The Icepick Surgeon

I enjoyed this book quite a bit, the stories inside were fascinating and gruesome, while also getting into the moral complexity of using research as ill-gotten gains. The Nazis are the most obvious to come to mind here, but there were lots of shady research experiments done in the past. The story that stuck out the most to me was the one from Winnipeg regarding the David Reimer case- I live in Winnipeg and I had never heard anything about this. This story was absolutely horrifying!

I did have some problems with this book, though. The author did use outdated language a few times; It mostly didn't bother me too much because due to the context, I could tell that Kean was trying to keep the language “as it was”- I believe he used Indian after referring to a group that had Indian in their name and their stated goal was to “kill Indians”. While it's a term I would normally look down upon an author using today, I felt in the context to switch to “indigenous” would have felt awkward- but a disclaimer after the fact would have been nice, especially since many Americans still use the term colloquially, to help normalize it felt weird. The second irritating thing he did was to keep promoting his podcast. Such a weird thing to do. Maybe it's an audiobook thing only, and in the physical book, they are instead footnotes? Either way, it was jarring.

I recommend this book, but with some caveats. It can be pretty heavy, and it's possible the language may put you off it (or the constant podcast-advertising).