Blue sky, green trees

Interesting and well-written science book. I did find it to be overly long, some of the diseases discussed could have been cut in order to keep it lean and zesty.

I also have to say that in the chapter about typhoid, I thought it was irresponsible of the author to declare that Mary Mallon (aka Typhoid Mary) had a mental illness when there is no indication that she was ever diagnosed with one - a fact that the author freely admits immediately after asserting the mental illness claim. Just because someone has a disagreeable personality, and sometimes doesn't conform to social norms, doesn't mean they have a mental illness. The willingness of the author to label people as mentally ill, having never met them and coming from an entirely different cultural period, is deeply troubling.

It's like the love child of a fairy tale book and an inter-generational novel about mothers and daughters - I loved it.

This book can be divided into four parts: the lead-up to the disaster, the disaster, the immediate afterwards, and the long-term afterwards. The first part, the lead-up, is quite repetitive, with facts and elements repeated a minimum of three times (per my personal counting). Don't let this stop you! The rest of the book is fantastic, by turns horrifying and sad and uplifting, and at every point fascinating.

Quite interesting. When it got to the testimonies of the defendants I started skimming because I figured it was all lies, and by the time we were in the closing statements I was heavily skimming because it got very repetitive. I skimmed basically everything after that until it came to the epilogue, which, along with the afterward, returned to new and interesting points.

Final thought: I was surprised and titillated at how much the author threw the cops under the bus, it must have been quite controversial at the time.

Absolutely fantastic.

I found all but a few of the people in this book completely horrible. That makes it a weird ride, to hate people who you are spending many hours learning about, but also to still be interested in the story.

Also, I felt like the author was quite the apologist for Sam. He never says it explicitly, but the vibe is very "Sam is an asshole and treats people like shit but it's okay because he's smart!" This made me lose faith in the author and in his perspective on the story.

Glad I read the book, but even more glad that it's over.

I read it in one sitting, starting after dinner and going past midnight. I couldn't put it down!

I liked it, it was a fun read. There was A LOT of boating terminology, which I don't understand; at first it wasn't so bad, but I found myself having to skim entire paragraphs that were simply describing how parts of the boat were working. For this I'm knocking off a star because it really did take up quite a lot of the book. Aside from that I found the plot and writing charming.

Really great mystery! I recognized one of the clues as being a clue, which made me feel smart, but I didn't guess the ending, which kept me in a state of suspense throughout. In short, a perfect combo!