Download or read book The Poisoner s Handbook written by Deborah Blum and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011-01-25 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Equal parts true crime, twentieth-century history, and science thriller, The Poisoner's Handbook is "a vicious, page-turning story that reads more like Raymond Chandler than Madame Curie." —The New York Observer “The Poisoner’s Handbook breathes deadly life into the Roaring Twenties.” —Financial Times “Reads like science fiction, complete with suspense, mystery and foolhardy guys in lab coats tipping test tubes of mysterious chemicals into their own mouths.” —NPR: What We're Reading A fascinating Jazz Age tale of chemistry and detection, poison and murder, The Poisoner's Handbook is a page-turning account of a forgotten era. In early twentieth-century New York, poisons offered an easy path to the perfect crime. Science had no place in the Tammany Hall-controlled coroner's office, and corruption ran rampant. However, with the appointment of chief medical examiner Charles Norris in 1918, the poison game changed forever. Together with toxicologist Alexander Gettler, the duo set the justice system on fire with their trailblazing scientific detective work, triumphing over seemingly unbeatable odds to become the pioneers of forensic chemistry and the gatekeepers of justice. In 2014, PBS's AMERICAN EXPERIENCE released a film based on The Poisoner's Handbook.
Download or read book The Poisoner s Handbook written by Deborah Blum and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2011-01-25 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Equal parts true crime, twentieth-century history, and science thriller, The Poisoner's Handbook is "a vicious, page-turning story that reads more like Raymond Chandler than Madame Curie." —The New York Observer “The Poisoner’s Handbook breathes deadly life into the Roaring Twenties.” —Financial Times “Reads like science fiction, complete with suspense, mystery and foolhardy guys in lab coats tipping test tubes of mysterious chemicals into their own mouths.” —NPR: What We're Reading A fascinating Jazz Age tale of chemistry and detection, poison and murder, The Poisoner's Handbook is a page-turning account of a forgotten era. In early twentieth-century New York, poisons offered an easy path to the perfect crime. Science had no place in the Tammany Hall-controlled coroner's office, and corruption ran rampant. However, with the appointment of chief medical examiner Charles Norris in 1918, the poison game changed forever. Together with toxicologist Alexander Gettler, the duo set the justice system on fire with their trailblazing scientific detective work, triumphing over seemingly unbeatable odds to become the pioneers of forensic chemistry and the gatekeepers of justice. In 2014, PBS's AMERICAN EXPERIENCE released a film based on The Poisoner's Handbook.
Download or read book The Poisoner s Handbook written by Deborah Blum and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Writing with the high style and skill for suspense characteristic of the very best mystery fiction‚ Deborah Blum shares the untold story of how poison rocked Jazz Age New York City. In The Poisoner's Handbook she draws from original research to track the fascinating‚ perilous days when forensic scientists Charles Norris and Alexander Gettler began their trailblazing chemical detective work‚ in an era when untraceable poisons offered an easy path to the perfect crime.
Download or read book The Poisoner s Handbook written by Maxwell Hutchkinson and published by Loompanics Unltd. This book was released on 1988 with total page 88 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is our blood and guts section. These books are the most gruesome and terrifying of any in our entire catalog. Enjoy! One of the most gruesome books ever printed. Covers poisons and how to use them, including: -- Plant Poisons -- Animal Toxins -- Chemical Poisons -- Terrible Poisons -- Lethal Drugs -- Poisonous Gases -- And More. Also Covers some methods of delivery and antidotes.
