For english (college level 12th grade class for reference) we were given a very broad choice of books to read. Our teacher said pick any nonfiction book that’s college level, and whose topic you’d consider writing a report-style essay about. I don’t tend to read much (or any) nonfiction so I wanted to find something that still had a really interesting narrative, and the poetic writing you’d typically find more in a fiction than a history/science book. I was originally considering something to do with politics or history, like nazi Germany or something, but after a literal hour of walking around Barnes & Noble, I ended up narrowing it down to two books about medical history.
The first one is called “The Icepick Surgeon” by Sam Kean, and the second is called “The Butchering Art” by Lindsey Fitzharris. The former is about the atrocities committed in the name of scientific and medical advancement, and the latter is about the history of surgery and the doctor who realized how infections work and how to prevent them during operations. These are just the ideas I got from the back covers, so feel free to correct my summaries. If you’ve read one or both, can you convince me to read one or the other, maybe taking into consideration how suitable their topics would be for writing a paper? They both seem super interesting to me so I’m sure I can write pages and pages on either of them.
by SeveralAd3723
1 Comment
Both are solid picks but I’d go with “The Butchering Art” – Fitzharris has this really engaging narrative style that reads almost like a thriller, and the Joseph Lister story has a clear arc that’s perfect for essay structure. Plus you get all these gnarly surgery details from before anesthesia that’ll definitely keep your attention
The Sam Kean book is good too but it’s more of a collection of different stories so it might be harder to focus your paper on one cohesive argument