Best Selling Books by Deborah Blum

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.

Dr. Harvey Washington Wiley set out to ensure food safety. He selected food tasters to test various food additives and preservatives, letting them know that the substances could be harmful or deadly. The tasters were recognized for their courage, and became known as the poison squad.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Poision Squad and The Poisoner''s Handbook tells the amazing story of William James''s quest for empirical evidence of the spirit world What if a world-renowned philosopher and professor of psychiatry at Harvard suddenly announced he believed in ghosts? At the close of the nineteenth century, the illustrious William James led a determined scientific investigation into "unexplainable" incidences of clairvoyance and ghostly visitations. James and a small group of eminent scientists staked their reputations, their careers, even their sanity on one of the most extraordinary quests ever undertaken: to empirically prove the existence of ghosts, spirits, and psychic phenomena. What they pursued—and what they found—raises questions as fascinating today as they were then.

Go beyond the headlines and the hype to get the newest findings in the burgeoning field of gender studies. Drawing on disciplines that include evolutionary science, anthropology, animal behavior, neuroscience, psychology, and endocrinology, Deborah Blum explores matters ranging from the link between immunology and sex to male/female gossip styles. The results are intriguing, startling, and often very amusing. For instance, did you know that. . . • Male testosterone levels drop in happy marriages; scientists speculate that women may use monogamy to control male behavior • Young female children who are in day-care are apt to be more secure than those kept at home; young male children less so • Anthropologists classify Western societies as "mildly polygamous" The Los Angeles Times has called Sex on the Brain "superbly crafted science writing, graced by unusual compassion, wit, and intelligence, that forms an important addition to the literature of gender studies."

A fascinating and very lucid account of the conflicts, both social and psychological, that permeate the keeping and use of monkeys and apes in American laboratories.

This affecting true crime book by a California film producer tells the story of two young people in the Berkeley of 1968 whose relationship proved to be a tragedy. They were from vastly different cultures: Prosenjit Poddar, a naval architecture student at the University of California, was from India''s Untouchables, and knew nothing about young Americans, their attitudes, their dating rituals. Tanya Tarasoff, a junior college student, knew even less about Indian customs. Additionally, their personality problems were acute: he was a single-minded individual whose obsession with his work turned into an obsession for Tanya, while she, immature, insecure and the product of a home dominated by an alcoholic bully of a father, manipulated her power over Poddar, alternately luring and rejecting him. A psychiatrist who treated him predicted violence, but got no cooperation from the police. Poddar was found guilty of killing the young woman and was eventually deported after his conviction was overturned.

"Coming of Age focuses on five years in Mead''s young life when she began to question the traditional attitudes toward sex, courtship and marriage that dominated the early 20th century. The story begins in 1921, when Mead is a young woman of twenty and a student at Barnard College in New York City. Conventional enough to accept the role society has handed to her, and defiant enough to rise up against it, she struggles to find her own path. Life begins to change as she experiences new friendships and many firsts, including marriage and an affair. In 1925, following her interest in anthropology, Mead takes a step that shocks both family and colleagues. She decides to go alone to Samoa to study how girls in this very different culture mature into women. There on a tiny island in the South Pacific, with an ocean between her and the people she loves, she begins to understand how the invisible chains of society can imprison one''s body and mind. Mead''s voyage of self-discovery is both painful, exciting and enlightening. She returns from her fieldwork ready to do something no woman before her has dared to do: write with frankness and clarity about the sexual awakening of young girls. And America, it turns out, is ready to hear what she has to say. Drawing on letters, diaries and memoirs, Blum reconstructs the colorful and dramatic life of one of the most provocative thinkers of the 20th century"--

Madison (USA), 1932-1974: Im Labor der University of Wisconsin werden grausame Affenexperimente durchgeführt - doch mit ihnen gelingt es Harry Harlow, die Kinderpsychologie zu revolutionieren. Die Entdeckung der Mutterliebe gegen den Widerstand der Wissenschaft - meisterhaft erzählt von Pulitzer-Preisträgerin Deborah Blum. Bis in die Mitte der 50er-Jahre prägten Strenge und Distanz die Kindererziehung. Deborah Blum enthüllt die dunkle Geschichte der Kinderpsychologie und schildert das Leben des exzentrischen und umstrittenen Wissenschaftlers Harry Harlow, der mit seinen legendären Affenexperimenten die Kraft der Mutterliebe und -bindung bewies. Harlow und seine Kollegen legten den Grundstein für die Wissenschaft der Bindung - angesichts der aktuellen Diskussion um strikte Autorität und Fremdbetreuung schon von kleinen Kindern ein Thema von bestürzender Aktualität.

"The veteran journalist Tim Radford, who headed up the science desk at the UK''s Guardian newspaper for more than two decades, was once interviewed by a government committee charged with investigating the fragile relationship between "science and society." In a lengthy report submitted to the House of Lords in February, 2000, the committee noted that the public''s faith in both science and government had been shaken over the preceding years - in part by an outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, colloquially known as "mad cow disease." This and the swift rise of biotechnology, the burgeoning internet age, and other fast-moving manifestations of human ingenuity, it was determined, were creating an air of anxiety and mistrust"--