The Barbary Plague: The Black Death in Victorian San Francisco

A great story of how the Plague came to San Francisco in 1900 and how it was eventually eradicated. Dr. Rupert Blue shines as the hero in the second plague event. Blue promoted and preached sanitation to contain the disease, but it was only when he focused his attack on the newly discovered source of the plague - the infected rats and their fleas - that he finally eradicated it— one of the great, little known, triumphs in American public health history. We see the streets of San Francisco from a "rat" point of view, and how factors like earthquakes can dislodge the rats and bring about illnesses. Hmmmmm.

Beth Dunigan at Mississippi College shared this read with me, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I don't know how either of us stayed sane during the Ph. D. crisis, but we both read more than just research for the dissertations. Therein may lie the sanity.

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Marie Curie: a Life, by Susan Quinn

Just like most of you, I read Eva Curie's biography of her mother when I was around 10 or 11 years old (mine was is the Reader's Digest for Young Adults). I was, like you, inspired. Recently, I saw the reenactment of Marie Curie by Susan Marie Frontczak, produced on film by Jen Myronuk. The presentation was AMAZING! I really did feel as if Marie Curie was telling her story just to me. MSTA will be discussing sponsoring this presentation at a conference in the future. Susan Marie Frontczak talked with the audience via Skype after the presentation. She told us that she had read Eva Curie's biography in her preparation, but she relyied on the Susan Quinn biography for much of her research and dialogue. I knew I had to read this book, so I downloaded it to my Kindle that very day! The book is, of course, enlightening. I just happened to be reading about Marie's viewing the total eclipse the night before our total eclipse in August. I stopped so I could read th...

Silent Witnesses by Nigel McCrery

I really enjoyed this book and I am including the book on my biology readings list. The book gives the "first starts" for the many areas contained in forensics, and I do have students interested in this very type of reading. In this, we have a good overview of the Colin Pitchfork case, in which DNA fingerprinting was used for two 1sts: proving a man's innocence and proving a man's guilt. Also included are ballistics, trajectory, blood evidence, etc. Because each chapter is a "short story," this would be an easy biology book club book.

Survival of the Sickest: an Amazon Review

Amazon.com Review Dan Ariely on Survival of the Sickest MIT professor Dan Ariely has become one of the leaders in the growing field of behavioral economics, and his bestselling book debut, Predictably Irrational, has brought his ideas--and his ingenious experiments and charming sense of humor--to a much wider audience. With the simplest of tests (often an auction or a quiz given under a few conditions) he shows again and again not only that we are wired to make irrational decisions in many situations, but that we do so in remarkably predictable ways. I have always been puzzled by the way in which genetic diseases have managed to survive throughout the ages. How could it be that these diseases were able to withstand the evolutionary process, where only the most fit survive, and continue to be transferred from one generation to the next? Survival of the Sickest provides a thought provoking yet entertaining explanation to this puzzle. In this insightful book Dr. Sharon Moalem demonstra...

Aleta's Book Report

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