Frances Ashcroft

I noticed that people complain about abundance of facts in the book, which otherwise could be easily fetched to you by Google. Yes there are facts, numbers and statistics. And for good reason.

However, these digits and stories of history's firsts don't constitute the bulk of the book, or at least the most interesting and practical part of it. IMHO readers benefit most from detailed explanation of how your body (and those of some other living creatures) reacts to exposure to most extreme conditions at different levels. It is extremely curious and enlightening. A lot of these facts (especially regarding helping the injured) run against the grain of conventional wisdom.… (more)

I wish this has been a better book. I felt like she really wanted to write about her favorite topic, ion channels in cells, but no one was interested in it so she picked this electricity in the body theme but it wasn't well knit together. She got deep into some technical concepts and then just started reeling off examples and I never really got a through line of anything. It felt a bit too textbook at times and I didn't see connections between her examples. She has a very dry British sense of humour and is clearly very widely read but it just did not come through well in this book.… (more)