Scientific American Notable Book
History Book Club pick
Book of the Month Club pick
“Tucker . . . does a marvelous job of chronicling the 17th-century controversy pitting science against religion and shows how much of the language used then against the new technique of blood transfusion mirrors language used today against stem cell research and cloning. . . . Tucker’s sleuthing adds drama to an utterly compelling picture of Europe at the moment when modern science was being shaped.”
—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, starred review
“. . . .a page-turning insight into early scientific attitudes and disputes over priority . . . . Blood Work is a powerful reconstruction of what has often been relegated to a minor episode within early modern science and medicine.”
—NATURE
“Ms. Tucker’s chronicle of the world of 17th-century science in London and Paris is fascinating. A meticulous historian, she paints a compelling picture of rivalries and politics among the various English and French academies and their members. In an interesting twist, she even unearths evidence that Mauroy died, not as a result of the transfusion, but because he was murdered by Denis’s opponents.”
—THE ECONOMIST
“(Blood Work). . . . is vivid, strange, and reveals much about modern medicine.”
—THE ATLANTIC
“. . . .Tucker masterfully narrates a rich tale about the competing passions of faith, politics, and knowledge.”
—THE BOSTON GLOBE
“Tucker has done a wonderful job of re-creating a time, place and event unfamiliar to most contemporary readers….It all makes for a riveting story.”
—THE SEATTLE TIMES
“. . . .a solid dose of learning in a novelistic package, where a lesser writer might have presented only a dry account of some curious medical milestones.”
—IN THE MARGIN (BARNES AND NOBLE.COM review column)
“With verve and the impressive use of wide-ranging research, Tucker spills the gory early history of blood transfusion and the medical, political and religious disputes it created.”
—MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE
“Tucker uncovers a suspenseful tale of superstition, jealously guarded reputations, and criminal conspiracies….In masterfully recounting the turmoil surrounding another era’s medical controversies, Tucker also sheds light on contemporary ones, such as stem-cell research, and issues a plea to let rational discourse prevail over religious fervor.”
-BOOKLIST
“Fascinating book and very well-written. I recommend it to everybody.”
-IRA FLATOW, NPR Science Friday
“Blood Work is both a smart and an addictive read, one of those rare opportunities for readers to learn and be royally entertained at the same time.”
—DEBORAH BLUM, author of The Poisoner’s Handbook
“Blood Work is a magnificent story of the heady days when transfusions were first being performed. There is drama, intrigue, discovery, and revelation in this tale, and the writing is terrific.”
—ABRAHAM VERGHESE, author of Cutting for Stone
“Blood Work is fascinating and richly researched, giving us a gory glimpse of the dawn of our scientific age.”
—CARL ZIMMER, author of Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain—and How it Changed the World
“Holly Tucker does an incredible job of bringing the history of blood transfusion to life with harrowing immediacy, spinning a tale of blood, ambition, and murder so gripping that it reads with novelistic intensity. She also reminds us that science itself has a history, that the discipline which we trust to explain our world can also be bound up in the prejudices and assumptions of our own time. Anyone with a taste for historical intrigue will devour Blood Work, just as I did.”
—KATHERINE HOWE, author of the New York Times bestselling The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane
“A fast-paced and fascinating ride through a dark and devious period in science. Blood Work is a witty, insightful, and skillfully written book that sheds light on the mysterious story of blood transfusion.”
—WENDY MOORE, author of The Knife Man: Blood, Body Snatching, and the Birth of Modern Surgery
“Blood Work layers in everything I crave in nonfiction narrative—big ideas, history, science, suspense, dark secrets, larger-than-life personalities, life-and-death issues, and a palpable sense of what the past looked, sounded, and smelled like. Holly Tucker is fearless in tackling meaty, bloody subjects and nimble at making acute, original connections. Blood Work conjures up the beating heart and the ambitious, flawed intellect of a past world.”
—DAVID LASKIN, author of The Children’s Blizzard and The Long Way Home: An American Journey from Ellis Island to the Great War
“At what point does medical experimentation so challenge a community’s values that it needs to be shunted aside and hidden? Holly Tucker’s marvelous study of blood transfusion makes us realize that the scientific community of seventeenth-century Europe struggled against age-old prejudices and contemporary skepticism alike. This vital story, wrestled out of the archives, brings us in the labs streets, and scandals of early modern London and Paris. Wise in judgments and supple in its elegant prose, Blood Work is history with the wallop of a novel, a book that teaches as it entertains.”
—PETER C. MANCALL, author of Fatal Journey: The Final Expedition of Henry Hudson—A Tale of Mutiny and Murder in the Arctic
LINKS
Holly Tucker’s Blood Work: Next Big Nashville Book?
Hot Blooded: Holly Tucker Explores the Fascinating History of Blood Transfusion
‘Blood Work’ Is a Compelling Account of Early Scientific Transgressions
Book of the week: Blood Work by Holly Tucker