A read definitely for an audience that is over the age of majority, it certainly held my attention. I rather enjoyed the story and would listen to others by this author and narrator

"Science is a force for good in the world—at least usually. But sometimes, when obsession gets the better of scientists, they twist a noble pursuit into something sinister. Under this spell, knowledge isn’t everything, it’s the only thing—no matter the cost. Bestselling author Sam Kean tells the true story of what happens when unfettered ambition pushes otherwise rational men and women to cross the line in the name of science, trampling ethical boundaries and often committing crimes in the process.

The Icepick Surgeon masterfully guides the reader across two thousand years of history, beginning with Cleopatra’s dark deeds in ancient Egypt. The book reveals the origins of much of modern science in the transatlantic slave trade of the 1700s, as well as Thomas Edison’s mercenary support of the electric chair and the warped logic of the spies who infiltrated the Manhattan Project. But the sins of science aren’t all safely buried in the past. Many of them, Kean reminds us, still affect us today. We can draw direct lines from the medical abuses of Tuskegee and Nazi Germany to current vaccine hesitancy, and connect icepick lobotomies from the 1950s to the contemporary failings of mental-health care. Kean even takes us into the future, when advanced computers and genetic engineering could unleash whole new ways to do one another wrong.

Unflinching, and exhilarating to the last page, The Icepick Surgeon fuses the drama of scientific discovery with the illicit thrill of a true-crime tale. With his trademark wit and precision, Kean shows that, while science has done more good than harm in the world, rogue scientists do exist, and when we sacrifice morals for progress, we often end up with neither."

My true crime heart is happy. My science brain provoked. My DNR updated. These stories were terrifying. I work in medicine and hated going to the doctor before this. Now? I'm good. No need for a doctor ever again. Yikes.

A chilling listen, perfect for October! The Ice Pick Surgeon and other tales has a fantastic narrator that keeps you on the edge of your seat as you listen to stories about scientists who have gone wrong and other disturbing tales of science under the umbrella of “progression”.

While I would not recommend this for a child, a teenager or above may find this a stimulating listen. The author did plug his podcast often, but it made me want to check that out, as I love podcasts.

Very interesting!

What a bizarre and fascinating book! These true stories are riveting and I'm glad the author collected them under this title!

I have to admist I read some gory items but this one took the award for the most especially because it was based on true events- vacant enlivened there are people like this in the world

I really enjoyed this one. I love this style of book with different or short real life stories woven together. Fascinating and bizarre stories. I highly recommend!

Thank you for the opportunity to review this title.

Woah. Really interesting true tales of science, history and crime. This was a great read to fill the spare moments. It really was a fascinating thrill ride. There are lots of bad things people have done throughout history in the name of science. I recommend this one for both science nerds and true crime aficionados.

I chose this as a recent staff pick. Much like Jennifer Wright, I enjoyed how accessible Sam Kean’s assembly of history information is. Entertaining and often funny, the collection is wonderful for those who want a casual read (or listen) that’s also entertaining

The premise of this book is the harm scientists can do as they go about acquiring knowledge. Each chapter discusses a different example of scientific practices that were ultimately knowledge producing yet harmful. Kean starts with the case of William Dampier a naturalist who traveled the world collecting samples but whose temper resulted in him losing all his worldly goods as well as ending up imprisoned for beating up a naval officer on one of the ships he traveled on.
Other examples abound. There were the anatomy doctors whose thirst for corpses to dissect led to the crimes of men such as Burke and Harte who supplied bodies by digging them up from the graveyard. Those who did the first work on electricity such as Tesla and Edison also experimented on animals, electrocuting dogs and even elephants as entertainment for paying customers. The paleontologists gave us knowledge about the dinosaurs and that epoch in the Earth's development but their knowledge was rife with territorial battles.

Doctors have done many horrific things in the name of knowledge. There were the experiments of the Nazi doctors in the death camps. Less well known but also destructive were the doctors who worked on venereal diseases and gave these horrific diseases to patients so they could study the disease's progression. The book's title refers to the lobotomies that were forced on mental patients and which left them damaged for life. Psychologists and psychiatrists have used their knowledge to test how to break down a patient's defenses, which was done to the man who later became the Unabomber. This field also has much to answer for when dealing with characteristics such as homosexuality or gender issues, which the field first called diseases and tried to 'cure' by horrific methods.

