The Vaccine Race: Science, Politics, and the Human Costs of Defeating Disease

I've read a bit about vaccines in the past few years (and not all of it for my Regulatory Affairs degree). The Vaccine Race is the most complex of the layman's books I've read, covering not just the development of vaccines for rabies and rubella, but the people involved (with their quirks and territorial issues), the techniques used to develop vaccines and their components, the human cost of failed vaccines, intellectual property, fights with bureaucracy (worsened by an NIH official's view of new techniques), aging, medical ethics (and the lack thereof before the mid 1960s) and how one scientist's bad administrative decision effectively stalled his still formidable contributions to the science. Waldman does a reasonable job of integrating all the threads, and wisely chooses to only highlight Leonard Hayflick, whose work in creating the cell line used in many vaccines and other drugs also created the science of aging, and Stanley Plotkin, who developed the measles and rubella vaccines. Still, the enormity of the task means that some sections feel rushed and I wanted to know more about some of the scientists. 

Now May You Weep

 Duncan Kincaid took the lead in the first of Deborah Crombie's mysteries, and now it's time for Gemma James to solve a personal mystery mostly on her own. Her friend Holly has invited her to a cooking weekend in Scotland and still recovering physically and emotionally from her trauma-induced stillbirth, Gemma is glad for the break from home. Once they arrive, Gemma realizes her friend was also using her as cover for her burgeoning affair with old flame Douglas Brodie, a whiskey distiller whose family had a centuries old rivalry with Holly's family. Further complicating matters, Holly's boarding school roommate co-owns the B&B where they're staying and Holly's cousin (who worked for Douglas) is another one of the guests. When Douglas is murdered, everyone at the B&B except Gemma has the motive, opportunity, or both to have committed the crime and, working with the resentful local police and with late help from Duncan, she identifies the culprit. Crombie intersperses the present-day narrative with Holly's ancestor's diary entries so the reader knows more than the detective but not so much that I solved the case more easily than Gemma. There's also a subplot (Duncan's son Kit's grandmother is suing for custody and Kit's putative father in Toronto is remarrying) but it's well integrated, feeling more like the day-to-day pressures Gemma feels as part of a blended family.

The Tintern Treasure

 There's only one more book in Kate Sedley's Roger the Chapman series, and as The Tintern Treasure unfolds, we get an uneasy feeling about Roger's sometime employer, Richard III. There's an undercurrent of gossip about the missing Princes, and Roger hears much of it because the people of Bristol believe his connection with Richard is stronger than it is. Roger is too busy trying to earn a living when he spends the night at Tintern Abbey to care much about political intrigue. Through an attempted robbery of the abbey's rumored treasure and Roger's attempts to contact the father of a dying former fling's baby boy, he once again ends up in the middle of political intrigue, only this time in endangers his family as well. As I read, I thought there were too many plot lines for a coherent mystery but Sedley left a clue here, a casual comment there so that they all converged in an exciting final chapter. I'll miss Roger when I read his final adventure - I've known him for over 25 of my years and about 10 of his - but I can always go back to the beginning.

Sunburn

Laura Lippman calls her work "tart noir" and Sunburn is her most obvious homage to traditional noir. We meet Polly and Adam in a bar when he offers to buy her a drink. She remains cool, and yet we know that they will begin an affair. She's escaping a marriage before her husband can divorce her, and ends up as a waitress in a small town in Delaware. Adam manages to get himself hired as a chef and as you expect, there's more to his story than a simple obsession with a woman he "happened" to meet. Lippman accurately captures the just-before-now mid-90s setting, but the characters are a bit too cool to grab my interest. It's a book where I enjoyed the slowly revealed plot but cared less because the characters were so opaque.

The World in a Grain

 Our world is built on sand. The concrete foundations of our buildings, the roads on which we drive, the computers that control most of our industry - all require sand in some form or another. It's a common substance, and yet the right kinds of sand are running out. Concrete needs rough grains which lock together and the people who mine this sand are cutthroat and occasionally criminal. The ultra-pure silicates needed for glass (particularly lab glass) computers is the same white sand used in the sand traps on luxury golf courses. Vince Beiser livens what could be a dull subject with interviews with people whose lives have been threatened by sand barons and the story of the first mechanized glass factory.