Download or read book The Poison Squad written by Deborah Blum and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-09-25 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Notable Book The inspiration for PBS's AMERICAN EXPERIENCE film The Poison Squad. From Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times-bestselling author Deborah Blum, the dramatic true story of how food was made safe in the United States and the heroes, led by the inimitable Dr. Harvey Washington Wiley, who fought for change By the end of nineteenth century, food was dangerous. Lethal, even. "Milk" might contain formaldehyde, most often used to embalm corpses. Decaying meat was preserved with both salicylic acid, a pharmaceutical chemical, and borax, a compound first identified as a cleaning product. This was not by accident; food manufacturers had rushed to embrace the rise of industrial chemistry, and were knowingly selling harmful products. Unchecked by government regulation, basic safety, or even labelling requirements, they put profit before the health of their customers. By some estimates, in New York City alone, thousands of children were killed by "embalmed milk" every year. Citizens--activists, journalists, scientists, and women's groups--began agitating for change. But even as protective measures were enacted in Europe, American corporations blocked even modest regulations. Then, in 1883, Dr. Harvey Washington Wiley, a chemistry professor from Purdue University, was named chief chemist of the agriculture department, and the agency began methodically investigating food and drink fraud, even conducting shocking human tests on groups of young men who came to be known as, "The Poison Squad." Over the next thirty years, a titanic struggle took place, with the courageous and fascinating Dr. Wiley campaigning indefatigably for food safety and consumer protection. Together with a gallant cast, including the muckraking reporter Upton Sinclair, whose fiction revealed the horrific truth about the Chicago stockyards; Fannie Farmer, then the most famous cookbook author in the country; and Henry J. Heinz, one of the few food producers who actively advocated for pure food, Dr. Wiley changed history. When the landmark 1906 Food and Drug Act was finally passed, it was known across the land, as "Dr. Wiley's Law." Blum brings to life this timeless and hugely satisfying "David and Goliath" tale with righteous verve and style, driving home the moral imperative of confronting corporate greed and government corruption with a bracing clarity, which speaks resoundingly to the enormous social and political challenges we face today.
Download or read book Ghost Hunters written by Deborah Blum and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2007-05-29 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Poision Squad and The Poisoner's Handbook tells the amazing story of William James's quest for empirical evidence of the spirit world What if a world-renowned philosopher and professor of psychiatry at Harvard suddenly announced he believed in ghosts? At the close of the nineteenth century, the illustrious William James led a determined scientific investigation into "unexplainable" incidences of clairvoyance and ghostly visitations. James and a small group of eminent scientists staked their reputations, their careers, even their sanity on one of the most extraordinary quests ever undertaken: to empirically prove the existence of ghosts, spirits, and psychic phenomena. What they pursued—and what they found—raises questions as fascinating today as they were then.
Download or read book The Sirens of Mars written by Sarah Stewart Johnson and published by Crown. This book was released on 2020-07-07 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Sarah Stewart Johnson interweaves her own coming-of-age story as a planetary scientist with a vivid history of the exploration of Mars in this celebration of human curiosity, passion, and perseverance.”—Alan Lightman, author of Einstein’s Dreams WINNER OF THE PHI BETA KAPPA AWARD FOR SCIENCE • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • Times (UK) • Library Journal “Lovely . . . Johnson’s prose swirls with lyrical wonder, as varied and multihued as the apricot deserts, butterscotch skies and blue sunsets of Mars.”—Anthony Doerr, The New York Times Book Review Mars was once similar to Earth, but today there are no rivers, no lakes, no oceans. Coated in red dust, the terrain is bewilderingly empty. And yet multiple spacecraft are circling Mars, sweeping over Terra Sabaea, Syrtis Major, the dunes of Elysium, and Mare Sirenum—on the brink, perhaps, of a staggering find, one that would inspire humankind as much as any discovery in the history of modern science. In this beautifully observed, deeply personal book, Georgetown scientist Sarah Stewart Johnson tells the story of how she and other researchers have scoured Mars for signs of life, transforming the planet from a distant point of light into a world of its own. Johnson’s fascination with Mars began as a child in Kentucky, turning over rocks with her father and looking at planets in the night sky. She now conducts fieldwork in some of Earth’s most hostile environments, such as the Dry Valleys of Antarctica and the salt flats of Western Australia, developing methods for detecting life on other worlds. Here, with poetic precision, she interlaces her own personal journey—as a female scientist and a mother—with tales of other seekers, from Percival Lowell, who was convinced that a utopian society existed on Mars, to Audouin Dollfus, who tried to carry out astronomical observations from a stratospheric balloon. In the process, she shows how the story of Mars is also a story about Earth: This other world has been our mirror, our foil, a telltale reflection of our own anxieties and yearnings. Empathetic and evocative, The Sirens of Mars offers an unlikely natural history of a place where no human has ever set foot, while providing a vivid portrait of our quest to defy our isolation in the cosmos.
