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cspiwak's review
5.0
The one that started my obseesion with diseases and the heroes who track them down. It is exciting and, even after all these years, still a compelling read
raehink's review
4.0
This is probably the first real science book I read--way back in fifth or sixth grade. I loved de Kruif's accounts of how bacteria were discovered and how antibiotics were developed. This book shaped my love of all things medical and scientific in nature.
thuja's review
4.0
Engaging and quite interesting, but also very much a product of the time it was written. The tone is much less formal than most science for laypeople books currently, and there are certainly no cited sources. The author does a great job of making the various researchers into very human characters, although I wonder how much is poetic license. Also, the casual racism, sexism, and lack of medical ethics threw me for a loop from time to time.
Overall, it was still a very fun read and made me look up a lot of things to see how treatments and research have changed since the 1920s
Overall, it was still a very fun read and made me look up a lot of things to see how treatments and research have changed since the 1920s
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