A fascinating book

Compelling

The charm of Spare Parts comes from situating these landmarks in a wider history of ideas

A thrilling and often terrifying ride through transplantation and the theories and techniques that made it possible . . . tantalizing

Anyone interested in the history of surgery will find much to amaze and startle in Paul Craddock's Spare Parts: A Surprising History of Transplants

Excellent . . . Much has been written about this subject, but with Spare Parts Paul Craddock has achieved something unique: a serious, entertaining and thoroughly researched work that usefully sets the history of transplantation in the context of the evolution of ideas about the human body

Craddock combines meticulous scholarship with wry wit in lucid prose which is all the more powerful for being understated . . . Spare Parts is a triumph

I read Spare Parts with my mouth open, my eyes popping and my brain fizzing. It's a fascinating exploration of just how far humans will go to stay on the right side of death. I can't think of any other book whose pages will make you laugh, gasp, grimace and wince. Spare Parts is a triumph of medical story-telling

This is a fascinating and sure-footed exploration of the medical, historical and mythological landscape in which humans use parts from each other to make themselves whole. With compassion and insight, Paul Craddock elucidates vital questions about what it means to be human and to realise our dreams of survival

This is a captivating and absorbing read that surprises on every page whether it be from prosthetic noses of the 16th Century to modern day bio-printing and stem cell technology

Paul Craddock's book is a veritable tour de force, a tantalising journey through human efforts in understanding science, medicine, personal beliefs and ourselves over the past centuries . . .Packed with stories which bring to life the personalities, the heroes and villains, and, with benefit of hindsight, the sometime frankly incredulous ideas, we get a unique and inspiring tapestry of events . . . A thoroughly good read

This compelling and impeccably researched history of transplant surgery puts you right at the heart of the gruesome action. An enthralling read

A riveting journey through the story of anatomical alchemy, Spare Parts is a fascinating read filled with adventure, delight and surprise

Spare Parts is such a pleasure to read, filled with so many fascinating characters and stories that seem almost too crazy to be real; I found myself chuckling, shaking my head and yet proud to be a part of this field. This is a must read for anyone that has ever been touched by transplantation or the gift of donation, a book that makes us proud of our macabre past and excited about what can only be a limitless future

Stuffed with eccentric characters and questionable experiments, this is a joyful romp through a fascinating slice of medical history

A perfect blend of history, science and humanity on a thrilling journey around old and new parts of the human body

Spare Parts uncovers the gripping birth of sharing body parts, and significantly, tells us all of our current 'good ideas and innovations' have been thought of and tested already - we are simply adding to the mix. This visceral book offers us an unparalleled historical treatise, as the world of complex transplantation continues to unravel and change

With curious and clinical precision ... Craddock raises questions about how we relate to one another, what stories we choose to privilege and who gets to tell them

By turns delightful and disturbing, even the most seasoned of medical history buffs will be astonished by Spare Parts. A thoroughly engrossing read that I couldn't put down. Hit that order button -- you won't regret it

An accessible and wide-ranging account . . . Amid the toe-curling descriptions of vivisected dogs and doomed trial runs at human-to-human tooth transplants are hopeful and inspiring accounts of how farmers and embroiderers shared their knowledge with medical practitioners . . . Thoroughly researched and appealingly digressive, this fascinating medical and cultural history sheds light on what it means to be human

The joy of this excellent book is Saladino's journalistic eye for detail...and his optimism.

One of the wonders of the world is the rich diversity of its food, but diversity is disappearing as many traditional foods are becoming endangered. Dan Saladino make a fascinating case for why we all need to care about this.

An eloquent call to arms... inspiring and superbly researched.

A book of wonders that celebrates diversity on the plate.

Saladino's reporting is impressively thorough... he has visited a dizzying array of remote locations to gather the stories within these pages... I predict that Eating to Extinction will prove a valuable archive of these tales in the years to come.

A brilliantly written book, weaving together scientific, historical and environmental information with first-hand reporting, this is a powerful account of the threat to some of the world's most remarkable foods and the people who produce them

Stirring, surprising and beautifully written, Otherlands offers glimpses of times so different to our own they feel like parallel worlds. In its lyricism and the intimate attention it pays to nonhuman life, Thomas Halliday's book recalls Rachel Carson's Under the Sea Wind, and marks the arrival of an exciting new voice

Imaginative

This study of our prehistoric earth is "beyond cinematic", James McConnachie says. "It could well be the best book I read in 2022

It's phenomenally difficult for human brains to grasp deep time. Even thousands of years seem unfathomable, with all human existence before the invention of writing deemed 'prehistory', a time we know very little about. Thomas Halliday's book Otherlands helps to ease our self-centred minds into these depths. Moving backwards in time, starting with the thawing plains of the Pleistocene (2.58 million - 12,000 years ago) and ending up in the marine world of the Ediacaran (635-541 mya), he devotes one chapter to each of the intervening epochs or periods and, like a thrilling nature documentary, presents a snapshot of life at that time. It's an immersive experience, told in the present tense, of these bizarre 'otherlands', populated by creatures and greenery unlike any on Earth today

Each chapter of this literary time machine takes us further back in prehistory, telling vivid stories about ancient creatures and their alien ecologies, ending 550 million years ago

The largest-known asteroid impact on Earth is the one that killed the dinosaurs 65?million years ago, but that is a mere pit stop on Thomas Halliday's evocative journey into planetary history in Otherlands. Each chapter of this literary time machine takes us further back into the deep past, telling vivid stories about ancient creatures and their alien ecologies, until at last we arrive 550?million years ago in the desert of what is now Australia, where no plant life yet covers the land. Halliday notes the urgency of reducing carbon emissions in the present to protect our settled patterns of life, but adds: "The idea of a pristine Earth, unaffected by human biology and culture, is impossible." It's an epic lesson in the impermanence of all things

The world on which we live is "undoubtedly a human planet", Thomas Halliday writes in this extraordinary debut. But "it has not always been, and perhaps will not always be". Humanity has dominated the Earth for a tiny fraction of its history. And that History is vast. We tend to lump all dinosaurs, for example, into one period in the distant past. But more time passed between the last diplodocus and the first tyrannosaurus than has passed between the last tyrannosaurus and the present day. A mind-boggling fact. This is a glorious, mesmerising guide to the past 500 million years bought to life by this young palaeobiologist's rich and cinematic writing

A book that I really want to read but haven't yet bought - so I hope it goes into my Christmas stocking - is Otherlands: A World in the Making by Thomas Halliday. It sounds so amazing - a history of the world before history, before people. He's trying to write the history of the organisms and the plants and the creatures and everything else as the world grows from protozoic slime or whatever we emerged from. It sounds like an absolutely incredible effort of imagination. I think that Christmas presents should be books you can curl up with and get engrossed in and transported by - and Otherlands sounds like exactly that

But, of course, not all history is human history, Otherlands, by Thomas Halliday, casts its readers further and further back, past the mammoths, past the dinosaurs, back to an alien world of shifting rock and weird plants. It is a marvel