Scientists err in other ways also. There are the scientists who sold information to foreign intelligence agencies, both scientific knowledge and military information when they worked on projects for the government. Some were involved in helping with torture, naming dissidents as mentally disturbed or overseeing such patients' care in asylums. Scientists in crime labs who scrimp on their work or misreport the conclusions evidence points to are responsible for false imprisonment or conversely, for guilty prisoners going free because all the trials in which they testified are now tainted.

Same Kean has concentrated his career on writing books about various scientific topics. This book is an interesting collection although personally I had heard of almost all the cases prior to reading this. I listened to this book and the narrator was very good. The two men have collaborated on several of Kean's books. This book is recommended for nonfiction readers who are interested in science and for those who wonder how to balance ethics with the need to discover new knowledge.

My hopes were high for this one and it really paid off. Kean certainly tells a complete story with these scientists: what they did, their scientific background, and how they justified their actions. And it's more than just a story of science gone wrong. Probably a quarter of each chapter explores general scientific ethics. Each chapter typically contains a second example of the same breach of ethic, reminding us that this is not the work of isolated monsters. These are lines that any scientist can cross given the right motivation. Not only am I glad I listened to this one, I'm already thinking of people who will enjoy it as well.

I have always known some bad things have been done in the name of science. But most know them in a periphery, a side view that may not be accurate. Mangala, bad scientist. Tuskegee, bad science, etc. But this book gives the readers a bit more in depth knowledge of these and many more events without overloading on any one topic. Plus the stories the author decided to tell were sometimes known, other times not, and some were downright shocking. Like figuring out how to kill someone so the body could be used for dissection. And I won’t even get into what Cleopatra did. Elizabeth Taylor never showed us that side of the classic beauty. This book was told in chronological order so that the reader could see and understand, that even now things are being done for the purpose of scientific advancement, that in a few years time may be considered unethical, or were unethical to start with but happened anyway. The biggest drawback to this book was the references. There were many times when the author would direct the reader to more information on a topic and it was almost always another of their books, or their podcast. They should have been directing readers to other works on the subject and not just what they did themselves.

I really enjoyed this one. I love this type of book with all sorts or short real life stories woven together. Fascinating and highly recommend!

3.5 stars

"The Icepick Surgeon" was an interesting read, but I definitely expected more.
The cases that were discussed were fun to learn about, but I think the author could have talked about more impactful cases.
I also didn't like how often the author referred to his podcast.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for this audiobook.
This was a very enjoyable book! There's a lot of variation in the chapters keeping it interesting and exciting to read. Knowing that each story was entirely separate from the last kept me intrigued and coming back for more and I enjoyed being able to listen to a whole story in one go, it meant that this book was relatively quick to get through.
The writing was informative and enjoyable, jam-packed with information and descriptions, but I never felt like there was too much information at once. I was consistently interested and I felt like I always understood; despite the writing being full of facts and the explanations often being scientific I felt he explained it well enough that I at least got the jist.
I also liked the discussions surrounding ethics and I liked that the author never tried to push the reader into thinking anything - I felt I was presented with the facts to come up with an opinion myself which for me is preferable.
I will say I felt the chapters were quite long, though of course I recognise for an entire story to be explained in one or two gos they had to be.
All in all this book was fun, interesting and informative. It wasn't life-changing but I certainly got a fair few fun facts and stories I'll be paying on from it.

