Praise for The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
“A thorny and provocative book about cancer, racism, scientific ethics and crippling poverty, ‘The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks’ also 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.’ More than 10 years in the making, 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 (click here for full review)
“Science journalist Skloot makes a remarkable debut with this multilayered story about faith, science, journalism, and grace. … Skloot tells 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 (click here for full review)
“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
“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 (click here for full review)
“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“A well-paced, vibrant narrative … Equal parts intimate biography and brutal clinical reportage, Skloot’s graceful narrative adeptly navigates the wrenching Lack family recollections and the sobering, overarching realities of poverty and pre–civil-rights racism. The author’s style is matched by a methodical scientific rigor and manifest expertise in the field.” — Kirkus Starred Review (click here for the full review)
“This book, labeled “science — cultural studies,” should be treated as a work of American history. It’s a deftly crafted investigation of a social wrong committed by the medical establishment, as well as the scientific and medical miracles to which it led. Skloot’s compassionate account can be the first step toward recognition, justice and healing.” — Washington Post (click here for full review)
“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.” — Boston Globe (read full review here)
“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
“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
“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
“If virtues could be cultured like cells, Rebecca Skloot’s would be a fine place to start⎯a 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
“… a work of both heart and mind, driven by the author’s passion for the story, which is as endlessly renewable as HeLa cells.”
—Los Angeles Times FACES TO WATCH IN 2010 feature
“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
More Early Praise
See what professors are saying about The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and its importance to academia. Read the Publishers Weekly cover story about Skloot and The Immortal Life, and more, on the press page of this site.