Download or read book Molecules of Death written by Rosemary H. Waring and published by Imperial College Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 455 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book has been developed over many years from several popular courses taught to students at both Birmingham and London universities. It provides an important step in introducing principles and concepts within the field of toxicology. The underlying mechanisms of toxicity are highlighted through examples taken from gases, minerals, plants, fungi, bacteria, marine creatures, industrial chemicals and pharmacological agents.In this second edition, the text has been completely revised and expanded with the addition of six new chapters ? carbon monoxide, hydrofluoric acid, lead, mushroom, toxins, paracetamol, paraquat and diquat. Each chapter is self-sufficient, enabling readers to dip into chapters of interest at random without any lack of understanding. The book is informative, with numerous clinical details, and will appeal to those who wish to delve into this fascinating subject.
Download or read book She Who Was No More written by Pierre Boileau and published by Pushkin Vertigo. This book was released on 2015-09-15 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A couple's murderous plot goes horribly awry in this French noir classic that later inspired the Alfred Hitchcock masterpiece Psycho Every Saturday evening, travelling salesman Ferdinand Ravinel returns to his wife, Mireille, who waits patiently for him at home. But Ferdinand has another lover, Lucienne—an ambitious doctor—and together the adulterers have devised a murderous plan. Drugging Mireille, the pair drown her in a bathtub. But before the "accidental" death can be discovered, the corpse mysteriously disappears. So begins the unraveling of Ferdinand's plot, and his sanity. This classic of French noir fiction was adapted for the screen by Henri-Georges Clouzot as Les Diaboliques (The Devils), starring Simone Signoret and Véra Clouzot, the film which in turn inspired Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. A second movie version, Diabolique, followed in 1996, starring Sharon Stone.
Download or read book The Monkey Wars written by Deborah Blum and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1995-12-14 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The controversy over the use of primates in research admits of no easy answers. We have all benefited from the medical discoveries of primate research--vaccines for polio, rubella, and hepatitis B are just a few. But we have also learned more in recent years about how intelligent apes and monkeys really are: they can speak to us with sign language, they can even play video games (and are as obsessed with the games as any human teenager). And activists have also uncovered widespread and unnecessarily callous treatment of animals by researchers (in 1982, a Silver Spring lab was charged with 17 counts of animal cruelty). It is a complex issue, made more difficult by the combative stance of both researchers and animal activists. In The Monkey Wars, Deborah Blum gives a human face to this often caustic debate--and an all-but-human face to the subjects of the struggle, the chimpanzees and monkeys themselves. Blum criss-crosses America to show us first hand the issues and personalities involved. She offers a wide-ranging, informative look at animal rights activists, now numbering some twelve million, from the moderate Animal Welfare Institute to the highly radical Animal Liberation Front (a group destructive enough to be placed on the FBI's terrorist list). And she interviews a wide variety of researchers, many forced to conduct their work protected by barbed wire and alarm systems, men and women for whom death threats and hate mail are common. She takes us to Roger Fouts's research center in Ellensburg, Washington, where we meet five chimpanzees trained in human sign language, and we visit LEMSIP, a research facility in New York State that has no barbed wire, no alarms--and no protesters chanting outside--because its director, Jan Moor-Jankowski, listens to activists with respect and treats his animals humanely. And along the way, Blum offers us insights into the many side-issues involved: the intense battle to win over school kids fought by both sides, and the danger of transplanting animal organs into humans. "As it stands now," Blum concludes, "the research community and its activist critics are like two different nations, nations locked in a long, bitter, seemingly intractable political standoff....But if you listen hard, there really are people on both sides willing to accept and work within the complex middle. When they can be freely heard, then we will have progressed to another place, beyond this time of hostilities." In The Monkey Wars, Deborah Blum gives these people their voice.
Download or read book For colored girls who have considered suicide When the rainbow is enuf written by Ntozake Shange and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-11-02 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The “extraordinary and wonderful” award-winning play in a new edition featuring an additional poem, production photos, and an introduction by Jesmyn Ward (The New York Times). From its inception in California in 1974 to its Broadway revival in 2022, the Obie Award–winning for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf has excited, inspired, and transformed audiences all over the country. Passionate and fearless, Shange’s words reveal what it meant to be a woman of color in the 20th century—and they continue to ring true in the 21st. First published in 1975, it was praised by The New Yorker for “encompassing . . . every feeling and experience a woman has ever had”. This new edition celebrates the play’s enduring legacy with introductions by Jesmyn Ward and Broadway director Camille A. Brown. It also features a poem not previously included in the text, and a selection of photos capturing the play’s evolution and reinvention.
