Brandy Schillace is a historian of medicine and the critically acclaimed author of Death’s Summer Coat: What Death and Dying Teach Us About Life and Living and Clockwork Futures: The Science of Steampunk. The host of the Peculiar Book Club, a livestream community for authors and their readers, she has appeared on the Travel Channel’s Mysteries at the Museum, NPR’s Here and Now, and FOX’s American Built. Dr. Schillace is a 2018 winner of the Arthur P. Sloan Science Foundation award and serves as editor-in-chief of BMJ’s Medical Humanities Journal.
Engrossing. Schillace is a first-rate historian with the perceptive eye of a storyteller. -- DR. LINDSEY FITZHARRIS, New York Times bestselling author of The Butchering Art Brandy Schillace has taken a most bizarre and ethically complex episode in the history of medicine and crafted from it a narrative that is nuanced, informed, and almost impossible to stop reading. I swear to you, if you have a brain inside your head (or anywhere else), you will find this book fascinating. -- MARY ROACH, New York Times bestselling author of Stiff Astonishing. When it comes to pushing the boundaries of medical ingenuity, readers will be profoundly affected by the questions presented by Schillace: not just 'Can we do this?' but more importantly, 'Should we?' -- DR. LYDIA KANG, coauthor of Quackery A rollicking, irresistible tale of doctors playing God, science facing off with ideology, and fate being sorely tempted at every turn. -- ROBERT KOLKER, New York Times bestselling author of Hidden Valley Road A riveting, heartfelt page-turner. Schillace reveals Dr. Robert White in all his strange, complicated brilliance: a pious, ambitious, egotistical innovator who was willing to challenge almost any norm--including the definition of life itself--in his quest to develop a mind-bending and potentially world-changing new surgical procedure. -- LUKE DITTRICH, New York Times bestselling author of Patient H.M. Captivating... Absorbing... Engrossing. -- Kirkus Reviews