Rebecca Skloot is an award-winning science writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine; O, The Oprah Magazine; Discover; and many others. She is coeditor of The Best American Science Writing 2011 and has worked as a correspondent for NPR’s Radiolab and PBS’s Nova ScienceNOW. She was named one of five surprising leaders of 2010 by the Washington Post. Skloot's debut book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, took more than a decade to research and write, and instantly became a New York Times bestseller. It was chosen as a best book of 2010 by more than sixty media outlets, including Entertainment Weekly, People, and the New York Times. It is being translated into more than twenty-five languages, adapted into a young reader edition, and being made into an HBO film produced by Oprah Winfrey and Alan Ball. Skloot is the founder and president of The Henrietta Lacks Foundation. She has a B.S. in biological sciences and an MFA in creative nonfiction. She has taught creative writing and science journalism at the University of Memphis, the University of Pittsburgh, and New York University. She lives in Chicago.
"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
“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
“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)
“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)
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