Download or read book The Inheritor s Powder A Tale of Arsenic Murder and the New Forensic Science written by Sandra Hempel and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2013-10-15 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores how an infamous murder case led to the birth of modern toxicology.
Download or read book A Taste for Poison written by Neil Bradbury, Ph.D. and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2022-02-01 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A fascinating tale of poisons and poisonous deeds which both educates and entertains.” --Kathy Reichs A brilliant blend of science and crime, A TASTE FOR POISON reveals how eleven notorious poisons affect the body--through the murders in which they were used. As any reader of murder mysteries can tell you, poison is one of the most enduring—and popular—weapons of choice for a scheming murderer. It can be slipped into a drink, smeared onto the tip of an arrow or the handle of a door, even filtered through the air we breathe. But how exactly do these poisons work to break our bodies down, and what can we learn from the damage they inflict? In a fascinating blend of popular science, medical history, and true crime, Dr. Neil Bradbury explores this most morbidly captivating method of murder from a cellular level. Alongside real-life accounts of murderers and their crimes—some notorious, some forgotten, some still unsolved—are the equally compelling stories of the poisons involved: eleven molecules of death that work their way through the human body and, paradoxically, illuminate the way in which our bodies function. Drawn from historical records and current news headlines, A Taste for Poison weaves together the tales of spurned lovers, shady scientists, medical professionals and political assassins to show how the precise systems of the body can be impaired to lethal effect through the use of poison. From the deadly origins of the gin & tonic cocktail to the arsenic-laced wallpaper in Napoleon’s bedroom, A Taste for Poison leads readers on a riveting tour of the intricate, complex systems that keep us alive—or don’t.
Download or read book Sex on the Brain written by Deborah Blum and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1998-07-01 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Go beyond the headlines and the hype to get the newest findings in the burgeoning field of gender studies. Drawing on disciplines that include evolutionary science, anthropology, animal behavior, neuroscience, psychology, and endocrinology, Deborah Blum explores matters ranging from the link between immunology and sex to male/female gossip styles. The results are intriguing, startling, and often very amusing. For instance, did you know that. . . • Male testosterone levels drop in happy marriages; scientists speculate that women may use monogamy to control male behavior • Young female children who are in day-care are apt to be more secure than those kept at home; young male children less so • Anthropologists classify Western societies as "mildly polygamous" The Los Angeles Times has called Sex on the Brain "superbly crafted science writing, graced by unusual compassion, wit, and intelligence, that forms an important addition to the literature of gender studies."
Download or read book The Killer Bean of Calabar and Other Stories written by Peter Macinnis and published by Allen & Unwin. This book was released on 2004-07-01 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A triumphantly toxic tome. As a dedicated Macinnis fan, I relish this latest display of erudition, story-telling and fun. One of his very best.' Robyn Williams, Head, ABC Science Unit Was Abraham Lincoln really as mad as a hatter? Who poisoned Phar Lap? Can wallpaper really kill? Was Jack the Ripper an arsenic eater? Painting a broad canvas, from the early Egyptians to the arsenical tube wells in Bangladesh and the Sarin gas attacks in a Tokyo subway, The Killer Bean of Calabar explores the accidental and intentional tales of poisons and their use throughout history. Historically difficult substances to trace, poisons have been used by many for their own dastardly purposes, from the Great Poisoners such as Nero and Madame de Brinvilliers to the mass gassings of World War II. But the truly great poisoners are those who make selective use of poisons to save human life, not the few who use poison to take human life. Most of the medicines we take are themselves poisons - therapeutic only by virtue of being more deadly to our viruses than to us. Poisons are all around us - from the plants in our gardens and lead in our homes, to the bacteria and toxins in our bodies. With ripping yarns and unusual views of famous people, Macinnis explains the whys and wherefores of poisons and poisoning.
Download or read book The Teacup Poisoner A Biography of Serial Killer Graham Young written by and published by . This book was released on with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Criminal Poisoning written by John H. Trestrail, III and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2007-10-28 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this revised and expanded edition, leading forensic scientist John Trestrail offers a pioneering survey of all that is known about the use of poison as a weapon in murder. Topics range from the use of poisons in history and literature to convicting the poisoner in court, and include a review of the different types of poisons, techniques for crime scene investigation, and the critical essentials of the forensic autopsy. The author updates what is currently known about poisoners in general and their victims. The Appendix has been updated to include the more commonly used poisons, as well as the use of antifreeze as a poison.
