Author: Deborah Blum
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101524898
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 338
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Book Description
Equal parts true crime, twentieth-century history, and science thriller, The Poisoner's Handbook is "a vicious, page-turning story that reads more like Raymond Chandler than Madame Curie." —The New York Observer “The Poisoner’s Handbook breathes deadly life into the Roaring Twenties.” —Financial Times “Reads like science fiction, complete with suspense, mystery and foolhardy guys in lab coats tipping test tubes of mysterious chemicals into their own mouths.” —NPR: What We're Reading A fascinating Jazz Age tale of chemistry and detection, poison and murder, The Poisoner's Handbook is a page-turning account of a forgotten era. In early twentieth-century New York, poisons offered an easy path to the perfect crime. Science had no place in the Tammany Hall-controlled coroner's office, and corruption ran rampant. However, with the appointment of chief medical examiner Charles Norris in 1918, the poison game changed forever. Together with toxicologist Alexander Gettler, the duo set the justice system on fire with their trailblazing scientific detective work, triumphing over seemingly unbeatable odds to become the pioneers of forensic chemistry and the gatekeepers of justice. In 2014, PBS's AMERICAN EXPERIENCE released a film based on The Poisoner's Handbook.
Author: Deborah Blum
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781410425126
Category : Forensic science
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Writing with the high style and skill for suspense characteristic of the very best mystery fiction‚ Deborah Blum shares the untold story of how poison rocked Jazz Age New York City. In The Poisoner's Handbook she draws from original research to track the fascinating‚ perilous days when forensic scientists Charles Norris and Alexander Gettler began their trailblazing chemical detective work‚ in an era when untraceable poisons offered an easy path to the perfect crime.
Author: Elfriede Czurda
Publisher: African Sun Media
ISBN: 1928314694
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 134
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Book Description
Else poisoned her husband as a token of her love for Erika. Alone in her prison cell Else relives who and what had brought her there – Erika and their secret language, Erika’s enabling mother, Else’s jealous mother-in-law, her abusive husband and his appalling secret, the words of oppression. “Elsechickgorgeousyou you are like a blank white sheet of paper on which I am the Word. You are like the nothingness that I first efface because I have Words to put into the emptiness. Because I am the Word so-to-say.”
Author: Deborah Blum
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0525560289
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 370
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Book Description
A New York Times Notable Book The inspiration for PBS's AMERICAN EXPERIENCE film The Poison Squad. From Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times-bestselling author Deborah Blum, the dramatic true story of how food was made safe in the United States and the heroes, led by the inimitable Dr. Harvey Washington Wiley, who fought for change By the end of nineteenth century, food was dangerous. Lethal, even. "Milk" might contain formaldehyde, most often used to embalm corpses. Decaying meat was preserved with both salicylic acid, a pharmaceutical chemical, and borax, a compound first identified as a cleaning product. This was not by accident; food manufacturers had rushed to embrace the rise of industrial chemistry, and were knowingly selling harmful products. Unchecked by government regulation, basic safety, or even labelling requirements, they put profit before the health of their customers. By some estimates, in New York City alone, thousands of children were killed by "embalmed milk" every year. Citizens--activists, journalists, scientists, and women's groups--began agitating for change. But even as protective measures were enacted in Europe, American corporations blocked even modest regulations. Then, in 1883, Dr. Harvey Washington Wiley, a chemistry professor from Purdue University, was named chief chemist of the agriculture department, and the agency began methodically investigating food and drink fraud, even conducting shocking human tests on groups of young men who came to be known as, "The Poison Squad." Over the next thirty years, a titanic struggle took place, with the courageous and fascinating Dr. Wiley campaigning indefatigably for food safety and consumer protection. Together with a gallant cast, including the muckraking reporter Upton Sinclair, whose fiction revealed the horrific truth about the Chicago stockyards; Fannie Farmer, then the most famous cookbook author in the country; and Henry J. Heinz, one of the few food producers who actively advocated for pure food, Dr. Wiley changed history. When the landmark 1906 Food and Drug Act was finally passed, it was known across the land, as "Dr. Wiley's Law." Blum brings to life this timeless and hugely satisfying "David and Goliath" tale with righteous verve and style, driving home the moral imperative of confronting corporate greed and government corruption with a bracing clarity, which speaks resoundingly to the enormous social and political challenges we face today.
Author: C. J. S. Thompson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781494101329
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 390
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Book Description
This is a new release of the original 1931 edition.
