Credit Dunn with a valuable text that offers something for everyone—patients, practitioners, medical students, historians...
The heart was a black box up until a century ago, writes Dunn (Ecology and Evolution/North Carolina State Univ.; The Wild Life on Our Bodies, 2011, etc.). His well-researched text chronicles how the box was opened.
The author opens with an account of how, even with today’s impressive technology and medicine, his mother nearly died from too high a dosage of digitalis, a drug used to slow a rapid heartbeat. The author then recounts an incident in 1893 in which an African-American doctor in Chicago saved the life of a victim of a stab wound to the heart by cutting into the wound and sewing a tear in the pericardium. Then it’s on to ancient history, with nods to da Vinci, Harvey and some others as exceptions to the view of the heart as sacrosanct and inviolable. The modern era began with the derring-do of the titular doctor, Werner Forssmann, who in 1929 inserted a catheter into an arm vein, threaded it to the heart and had it X-rayed, performing the first angiogram. In the 1930s, there were significant improvements in angiography, and succeeding decades saw the advent of heart-lung machines, new diets, drugs and devices (pacemakers, stents), and heart transplants. Dunn profiles the principals, with particular opprobrium for Christiaan Barnard, the South African surgeon ruthless in his zeal to be first to perform a human-to-human heart transplant. As for treatments today, Dunn cites studies showing that patients fare better with medication and diet to treat narrowed arteries, as compared with stents, but the latter are a huge moneymaker for hospitals. Finally, speaking as an evolutionary biologist, the author urges scientists to study the heart in evolution, pointing to striking findings that humans are alone among primates in our suffering from atherosclerosis. It’s complicated, he writes, but we might reap huge benefits in prevention rather than just focusing on repairs.
Credit Dunn with a valuable text that offers something for everyone—patients, practitioners, medical students, historians and policymakers.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0316225793
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
An intriguing meditation on the nature of the universe and our attempts to understand it that should appeal to both...
Italian theoretical physicist Rovelli (General Relativity: The Most Beautiful of Theories, 2015, etc.) shares his thoughts on the broader scientific and philosophical implications of the great revolution that has taken place over the past century.
These seven lessons, which first appeared as articles in the Sunday supplement of the Italian newspaper Sole 24 Ore, are addressed to readers with little knowledge of physics. In less than 100 pages, the author, who teaches physics in both France and the United States, cogently covers the great accomplishments of the past and the open questions still baffling physicists today. In the first lesson, he focuses on Einstein's theory of general relativity. He describes Einstein's recognition that gravity "is not diffused through space [but] is that space itself" as "a stroke of pure genius." In the second lesson, Rovelli deals with the puzzling features of quantum physics that challenge our picture of reality. In the remaining sections, the author introduces the constant fluctuations of atoms, the granular nature of space, and more. "It is hardly surprising that there are more things in heaven and earth, dear reader, than have been dreamed of in our philosophy—or in our physics,” he writes. Rovelli also discusses the issues raised in loop quantum gravity, a theory that he co-developed. These issues lead to his extraordinary claim that the passage of time is not fundamental but rather derived from the granular nature of space. The author suggests that there have been two separate pathways throughout human history: mythology and the accumulation of knowledge through observation. He believes that scientists today share the same curiosity about nature exhibited by early man.
An intriguing meditation on the nature of the universe and our attempts to understand it that should appeal to both scientists and general readers.Pub Date: March 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-399-18441-3
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A magnificent account of a central reality of our times, incorporating deep scientific expertise, broad political and social knowledge, and ethical insight, and Idled with beautifully written biographical sketches of the men and women who created nuclear physics. Rhodes describes in detail the great scientific achievements that led up to the invention of the atomic bomb. Everything of importance is examined, from the discovery of the atomic nucleus and of nuclear fission to the emergence of quantum physics, the invention of the mass-spectroscope and of the cyclotron, the creation of such man-made elements as plutonium and tritium, and implementation of the nuclear chain reaction in uranium. Even more important, Rhodes shows how these achievements were thrust into the arms of the state, which culminated in the unfolding of the nuclear arms race. Often brilliantly, he records the rise of fascism and of anti-Semitism, and the intensification of nationalist ambitions. He traces the outbreak of WW II, which provoked a hysterical rivalry among nations to devise the bomb. This book contains a grim description of Japanese resistance, and of the horrible psychological numbing that caused an unparalleled tolerance for human suffering and destruction. Rhodes depicts the Faustian scale of the Manhattan Project. His account of the dropping of the bomb itself, and of the awful firebombing that prepared its way, is unforgettable. Although Rhodes' gallery of names and events is sometimes dizzying, his scientific discussions often daunting, he has written a book of great drama and sweep. A superb accomplishment.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1986
ISBN: 0684813785
Page Count: 932
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1986
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