What We Are Reading Today: The Perfect Predator by Steffanie Strathdee

Updated 05 November 2019
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What We Are Reading Today: The Perfect Predator by Steffanie Strathdee

The Perfect Predator is a medical memoir that reads like a thriller.

This very engaging story “will probably be a historical record of the day treatment in the US of antibiotic resistant bacteria turned an important corner,” said a review in goodreads.com.

The author, Dr. Steffanie Strathdee, is a Canadian-American infectious disease epidemiologist who received her doctoral training at the University of Toronto.

“It’s an emotional journey with the author as she tells of her frantic efforts to save her husband’s life by finding the ‘perfect predator’ capable of knocking out ‘the worst bacteria on the planet.’ She does so my mobilizing her circle of medical and scientist friends to search for bacteriophages capable of doing what all known antibiotic drugs had failed to do,” said the review.

“It’s fascinating to read about the history of bacteriophage therapy. The therapy was discovered in 1915 (before Penicillin), but largely forgotten by the Western world after the Second World War,” added the review.

“The most surprising thing is that Strathdee is able to tell a very complex, scientific experience in a way that keeps a non-scientist totally engaged,” it added.


What We’re Reading Today: Work Life Well-lived

Updated 25 April 2024
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What We’re Reading Today: Work Life Well-lived

Author: Kelly Mackin

This book will disrupt how you think about creating your best work life and workplace and give you a road map to get you there, says a review published on goodreads.com.

Through years of research and truth-finding, Kelly Mackin and her company, Motives Met, have discovered a completely new mindset and approach around what well-being at work is all about, how to get there, and why it’s so important that we do get there.

This book is a personal guide and a call to action for a shift in our approach to work.


What We Are Reading Today: Natural Magic

Updated 25 April 2024
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What We Are Reading Today: Natural Magic

Author: Renee Bergland 

Emily Dickinson and Charles Darwin were born at a time when the science of studying the natural world was known as natural philosophy, a pastime for poets, priests, and schoolgirls.

The world began to change in the 1830s, while Darwin was exploring the Pacific aboard the Beagle and Dickinson was a student in Amherst, Massachusetts.

“Natural Magic” intertwines the stories of these two luminary 19th-century minds whose thought and writings captured the awesome possibilities of the new sciences and at the same time strove to preserve the magic of nature.


What We Are Reading Today: Frogs of the World: A Guide to Every Family

Updated 24 April 2024
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What We Are Reading Today: Frogs of the World: A Guide to Every Family

Authors: Mark O’Shea & Simon Maddock

With more than 7,600 known species, frogs exhibit an extraordinary range of forms and behaviors, from those that produce toxins so deadly that they could kill a human many times over to those that can survive being frozen in ice.

“Frogs of the World” is an essential guide to this astonishingly diverse group of animals. An in-depth introduction covers everything from the origins and evolution of frogs to their life cycles and defense strategies.


What We Are Reading Today: Sixty Miles Upriver

Updated 23 April 2024
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What We Are Reading Today: Sixty Miles Upriver

Author: Richard E. Ocejo

Newburgh is a small postindustrial city of some 28,000 people located 60 miles north of New York City in the Hudson River Valley.

Like many similarly sized cities across America, it has been beset with poverty and crime after decades of decline, with few opportunities for its predominantly minority residents.

“Sixty Miles Upriver” tells the story of how Newburgh started gentrifying, describing what happens when White creative professionals seek out racially diverse and working-class communities and revealing how gentrification is increasingly happening outside large city centers in places where it unfolds in new ways.


What We Are Reading Today: A Death in the Rainforest

Updated 22 April 2024
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What We Are Reading Today: A Death in the Rainforest

Author: Don Kulick

As a young anthropologist, Don Kulick went to the tiny village of Gapun in New Guinea to document the death of the native Tayap, an endangered Papuan language.

“A Death in the Rainforest” takes readers inside the village, revealing what it is like to live in a place carved out like a cleft in the middle of a tropical rainforest.

This book offers insight into the impact of white society on the farthest reaches of the globe — and the story of why this anthropologist realized finally that he had to give up his study of this language and this village.

An engaging, deeply perceptive, and brilliant interrogation of what it means to study a culture, the book takes readers into a world that endures in the face of massive changes, one that is on the verge of disappearing forever.