The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks Audiobook

Quotes

• One of the most graceful and moving nonfiction books I’ve read in a very long time . . . The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks . . . floods over you like a narrative dam break, as if someone had managed to distill and purify the more addictive qualities of Erin Brockovich, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and The Andromeda Strain. . . . It feels like the book Ms. Skloot was born to write. It signals the arrival of a raw but quite real talent.

  — Dwight Garner, The New York Times

• Skloot's vivid account begins with the life of Henrietta Lacks, who comes fully alive on the page. . . . Immortal Life reads like a novel.

  — Eric Roston, The Washington Post

• “Gripping . . . by turns heartbreaking, funny and unsettling . . . raises troubling questions about the way Mrs. Lacks and her family were treated by researchers and about whether patients should control or have financial claims on tissue removed from their bodies.

  — Denise Grady, The New York Times

• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a fascinating read and a ringing success. It is a well-written, carefully-researched, complex saga of medical research, bioethics, and race in America. Above all it is a human story of redemption for a family, torn by loss, and for a writer with a vision that would not let go.

  — Douglas Whynott, The Boston Globe

• Riveting . . . raises important questions about medical ethics . . . It's an amazing story. . . . Deeply chilling . . . Whether those uncountable HeLa cells are a miracle or a violation, Skloot tells their fascinating story at last with skill, insight and compassion.

  — Colette Bancroft, St. Petersburg Times

• Science journalist Skloot makes a remarkable debut with this multilayered story about ‘faith, science, journalism, and grace.’…Recalls Adrian Nicole LeBlanc’s Random Family…A rich, resonant tale of modern science, the wonders it can perform and how easily it can exploit society’s most vulnerable people.

  — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

• The history of HeLa is a rare and powerful combination of race, class, gender, medicine, bioethics, and intellectual property; far more rare is the writer than can so clearly fuse those disparate threads into a personal story so rich and compelling. Rebecca Skloot has crafted a unique piece of science journalism that is impossible to put down—or to forget.

  — Seed magazine

• No one can say exactly where Henrietta Lacks is buried: during the many years Rebecca Skloot spent working on this book, even Lacks’s hometown of Clover, Virginia, disappeared. But that did not stop Skloot in her quest to exhume, and resurrect, the story of her heroine and her family. What this important, invigorating book lays bare is how easily science can do wrong, especially to the poor. The issues evoked here are giant: who owns our bodies, the use and misuse of medical authority, the unhealed wounds of slavery ... and Skloot, with clarity and compassion, helps us take the long view. This is exactly the sort of story that books were made to tell—thorough, detailed, quietly passionate, and full of revelation.

  — TED CONOVER, author of Newjack and The Routes of Man

• It’s extremely rare when a reporter’s passion finds its match in a story. Rarer still when the people in that story courageously join that reporter in the search for what we most need to know about ourselves. When this occurs with a moral journalist who is also a true writer, a human being with a heart capable of holding all of life’s damage and joy, the stars have aligned. This is an extraordinary gift of a book, beautiful and devastating—a work of outstanding literary reportage. Read it! It’s the best you will find in many many years.

  — ADRIAN NICOLE LEBLANC, author of Random Family

• ”The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks brings to mind the work of Philip K. Dick and Edgar Allan Poe. But this tale is true. Rebecca Skloot explores the racism and greed, the idealism and faith in science that helped to save thousands of lives but nearly destroyed a family. This is an extraordinary book, haunting and beautifully told.

  — ERIC SCHLOSSER, author of Fast Food Nation 

• Skloot’s book is wonderful -- deeply felt, gracefully written, sharply reported. It is a story about science but, much more, about life.

  — SUSAN ORLEAN, author of The Orchid Thief

• This is a science biography like the world has never seen. What if one of the great American women of modern science and medicine--whose contribution underlay historic discoveries in genetics, the treatment and prevention of disease, reproduction, and the unraveling of the human genome--was a self-effacing African-American tobacco farmer from the Deep South? A devoted mother of five who was escorted briskly to the Jim Crow section of Johns Hopkins for her cancer treatments? What if the untold millions of scientists, doctors, and patients enriched and healed by her gift never, to this day, knew her name? What if her contribution was made without her knowledge or permission? Ladies and gentlemen, meet Henrietta Lacks. Chances are, at the level of your DNA, your inoculations, your physical health and microscopic well-being, you’ve already been introduced.

  — Melissa Fay Greene, author of Praying for Sheetrock and There Is No Me Without You

• Heartbreaking and powerful, unsettling yet compelling, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a richly textured story of the hidden costs of scientific progress. Deftly weaving together history, journalism and biography, Rebecca Skloot?s sensitive account tells of the enduring, deeply personal sacrifice of this African American woman and her family and, at long last, restores a human face to the cell line that propelled 20th century biomedicine. A stunning illustration of how race, gender and disease intersect to produce a unique form of social vulnerability, this is a poignant, necessary and brilliant book.

  — Alondra Nelson, Columbia University; editor of Technicolor: Race, Technology and Everyday Life

• Rebecca Skloot has written a marvelous book so original that it defies easy description. She traces the surreal journey that a tiny patch of cells belonging to Henrietta Lacks’s body took to the forefront of science. At the same time, she tells the story of Lacks and her family—wrestling the storms of the late twentieth century in America—with rich detail, wit, and humanity. The more we read, the more we realize that these are not two separate stories, but one tapestry. It’s part The Wire, part The Lives of the Cell, and all fascinating.

