Reviews tagging 'Slavery'

The Icepick Surgeon: Murder, Fraud, Sabotage, Piracy, and Other Dastardly Deeds Perpetuated in the Name of Science by Sam Kean

17 reviews

alyssatuininga's review

dark emotional funny informative reflective sad fast-paced

4.5

 Fascinating book documenting the dark side of science. This book looks at things like Nazi doctors, grave robbing anatomists, the Tuskeegee experiment, etc.  I knew many of the stories in the book already but many of the questions that this book raised were super interesting and really made me think about these issues. I really enjoy Sam Kean’s writing (although I enjoyed The Violinst’s Thumb more). There was definitely some difficult subject matter in this book but it was well worth a read (although I will admit I skipped the animal torture chapter). 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Slavery, Murder, Torture, Animal cruelty, Injury/Injury detail, and Medical trauma

gk1412's review

challenging dark informative mysterious reflective fast-paced

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Colonisation, Domestic abuse, Pedophilia, Antisemitism, Death, Racism, Suicide, Suicide attempt, Torture, Blood, Body shaming, Child abuse, Deportation, Hate crime, Transphobia, Incest, Mental illness, Misogyny, Murder, Physical abuse, Slavery, Ableism, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Bullying, Classism, Forced institutionalization, Homophobia, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , and Violence

shelbycundiff's review

dark informative reflective sad fast-paced

4.25

A fascinating yet disturbing read. I enjoyed it a lot but some chapters were so graphic it nearly made me gag. Overall great page turnability for non fiction!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror and Medical trauma

Moderate: Suicide, Slavery, and Medical content

mfrisk's review

challenging dark informative slow-paced

3.0

I’ve been reading a lot more this year and getting through books quicker especially those I’ve enjoyed. However, this read took me several months to finish. 

I note this because while I find the overall subject interesting and also important in terms of the fields of science, medicine, and fields which intersect with these areas I don’t feel like these stories were given the appropriate weight and critical lens. As many reviewers mention inappropriate terminology is used for a variety of marginalized populations within this book and I often felt the author was trying to get a laugh out of us (the readers) more than they were working to connect the story to their larger point of morality and ethics. The podcast plugs were annoying but not as egregious as the lack of depth certain stories were given when they covered very sensitive topics. It may not have hurt for their to be additional commentary from other folks especially in stories where marginalized populations were involved and that was only touched on a surface level. I’ve listened to the podcast as well after reading some stories in this book and it has similar issues seen in this book. 

Also want to add this book could have used a more central defining element or at least narrowing down to specific field or some other way to make this more focused. It often was confusing that the stories felt so disconnected and the conclusion doesn’t quite pull together the ideas enough. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Medical content, Slavery, Self harm, Misogyny, Sexual content, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Injury/Injury detail, Violence, Suicidal thoughts, Sexual violence, Forced institutionalization, Colonisation, Torture, Suicide, Sexual harassment, Medical trauma, Suicide attempt, Sexual assault, Murder, Racism, and Sexism

kyliebloch's review against another edition

challenging dark informative reflective medium-paced

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder, Animal death, Animal cruelty, and Slavery

lauramegan's review

The author seemed a bit flippant at times about the atrocities committed. Additionally, he kept plugging his podcast in the middle of chapters.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Sexual violence, Racism, and Slavery

monstersinspace's review

emotional informative reflective fast-paced

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Medical content, Chronic illness, Medical trauma, and Terminal illness

Moderate: Animal death, Death, Mental illness, Ableism, Alcohol, Animal cruelty, and Child abuse

Minor: Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Antisemitism, Blood, Gaslighting, Homophobia, Pedophilia, Slavery, Body horror, Child abuse, Colonisation, Death, Drug use, Racism, and Suicide

chloethonus's review

dark informative lighthearted relaxing sad medium-paced

4.75

This was a great book, a very interesting collection of scientific ethics being set aside and how it has gone very wrong. Allows us to see scientists as humans rather than unquestionable gods who can do no wrong, but also acknowledges that we cannot fully discredit scientists as a whole and should instead be skeptical and read scientific media critically. I learned a lot of interesting stories that range from questionable ethics to outright murder. Some content is quite shocking, and for the faint of heart there are mentions of psychological torture and in some cases extreme physical harm coming to people.

My only critique is some outdated language like calling Native Americans "Indians" and the prologue about Cleopatra being very clumsy. The prologue is made up of information that can't be proven which is a questionable start for this book. The language, however, bothers me more. Native Americans should be respected and referred to using proper terms that do not have to do with the entirely unrelated nation of Indian. Native American, indigenous peoples, tribe name, there are a lot of options.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Medical trauma and Slavery

Moderate: Racism, Xenophobia, Torture, Terminal illness, and Suicide

Minor: Misogyny

chupacobbruh's review

dark funny informative medium-paced

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Torture, Mental illness, Slavery, Physical abuse, Body horror, and Medical trauma

kbergsten's review

challenging dark informative reflective fast-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Death, Emotional abuse, Forced institutionalization, Genocide, Homophobia, Gaslighting, Gore, Medical content, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Sexual assault, Suicide attempt, Torture, Transphobia, Ableism, Abortion, Animal death, Antisemitism, Child abuse, Classism, Colonisation, Fire/Fire injury, Injury/Injury detail, Medical trauma, Mental illness, Miscarriage, Self harm, Sexual violence, Slavery, Suicide, Violence, Physical abuse, and Rape