RR

Since I'm definitely a really decisive person, while I decided to take a pass on Blink, I couldn't decide what to finally choose for my nonfiction book. I got out a couple I've read before, and took my dad's recommendation for a couple others. This is what I came up with...

Never Suck a Dead Man's Hand: Curious Adventures of a CSI, by Dana Kollmann.
This is a memoir of sorts. The author talks about her time as a civilian CSI, including the most horrifying of her cases (Shotgun suicide, head matter spattered everywhere, including the ceiling fan, which was unfortunately on, among others.), the funniest (The egg in the trash, and the book's namesake, dead-guy's-hand-in-the-mouth-aaargh-swish-with-rubbing-alcohol), and even the dumb pranks that the CSIs and Officers would play on each other. It's really interesting, but probably isn't good lunchtime reading.

Emergency!, by Mark Brown, M.D.
This one was great. I've read it at least three times by now. It's a collection of stories from ER doctors, med students, and nurses from around the country, telling about their funniest/weirdest cases (cucumber up the butt, Screech owl attached to the arm, etc. Also, never let someone with epilepsy give you a BJ...), some that are unbearably sad, and a few that give you a little more hope for humanity. There are a lot of stories, and some of them are hilarious, but others had me almost in tears. It's a really good book.

The Ghost Map, by Steven Johnson.
About the cholera epidemic in London, 1854. I haven't finished it yet, but it promises to be really interesting. It's also really well written, told like a story rather than a collection of data; but in a strangely detached way that's really beguiling, except at points where there were amazingly complete records of events.

The Family That Couldn't Sleep: A Medical Mystery, By D.T. Max.
This one is about prion diseases. It gives the stories of a Venetian family that suffers fatal familial insomnia, bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease, a tribe of cannibals in Papua, New Guinea who were nearly wiped out by a disease whose primary symptom is uncontrollable laughter, and how millions of sheep across England rubbed their fleeces raw and bloody before collapsing. If you're not interested now, you never will be.

All these books are great. I'm having some trouble deciding, so I'll let all two of the people who read my blog give me their opinions. I'm willing to do two of the books every week, or just alternate somehow. My personal preference is for Emergency! and The Family That Couldn't Sleep, but what do you think?