The author of this book has a podcast; this is something that is iterated at multiple sections of the book. It felt odd to interrupt plotlines to redirect attention to a podcast, so it stuck with me this long after having listened to the book. I think his research probably has the capacity to become more books like this one.
Although I had varying reactions to the number of times the author's podcast came up, the overall experience of listening to the book was fascinating. I am a fan of the random factoids and facts that provide a very detailed picture of a time and place that I would otherwise never have investigated or known anything about.
There is a lot that is tackled here with each individual focus. The malpractices of science are different with changing times and morals of the people living and what they consider appropriate or even legal. However, the running theme is that for almost every great scientific achievement, the foundation is probably darker.
The author tackles everything from slavery to murder. He goes into the complexities of how modern scientists could (if it is even possible) acknowledge the murky beginnings while continuing to use the discoveries for good.
There is a lot of data here, but each large individual chapter focuses on one central character, although other interesting stories are examined at times. I cannot talk of individual chapters that caught my fancy because it has been a while since I listened to it all, but I must say that if I had the time, I would not mind listening to it all again and maybe do a little digging of my own the next time. I also think that the audio medium was well suited to go through the book. The narrator did a brilliant job of bringing the author's words to life.
I received an ARC thanks to NetGalley and the publishers, but the review is entirely based on my own reading experience.

Entertaining, funny, educational, thorough and descriptive are some of the words I would use to describe this book. Science has evolved a lot through the ages and it is the result of a variety of trial and error method which led to the developments that we see today, especially in medical science. Though the acts described in the book are highly unethical and gruesome, we can still appreciate their contribution towards science and cannot deny the fact that it has led to some amazing discoveries. This doesn’t mean that I condone the acts. Be it the pirate explorer and adventurer, whose works have influenced Darwin’s theory, or the icepick surgeon who used icepicks to perform lobotomies, or the adventurer dealing in slave trade to further his projects, or the resurrectionists transacting in dead bodies, and often resorting to murder to provide bodies, or the archeologists sabotaging each other's excavations, or the Nazi doctors conducting human experiments to infect and treat diseases in the concentration camps, or the American doctors doing the same human experiments to find and treat syphilis, or the infamous disagreement between Thomas Edison and Nicola Tesla regarding the DC and Ac current which led to the torture of animals and experimentation on the electric chair; these dastardly acts if done today would never have been allowed due to it’s highly illegal and gruesome nature. All these were mainly due to the arrogance and ambition of these so called scientists who sacrificed their morality and ethics to further their own ambitions and selfish greed.

Overall it was a good book and I had a good listening experience, thanks to its narrator Ben Sullivan.

Thanks to #NetGalley and Hachette Audio for providing a free advance audiobook in exchange for an honest opinion.
#NetGalley #TheIcepickSurgeonAudio

This book had me starting conversations and it fueled so many amazing conversations about our role as humans and how we interact with knowledge and how to gain that knowledge.

Sam Kean’s work is always such a delight to read, no matter which branch of science he chooses.

Going in I expected to like this book less than some of his other work because medical science is of very little interest to me, but Kean proved he can make anything fun and interested and hooked me with this one too.

I will say that the chapters in this that interested me most were more about “bad, mad science” in general and less about medical issues specifically. The Russian spies and the always terrific Cope and Marsh were two of my favorites. And the resurrectionists are always fun as well. Full disclosure: I skipped the chapter on animal cruelty for obvious reasons.

The chapters dedicated more to disease were less to my liking, but Kean is so fun and funny that there was something in pretty much every subject to learn and delight in.

Be sure to read the appendix, where Kean talks about hypothetical crimes in the future. Space Crime?! So much fun.

For audiobook readers: I chose this format for this book, and this is absolutely the kind of material that works well in audio. Narrator Ben Sullivan was dynamic and fun and truly feels like he’s reading in Kean’s voice.

This book is about so much more than just surgeons gone wrong! Its a meticulously laid out series of events throughout time in which ambition, progression, and arrogance paved the way to the future but at what cost to the individuals?? Everything from Nicola Tesla to psychoanalysts to surgeons who paid for dead bodies to practice on to the "icepick" surgeon who did lobotomies with a icepick thru the eyesocket to the brain. TAP TAP people LOL. A great collection of well researched historical mishaps all in the name science, healthcare, and general advancement of knowledge. If you enjoy hearing about the underbelly of knowledge and technological advances, this book is for you!! Also big shout out to the author as he also has a podcast!

There is a saying that flowed consistently in my head as I listened to this audio book. "Power does not corrupt, power reveals."
You can blame a higher power and individual influences for only so long. In the name of science, people committed atrocities against other people and animals. I very much agree that the data found by these horrific methods should be scene as the victims did not die in vain. We should always bring up the atrocities occurred in the name of science or religion or a skewed version of ethics.