Kevles tells the complete story of David Baltimore, winner of a Nobel Prize for medicine in 1975 in the field of immunology, who got caught up in a legal battle over fraudulent scientific papers. Photos & line drawings.

"You read with a rising sense of despair and outrage, and you finish it as if awakening from a nightmare only Kafka could have conceived."--Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, New York Times David Baltimore won the Nobel Prize in medicine in 1975. Known as a wunderkind in the field of immunology, he rose quickly through the ranks of the scientific community to become the president of the distinguished Rockefeller University. Less than a year and a half later, Baltimore resigned from his presidency, citing the personal toll of fighting a long battle over an allegedly fraudulent paper he had collaborated on in 1986 while at MIT. From the beginning, the Baltimore case provided a moveable feast for those eager to hold science more accountable to the public that subsidizes its research. Did Baltimore stonewall a legitimate government inquiry? Or was he the victim of witch hunters? The Baltimore Case tells the complete story of this complex affair, reminding us how important the issues of government oversight and scientific integrity have become in a culture in which increasingly complicated technology widens the divide between scientists and society.

A biography of one of America's most famous and important molecular biologists.

President Bill Clinton’s year of crisis, which began when his affair with Monica Lewinsky hit the front pages in January 1998, engendered a host of important questions of criminal and constitutional law, public and private morality, and political and cultural conflict. In a book written while the events of the year were unfolding, Richard Posner presents a balanced and scholarly understanding of the crisis that also has the freshness and immediacy of journalism. Posner clarifies the issues and eliminates misunderstandings concerning facts and the law that were relevant to the investigation by Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr and to the impeachment proceeding itself. He explains the legal definitions of obstruction of justice and perjury, which even many lawyers are unfamiliar with. He carefully assesses the conduct of Starr and his prosecutors, including their contacts with the lawyers for Paula Jones and their hardball tactics with Monica Lewinsky and her mother. He compares and contrasts the Clinton affair with Watergate, Iran–Contra, and the impeachment of Andrew Johnson, exploring the subtle relationship between public and private morality. And he examines the place of impeachment in the American constitutional scheme, the pros and cons of impeaching President Clinton, and the major procedural issues raised by both the impeachment in the House and the trial in the Senate. This book, reflecting the breadth of Posner’s experience and expertise, will be the essential foundation for anyone who wants to understand President Clinton’s impeachment ordeal.

A classic work of American theatre, based on the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925, which pitted Clarence Darrow against William Jennings Bryan in defense of a schoolteacher accused of teaching the theory of evolution The accused was a slight, frightened man who had deliberately broken the law. His trial was a Roman circus. The chief gladiators were two great legal giants of the century. Like two bull elephants locked in mortal combat, they bellowed and roared imprecations and abuse. The spectators sat uneasily in the sweltering heat with murder in their hearts, barely able to restrain themselves. At stake was the freedom of every American. One of the most moving and meaningful plays of our generation. Praise for Inherit the Wind "A tidal wave of a drama."—New York World-Telegram And Sun “Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee were classic Broadway scribes who knew how to crank out serious plays for thinking Americans. . . . Inherit the Wind is a perpetually prescient courtroom battle over the legality of teaching evolution. . . . We’re still arguing this case–all the way to the White House.”—Chicago Tribune “Powerful . . . a crackling good courtroom play . . . [that] provides two of the juiciest roles in American theater.”—Copley News Service “[This] historical drama . . . deserves respect.”—The Columbus Dispatch

The twentieth century saw dramatic changes in the once Kurd-dominated Kirkuk region of Iraq. Despite having repeatedly relied on the Kurdish population of Iraq for military support, on three occasions the United States have abandoned their supposed allies in Kirkuk. The Great Betrayal provides a political and diplomatic history of the Kirkuk region and its international relations from the 1920s to the present day. Based on first-hand interviews and previously unseen sources, it provides an accessible account of a region at the very heart of America's foreign policy priorities in the Middle East. In September 2017, Iraqi Kurdistan held an independence referendum, intended to be a starting point on negotiations with the Iraqi Government in Baghdad on the terms of a friendly divorce. Though the US, Turkey, and Iran opposed it, the referendum passed with 93% of the vote. Rather than negotiate, Iraq's Prime Minister Heider al-Abadi issued an ultimatum and then attacked the region. Iraq's Kurdish population have been abandoned, once again, by their supposed allies in the US. In this book, David L. Phillips reveals the failings of America's policies towards Kirkuk and the devastating effects of betraying an ally.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “The story of modern medicine and bioethics—and, indeed, race relations—is refracted beautifully, and movingly.”—Entertainment Weekly NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE FROM HBO® STARRING OPRAH WINFREY AND ROSE BYRNE • ONE OF THE “MOST INFLUENTIAL” (CNN), “DEFINING” (LITHUB), AND “BEST” (THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER) BOOKS OF THE DECADE • ONE OF ESSENCE’S 50 MOST IMPACTFUL BLACK BOOKS OF THE PAST 50 YEARS • WINNER OF THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE HEARTLAND PRIZE FOR NONFICTION NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • Entertainment Weekly • O: The Oprah Magazine • NPR • Financial Times • New York • Independent (U.K.) • Times (U.K.) • Publishers Weekly • Library Journal • Kirkus Reviews • Booklist • Globe and Mail Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine: The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, which 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, viruses, and the atom bomb’s effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions. Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave. Henrietta’s family did not learn of her “immortality” until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists investigating HeLa began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. And though the cells had launched a multimillion-dollar industry that sells human biological materials, her family never saw any of the profits. As Rebecca Skloot so brilliantly shows, the story of the Lacks family—past and present—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. Over the decade it took to uncover this story, Rebecca became enmeshed in the lives of the Lacks family—especially Henrietta’s daughter Deborah. Deborah was consumed with questions: Had scientists cloned her mother? Had they killed her to harvest her cells? And if her mother was so important to medicine, why couldn’t her children afford health insurance? Intimate in feeling, astonishing in scope, and impossible to put down, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks captures the beauty and drama of scientific discovery, as well as its human consequences.