Search results for ""Author Gerald Weissmann""

"Once again, Gerald Weissmann, with a firm and easy knowledge of everyone who matters from Auden to Zola, bridges the space between science and the humanities, and particularly between medicine and the muses, with wit, erudition, and, most important, wisdom." --Adam Gopnik, author of Angels and Ages Admired by Nobel prize--winning scientists and literary tastemakers alike, Weissmann will continue to amaze and beguile new and faithful readers as both a masterful commentator on contemporary culture and a transcendent intellectual historian. By turns satirical and insightful, Mortal and Immortal DNA takes us on a nuanced exploration of the western canon, from Greek mythology through Dante to W.H. Auden and offers hilarious insights into popular culture along the way, from Paris Hilton to the true life story of Kathryn Lee Bates, the lesbian poet who penned "America the Beautiful." Gerald Weissmann is a physician, scientist, editor, and essayist whose collections include Epigenetics in the Age of Twitter: Pop Culture and Modern Science; Mortal and Immortal DNA: Science and the Lure of Myth; and Galileo's Gout: Science in an Age of Endarkenment. He is professor emeritus and research professor of medicine at New York University School of Medicine. His essays and reviews have appeared in numerous publications worldwide, including the London Review of Books and New York Times Book Review. The former editor-in-chief of the FASEB Journal, he is now its book reviews editor. He lives in Manhattan and Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

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"[Weissmann] has emerged in the last three decades as America's most interesting and important essayist. He has achieved this status both epigenetically and through Twitter, word of mouth, so to speak...Much like Susan Sontag, Weissmann likes being a contemporary, and does not feel shackled by tradition...This book is a joy for the heart and instructive for the mind." --ERIC KANDEL, Nobel Laureate and author of In Search of Memory "Only a mind as nimble and well traveled as Gerald Weissmann's could see, never mind make and expound on, the connections between salamanders and Prohibition ...white blood cells, Hollywood and erectile dysfunction ...health care reform and Marie Antoinette ...bacteria, the Equal Rights Amendment and the "Miracle on the Hudson." Better yet, Weissmann does so with wit and insight. A fascinating tour through history, science and pop culture." --MAX GOMEZ, MD, Emmy Award-winning WCBS-TV Medical Correspondent "Erudite energy leaps from this lively commingling of art, culture and science...In each [essay], Weissmann finds links between research and elements of history and pop culture, which play off each other to illuminating effect. So US politician Sarah Palin pops up in a discussion of 'Marie Antoinette syndrome'...and the 'meltdown' of the mythical Icarus meets the nuclear version at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant in Japan." --Nature Epigenetics, which attempts to explain how our genes respond to our environment, is the latest twist on the historic nature vs. nurture debate. In addressing this and other controversies in contemporary science, Gerald Weissmann taps what he calls "the social network of Western Civilization," including the many neglected women of science: from the martyred Hypatia of Alexandria, the first woman scientist, to the Nobel laureates Marie Curie, Christiane Nusslein-Volhard, and Elizabeth Blackburn, among other luminaries in the field. Always instructive and often hilarious, this is a one-volume introduction to modern biology, viewed through the lens of today's mass media and the longer historical tradition of the Scientific Revolution. Whether engaging in the healthcare debate or imagining the future prose styling of the scientific research paper in the age of Twitter, Weissmann proves to be one of our most incisive cultural critics and satirists. Gerald Weissmann is a physician, scientist, editor, and essayist whose collections include Epigenetics in the Age of Twitter: Pop Culture and Modern Science; Mortal and Immortal DNA: Science and the Lure of Myth; and Galileo's Gout: Science in an Age of Endarkenment. He is professor emeritus and research professor of medicine at New York University School of Medicine. His essays and reviews have appeared in numerous publications worldwide, including the London Review of Books and New York Times Book Review. The former editor-in-chief of the FASEB Journal, he is now its book reviews editor. He lives in Manhattan and Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

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“Oliver Sacks, Richard Selzer, Lewis Thomas . . . Weissmann is in this noble tradition.” —Los Angeles Times “[Weissmann] is a man of wide culture, a captivating and graceful writer.” —New Yorker “[Weissmann] bridges the space between science and the humanities, and particularly between medicine and the muses, with wit, erudition, and, most important, wisdom.” —Adam Gopnik “An absolutely first-rate writer.” —Kurt Vonnegut “Dr. Weissmann’s juggling with the balls of global politics, biology, medicine, and culture in the framework of history is breathtaking.” —Bengt Samuelsson, Nobel Laureate and former chairman of the Nobel Foundation In this diverting collection of essays, Gerald Weissmann looks back at the past few decades of his long career working at the intersection of the arts and sciences. The Fevers of Reason features some of his best and most representative works, alongside ten new essays that have never before been published in book form. Masterfully drawing from an array of subject areas and time periods, he tackles everything from Ebola to Eisenhower, Zika to Zola, Darwin to Dawkins, and once again shows that he is one of the most important voices in humanistic science writing today. Gerald Weissmann is a physician, scientist, editor, and essayist whose collections include Epigenetics in the Age of Twitter, Mortal and Immortal DNA, and Galileo’s Gout. He is professor emeritus and research professor of medicine at New York University School of Medicine, and his essays and reviews have appeared in numerous publications worldwide. He lives in Manhattan and Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

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