Author: Imraan Coovadia
Publisher: Penguin Random House South Africa
ISBN: 141521073X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 278
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Book Description
The Poisoners is a history of four devastating chapters in the making of the region, seen through the disturbing use of toxins and accusations of poisoning circulated by soldiers, spies, and politicians in Zimbabwe and South Africa. Imraan Coovadia’s fascinating new book exposes the secret use of poisons and diseases in the Rhodesian bush war and independent Zimbabwe, and the apparent connection to the 2001 anthrax attacks in the United States; the enquiry into the chemical and biological warfare programme in South Africa known as Project Coast, discovered through the arrest and failed prosecution of Dr Wouter Basson; the use of toxic compounds such as Virodene to treat patients at the height of the Aids epidemic in South Africa, and the insistence of the government that proven therapies like Nevirapine, which could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives, were in fact poisons; and the history of poisoning and accusations of poisoning in the modern history of the African National Congress, from its guerrilla camps in Angola to Jacob Zuma’s suggestion that his fourth wife collaborated with a foreign intelligence agency to have him murdered. But The Poisoners is not merely a book of history. It is also a meditation, by a most perceptive commentator, on the meaning of race, on the unhappy history of black and white in southern Africa, and on the nature of good and evil.
Author: Jeff Wheeler
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781981308668
Category : Alliances
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Before she befriended a frightened young boy in the palace of Kingfountain, Ankarette Tryneowy grew up during the shattering civil war that raged between members of the Argentine family. This is the story of how the only daughter of a lawyer and a midwife became the famed Queen's Poisoner.Recruited by King Eredur's ambitious uncle, Ankarette is thrown into a world of double dealing, deception, and tangled loyalties. With the help of her mentor and friend, Sir Thomas, she must learn to trust her instincts and remember that others will not always be loyal, even when they are of the same blood. But involving herself in the machinations of the realm draws the eye of an enemy more dangerous than kings or dukes. How will she navigate the politics of the realm and the desires of her heart to become the woman she needs to become?
Author: Coby Michael
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 164411335X
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 343
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Book Description
• Explains how to work with baneful herbs through rituals and spells, as plant spirit familiars, as potent medicines, and as visionary substances • Details the spiritual, alchemical, astrological, and symbolic associations of each plant, its active alkaloids, how to safely cultivate and harvest it, and rituals and spells suited to its individual nature and powers • Shares plant alchemy methods, magical techniques, and recipes featuring the plants, including a modern witches’ flying ointment Part grimoire and part herbal formulary, this guide to the Poison Path of occult herbalism shares history, lore, and information regarding the use of poisonous, consciousness-altering, and magical plants. Author Coby Michael explains how, despite their poisonous nature, baneful herbs can become powerful plant allies, offering potent medicine, magical wisdom, and access to the spirit realm. Detailing the spiritual, alchemical, astrological, and symbolic associations of each plant, the author explores their magical uses in spells and rituals. He focuses primarily on the nightshade family, or Solanaceae, such as mandrake, henbane, and thorn apple, but also explores plants from other families such as wolfsbane, hemlock, and hellebore. He also examines plants in the witch’s pharmacopoeia that are safer to work with and just as chemically active, such as wormwood, mugwort, and yarrow. The author shares rituals suited to the individual nature and powers of each plant and explains how to attract and work with plant spirit familiars. He offers plant alchemy methods for crafting spagyric tinctures and magical techniques to facilitate working with these plants as allies and teachers. He shares magical recipes featuring the plants, including a modern witches’ flying ointment. He also explores safely cultivating baneful herbs in a poison garden.
Author: Douglas Hill
Publisher: Gateway
ISBN: 1473202698
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 126
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Book Description
Marked with the tainted sword of the evil Prince Mephtik, Jarral Gullen will die horribly unless both the blade and the prince are destroyed by the next full moon. With the help of his friends, Archer, Scythe and the Lady Mandragorina - a band of magically talented adventurers - Jarral undertakes a perilous journey to Mephtik's demon-guarded fortress. Battling monsters and demons, they fight to overturn Jarral's sentence of death. According to the wizard Cryl, only Jarral can save the country from Mephtik's evil forces. Of the four friends, Jarral alone possesses the greatest magical talent. But will he live long enough to use it?
Author: Neil Bradbury, Ph.D.
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1250270766
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 234
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Book Description
“A fascinating tale of poisons and poisonous deeds which both educates and entertains.” --Kathy Reichs A brilliant blend of science and crime, A TASTE FOR POISON reveals how eleven notorious poisons affect the body--through the murders in which they were used. As any reader of murder mysteries can tell you, poison is one of the most enduring—and popular—weapons of choice for a scheming murderer. It can be slipped into a drink, smeared onto the tip of an arrow or the handle of a door, even filtered through the air we breathe. But how exactly do these poisons work to break our bodies down, and what can we learn from the damage they inflict? In a fascinating blend of popular science, medical history, and true crime, Dr. Neil Bradbury explores this most morbidly captivating method of murder from a cellular level. Alongside real-life accounts of murderers and their crimes—some notorious, some forgotten, some still unsolved—are the equally compelling stories of the poisons involved: eleven molecules of death that work their way through the human body and, paradoxically, illuminate the way in which our bodies function. Drawn from historical records and current news headlines, A Taste for Poison weaves together the tales of spurned lovers, shady scientists, medical professionals and political assassins to show how the precise systems of the body can be impaired to lethal effect through the use of poison. From the deadly origins of the gin & tonic cocktail to the arsenic-laced wallpaper in Napoleon’s bedroom, A Taste for Poison leads readers on a riveting tour of the intricate, complex systems that keep us alive—or don’t.
