Luigi Civalleri Poradie kníh (chronologicky)

"Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer, yet her cells--taken without her knowledge--became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first "immortal" human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer and viruses; helped lead to in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions. Yet Henrietta Lacks is buried in an unmarked grave. Her family did not learn of her "immortality" until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. The story of the Lacks family is inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of"--Publisher's description

First, a horse in Brisbane falls ill: fever, swelling, bloody froth.In a journey that takes him from southern China to the Congo, from Bangladesh to Australia, David Quammen tracks these infections to their source and asks what we can do to prevent some new pandemic spreading across the face of the earth.

It is a summer's night in 1860. In an elegant detached Georgian house in the village of Road, Wiltshire, all is quiet. Behind shuttered windows the Kent family lies sound asleep. At some point after midnight a dog barks. The family wakes the next morning to a horrific discovery: an unimaginably gruesome murder has taken place in their home. The household reverberates with shock, not least because the guilty party is surely still among them. Jack Whicher of Scotland Yard, the most celebrated detective of his day, reaches Road Hill House a fortnight later. He faces an unenviable task: to solve a case in which the grieving family are the suspects. The murder provokes national hysteria. The thought of what might be festering behind the closed doors of respectable middle-class homes - scheming servants, rebellious children, insanity, jealousy, loneliness and loathing - arouses fear and a kind of excitement. But when Whicher reaches his shocking conclusion there is uproar and bewilderment. A true story that inspired a generation of writers such as Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens and Arthur Conan Doyle, this has all the hallmarks of the classic murder mystery - a body; a detective; a country house steeped in secrets. In The Suspicions of Mr Whicher Kate Summerscale untangles the facts behind this notorious case, bringing it back to vivid, extraordinary life.

Kniha ocenená Pulitzerovou cenou ponúka fascinujúci pohľad na 13 000 rokov ľudskej histórie, skúmajúc, ako sa vývoj rôznych skupín a spoločností líšil a aké faktory to ovplyvnili. Dnes majú najviac bohatstva a moci národy s euroázijským pôvodom, zatiaľ čo na opačnom konci sú Afričania a pôvodní obyvatelia oboch Amerík a Austrálie. Autor analyzuje príčiny týchto rozdielnych trajektórií, pričom zdôrazňuje, že za nimi stoja najmä prírodné podmienky, ktoré buď podporovali, alebo brzdili rozvoj krajín. Odpúšťa si známe teórie o priaznivých klimatických podmienkach a odmieta rasistické názory, že za tým stoja vrodené predpoklady a inteligencia. Verí, že existuje množstvo faktorov, ako vynález a spracovanie železa, výroba strelných zbraní, používanie písma, rozvoj cestovania a šírenie choroboplodných zárodkov. Medzi ďalšie faktory patrí severo-južná orientácia Afriky, ktorá spomaľovala migráciu, a nedostatok zvierat vhodných na domestikáciu. Naopak, východo-západne orientovaná Eurázia mala väčšiu zásobáreň vhodných zvierat a rastlín, čo umožnilo rýchly presun vedomostí a ľudí. Autor zachytil príbeh ľudstva fascinujúcim a veľmi čítavým spôsobom.