts through the detritus of death in the Jean Harris/Herman Tarnower killing (``an accident''); the Claus von Bulow case (Sonny von Bulow, ``a walking pharmacy,'' overdosed herself); Jeffrey MacDonald (``the weight of the evidence leans against him'' but ``gut feeling'' points to innocence); Mary Jo Kopechne (``accidental drowning''); Elvis (Wecht replays his revelation that the King died from drugs, not a bad heart); and several lesser-known cases. Outspoken, provocative, persuasively argued: a full platter for true-crime fans who won't mind—or may even enjoy—looking over Wecht's shoulder as he takes scalpel and buzz-saw to yet another corpus delicti. (Eight page b&w photo insert—not seen)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-525-93661-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1993
BOOK REVIEW
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and...
A dense, absorbing investigation into the medical community's exploitation of a dying woman and her family's struggle to salvage truth and dignity decades later.
In a well-paced, vibrant narrative, Popular Science contributor and Culture Dish blogger Skloot (Creative Writing/Univ. of Memphis) demonstrates that for every human cell put under a microscope, a complex life story is inexorably attached, to which doctors, researchers and laboratories have often been woefully insensitive and unaccountable. In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, an African-American mother of five, was diagnosed with what proved to be a fatal form of cervical cancer. At Johns Hopkins, the doctors harvested cells from her cervix without her permission and distributed them to labs around the globe, where they were multiplied and used for a diverse array of treatments. Known as HeLa cells, they became one of the world's most ubiquitous sources for medical research of everything from hormones, steroids and vitamins to gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, even the polio vaccine—all without the knowledge, must less consent, of the Lacks family. Skloot spent a decade interviewing every relative of Lacks she could find, excavating difficult memories and long-simmering outrage that had lay dormant since their loved one's sorrowful demise. Equal parts intimate biography and brutal clinical reportage, Skloot's graceful narrative adeptly navigates the wrenching Lack family recollections and the sobering, overarching realities of poverty and pre–civil-rights racism. The author's style is matched by a methodical scientific rigor and manifest expertise in the field.
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and Petri dish politics.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4000-5217-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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