Winner's Book Club Selection of the Week: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

"The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks," by Rebecca Skloot

Amazon Best Books of the Month, February 2010

What are her Winner Credentials?

Henrietta Lacks was a poor African American woman who died of cancer at the age of 30 in 1951. Her contribution to medical science was that so monumental that it led to the cure for polio. To find out how, you'll have to read this incredible detective story.

From Publishers Weekly

Science journalist Skloot makes a remarkable debut with this multilayered story about faith, science, journalism, and grace. It is also a tale of medical wonders and medical arrogance, racism, poverty and the bond that grows, sometimes painfully, between two very different women—Skloot and Deborah Lacks—sharing an obsession to learn about Deborah's mother, Henrietta, and her magical, immortal cells. Henrietta Lacks was a 31-year-old black mother of five in Baltimore when she died of cervical cancer in 1951. Without her knowledge, doctors treating her at Johns Hopkins took tissue samples from her cervix for research. They spawned the first viable, indeed miraculously productive, cell line—known as HeLa. read more>>

Customer Review

Wow. This book should be required reading for scientists and students of life. The true story of Henrietta Lacks and her family has finally been told, beautifully, in this book. The book encompasses science, ethics, and the story of a family who was terribly wronged in the pursuit of scientific research. I could gush about this book for pages but I'll try first to hit the main points of why this book is so remarkable in list form for the sake of brevity: read more >>