  — Carl Zimmer, author of Microcosm  

• If virtues could be cultured like cells, Rebecca Skloot’s would be a fine place to start¾a rare combination of compassion, courage, wisdom, and intelligence. This book is extraordinary. As a writer and a human being, Skloot stands way, way out there ahead of the pack.

  — MARY ROACH, author of Stiff and Bonk

• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks takes the reader on a remarkable journey—compassionate, troubling, funny, smart—and irresistible. Along the way, Rebecca Skloot will change the way you see medical science and lead you to wonder who we should value more—the researcher or the research subject? Ethically fascinating and completely engaging—I couldn’t recommend it more.

  — DEBORAH BLUM, author of The Poisoner’s Handbook and The Monkey Wars and the Helen Firstbrook Franklin professor of journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

• This remarkable story of how the cervical cells of the late Henrietta Lacks, a poor black woman, enabled subsequent discoveries from the polio vaccine to in vitro fertilization is extraordinary in itself; the added portrayal of Lacks's full life makes the story come alive with her humanity and the palpable relationship between race, science, and exploitation.—PAULA J. GIDDINGS, author of Ida, A Sword Among Lions; Elizabeth A. Woodson 1922 Professor, Afro-American Studies, Smith College

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• Rebecca Skloot’s steadfast commitment to illuminating the life and contribution of Henrietta Lacks, one of the many vulnerable subjects used for scientific advancement, and the subsequent impact on her family is a testament to the power of solid investigative journalism. Her deeply compelling account of one family’s long and troubled relationship with America’s vast medical-industrial complex is sure to become a cherished classic.

  — ALLEN M. HORNBLUM, author of Acres of Skin and Sentenced to Science

• Writing with a novelist’s artistry, a biologist’s expertise, and the zeal of an investigative reporter, Skloot tells a truly astonishing story of racism and poverty, science and conscience, spirituality and family driven by a galvanizing inquiry into the sanctity of the body and the very nature of the life force.

  — Booklist (starred review)

• “[A] multilayered narrative of race, class, and family.”

  — O, The Oprah Magazine

• “The story of modern medicine and bioethics—and, indeed, race relations—is refracted beautifully and movingly.”

  — Entertainment Weekly

• “Skloot’s engaging, suspenseful book is an incredibly welcome addition for non-science wonks.”

  — Newsweek

• “The fine narration underscores the pain and frustration her family feels after Lacks’ death, the purloining of her cells, and the world’s failure to recognize her role. However difficult it is to acknowledge unscrupulous medical experimentation, Campbell’s star quality rivets listeners to this tribute to one whose life continues to improve health care worldwide. A 2011 Audie Award Winner.”

  — AudioFile

• “This extraordinary account shows us that miracle workers, believers, and con artists populate hospitals as well as churches, and that even a science writer may find herself playing a central role in someone else’s mythology.”

  — New Yorker

• “Science writing is often just about ‘the facts.’ Skloot’s book, her first, is far deeper, braver, and more wonderful.” 

  — New York Times Book Review

• “More than ten years in the making, it feels like the book Ms. Skloot was born to write.”

  — New York Times

• “A work of both heart and mind, driven by the author’s passion for the story, which is as endlessly renewable as HeLa cells.”

  — Los Angeles Times

• “One of the great medical biographies of our time.”

  — Financial Times (London)

• “A deftly crafted investigation of a social wrong committed by the medical establishment, as well as the scientific and medical miracles to which it led.” 

  — Washington Post

• “Riveting…a tour-de-force debut.” 

  — Chicago Sun-Times

• “Above all it is a human story of redemption for a family, torn by loss, and for a writer with a vision that would not let go.”

  — Boston Globe

• “Beautifully crafted and painstakingly researched.”

  — Science

• “Extraordinary.”

  — Telegraph (London)

• “No dead woman has done more for the living…a fascinating, harrowing, necessary book.”

  — Guardian (London)

• “A real-life detective story, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks probes deeply into racial and ethical issues in medicine…The emotional impact of Skloot’s tale is intensified by its skillfully orchestrated counterpoint between two worlds.”

  — Nature

• “Indelible…The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a heroic work of cultural and medical journalism.” 

  — Salon.com

• “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a triumph of science writing...one of the best nonfiction books I have ever read.”

  — Wired.com

• “Moving.”

  — Economist

• “Skloot is a terrific popularizer of medical science, guiding readers through this dense material with a light and entertaining touch.”

  — Globe and Mail (Toronto)

• “Blows away the notion that science writing must be the literary equivalent to Ambien.”

  — Chicago Tribune

• “[A] remarkable and moving book…a vivid portrait of Lacks that should be as abiding as her cells.”

  — Times (London)

• “A stunning book…surely the definitive work on the subject.”

  — Independent (London)

• “[A] remarkable book.”

  — London Review of Books

• “Seldom do you read a book that is science, social history, and a page turner.” 

  — British Medical Journal

• “An inspiring tale for all ages.” 

  — Essence

• “A remarkable feat of investigative journalism and a moving work of narrative nonfiction that reads with the vividness and urgency of fiction.”

  — NPR

• “As much an act of justice as one of journalism.” 

  — Seattle Times

• “An indelible, marvelous story as powerful as those cells.” 

  — Philadelphia Inquirer

• “Brings the Lacks family alive…[and] gives Henrietta Lacks another kind of immortality—this one through the discipline of good writing.”

  — Baltimore Sun