Books like The Icepick Surgeon: Murder, Fraud, Sabotage, Piracy, and Other Dastardly Deeds Perpetrated in the Name of Science
12 books with a reading profile close to The Icepick Surgeon: Murder, Fraud, Sabotage, Piracy, and Other Dastardly Deeds Perpetrated in the Name of Science by Sam Kean. Outward-looking and clear-cut; a moderate read.
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1
Assassination Vacation
by Sarah Vowell
Also outward-looking · history, entertainment
Sarah Vowell tracks the site-specific histories of the three American presidents murdered before the Secret Service provided permanent protection: Abraham Lincoln, James A.
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2
The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder
by David Grann
Also outward-looking and clear-cut · history, narrative
In 1740, the British vessel HMS Wager departed on a secret mission to intercept a Spanish treasure galleon but wrecked against desolate rocks off the coast of Patagonia.
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3
The Diamond Eye
by Kate Quinn
Also clear-cut · history, entertainment
In 1937 Kiev, Lyudmila Pavlichenko is a quiet history student and single mother who finds her life upended by the German invasion of the Soviet Union.
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4
The Lost Painting: The Quest for a Caravaggio Masterpiece
Also outward-looking and clear-cut · history, narrative
Jonathan Harr chronicles the recovery of "The Taking of Christ," a Caravaggio masterpiece hidden in the dining room of a Jesuit residence in Dublin for decades.
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5
300
by Frank Miller
Also outward-looking and clear-cut · history, entertainment
In 480 B.C., King Leonidas leads three hundred Spartan warriors to the narrow coastal pass of Thermopylae to block the invading Persian army commanded by the self-proclaimed god-king Xerxes.
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6
In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex
Also outward-looking and clear-cut · history, narrative
In the winter of 1820, a massive sperm whale repeatedly rammed and sank the whaleship Essex in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
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7
The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea
Also outward-looking and clear-cut · history, narrative
In October 1991, a rare meteorological convergence created a "meteorological bomb" off the coast of New England.
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8
The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War
Also outward-looking and clear-cut · history, narrative
Malcolm Gladwell examines the technological evolution and moral dilemmas of industrial warfare through the rivalry between General Haywood Hansell and General Curtis LeMay.
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9
Fermat's Enigma
by Simon Singh
Also outward-looking and clear-cut · history, narrative
Simon Singh chronicles the three-century pursuit of a solution to Pierre de Fermat’s Last Theorem, a deceptively simple conjecture stating that no three positive integers a, b, and c satisfy the equation a^n + b^n = c^n…
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10
The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon
by David Grann
Also outward-looking and clear-cut · history, narrative
In 1925, British explorer Percy Fawcett entered the Amazon jungle to locate a hidden civilization he named "Z," believing it to be the birthplace of complex South American culture.
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11
A History of the World in 6 Glasses
by Tom Standage
Also outward-looking and clear-cut · history, narrative
Tom Standage organizes human civilization into six distinct eras defined by a dominant beverage: beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, and cola.
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12
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