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The Family That Couldn't Sleep
- A Medical Mystery
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
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Publisher's summary
What these strange conditions, including fatal familial insomnia, kuru, scrapie, and mad cow disease, share is their cause: prions. Prions are ordinary proteins that sometimes "go wrong", resulting in neurological illnesses that are always fatal. Even more mysterious and frightening, prions are almost impossible to destroy because they are not alive and have no DNA. And the diseases they bring are now spreading around the world.
In The Family That Couldn't Sleep, essayist and journalist D. T. Max tells the spellbinding story of the prion's hidden past and deadly future. Through exclusive interviews and original archival research, Max explains this story's connection to human greed and ambition, from the Prussian chemist Justus von Liebig, who made cattle meatier by feeding them the flesh of other cows, to New Guinean natives whose custom of eating the brains of the dead nearly wiped them out.
The biologists who have investigated these afflictions are just as extraordinary. They include Daniel Carleton Gajdusek, a self-described "pedagogic pedophiliac pediatrician" who cracked kuru and won the Nobel Prize, and another Nobel winner, Stanley Prusiner, a driven, feared self-promoter who identified the key protein that revolutionized prion study.
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"Very timely and compellingly written." (Booklist)
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- Narrated by: Forrest Maready
- Length: 5 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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A fascinating account of the world’s most famous disease - polio - told as you have never heard it before. Epidemics of paralysis began to rage in the early 1900s, seemingly out of nowhere. Doctors, parents, and health officials were at a loss to explain why this formerly unheard-of disease began paralyzing so many children. Why did this disease start to become such a horrible problem during the late 1800s? Why did it affect children more often than adults? Why was it originally called teething paralysis by mothers and their doctors?
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Root Cause
- By Circlekay1 Gulfport MS on 10-24-19
By: Forrest Maready
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The Pandemic Century
- One Hundred Years of Panic, Hysteria, and Hubris
- By: Mark Honigsbaum
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 13 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Ever since the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic, scientists have dreamed of preventing catastrophic outbreaks of infectious disease. Yet despite a century of medical progress, viral and bacterial disasters continue to take us by surprise, inciting panic and dominating news cycles. From the Spanish flu to the 1924 outbreak of pneumonic plague in Los Angeles to the 1930 "parrot fever" pandemic, through the more recent SARS, Ebola, and Zika epidemics, the last one hundred years have been marked by a succession of unanticipated pandemic alarms.
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Pretty good
- By Baz 12345 on 04-03-20
By: Mark Honigsbaum
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Ten Drugs
- How Plants, Powders, and Pills Have Shaped the History of Medicine
- By: Thomas Hager
- Narrated by: Angelo Di Loreto
- Length: 8 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Beginning with opium, the “joy plant,” which has been used for 10,000 years, Thomas Hager tells a captivating story of medicine. His subjects include the largely forgotten female pioneer who introduced smallpox inoculation to Britain, the infamous knockout drops, the first antibiotic, which saved countless lives, the first antipsychotic, which helped empty public mental hospitals, Viagra, statins, and the new frontier of monoclonal antibodies. This is a deep, wide-ranging, and wildly entertaining book.
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Engrossing to physicians & lay persons alike
- By C. White on 03-08-19
By: Thomas Hager
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Pale Rider
- The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World
- By: Laura Spinney
- Narrated by: Paul Hodgson
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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In this gripping narrative history, Laura Spinney traces the overlooked pandemic to reveal how the virus travelled across the globe, exposing mankind's vulnerability and putting our ingenuity to the test. As socially significant as both world wars, the Spanish flu dramatically disrupted - and often permanently altered - global politics, race relations, and family structures while spurring innovation in medicine, religion, and the arts.
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A Predilection for Those in the Prime of Life
- By Cynthia on 02-12-18
By: Laura Spinney
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Polio
- An American Story
- By: David M. Oshinsky
- Narrated by: Jonathan Hogan
- Length: 14 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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This comprehensive and gripping narrative, which received the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for history, covers all the challenges, characters, and controversies in America's relentless struggle against polio. Funded by philanthropy and grassroots contributions, Salk's killed-virus vaccine (1954) and Sabin's live-virus vaccine (1961) began to eradicate this dreaded disease.
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Wonderful
- By Patricia B Tripoli on 07-22-08
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Asleep
- The Forgotten Epidemic That Became Medicine’s Greatest Mystery
- By: Molly Caldwell Crosby
- Narrated by: Christian Rummel
- Length: 6 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In 1918, a world war raged, and a lethal strain of influenza circled the globe. In the midst of all this death, a bizarre disease appeared in Europe. Eventually known as encephalitis lethargica, or sleeping sickness, it spread worldwide, leaving millions dead or locked in institutions. Then, in 1927, it disappeared as suddenly as it had arrived. Asleep, set in 1920s and '30s New York, follows a group of neurologists through hospitals and asylums as they try to solve this epidemic and treat its victims - who learned the worst fate was not dying of it, but surviving it.
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Scary, and still unsolved, medical mystery
- By joyce on 12-14-14
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The Cancer Chronicles
- Unlocking Medicine's Deepest Mystery
- By: George Johnson
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 8 hrs and 19 mins
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When the woman he loved was diagnosed with a metastatic cancer, science writer George Johnson embarked on a journey to learn everything he could about the disease and the people who dedicate their lives to understanding and combating it. What he discovered is a revolution under way - an explosion of new ideas about what cancer really is and where it comes from. In a provocative and intellectually vibrant exploration, he takes us on an adventure through the history and recent advances of cancer research that will challenge everything you thought you knew about the disease.
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A quick read - hard to put down
- By Digital Dilema on 09-06-13
By: George Johnson
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The Fantastic Laboratory of Dr. Weigl
- How Two Brave Scientists Battled Typhus and Sabotaged the Nazis
- By: Arthur Allen
- Narrated by: Dennis Holland
- Length: 10 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Few diseases are more gruesome than typhus. Transmitted by body lice, it afflicts the dispossessed - refugees, soldiers, and ghettoized peoples - causing hallucinations, terrible headaches, boiling fever, and often death. The disease plagued the German army on the Eastern Front and left the Reich desperate for a vaccine. For this they turned to the brilliant and eccentric Polish zoologist Rudolf Weigl.
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An Unforgettable book
- By Jean on 09-01-14
By: Arthur Allen
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Influenza
- The Hundred-Year Hunt to Cure the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic
- By: Dr. Jeremy Brown
- Narrated by: Holter Graham
- Length: 6 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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On the 100th anniversary of the devastating pandemic of 1918, Jeremy Brown, a veteran ER doctor, explores the troubling, terrifying, and complex history of the flu virus, from the origins of the Great Flu that killed millions, to vexing questions such as: are we prepared for the next epidemic, should you get a flu shot, and how close are we to finding a cure?
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Important read
- By Kathryn C. on 12-21-18
By: Dr. Jeremy Brown
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Cannibalism
- By: Bill Schutt
- Narrated by: Tom Perkins
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Eating one's own kind is a completely natural behavior in thousands of species, including humans. Throughout history we have engaged in cannibalism for reasons related to famine, burial rites, and medicine. Cannibalism has also been used as a form of terrorism and as the ultimate expression of filial piety. With unexpected wit and a wealth of knowledge, Bill Schutt takes us on a tour of the field, exploring exciting new avenues of research and investigating questions like why so many fish eat their offspring and some amphibians consume their mothers' skin.
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Ruined it at the end
- By Kimberly Ames on 12-07-17
By: Bill Schutt
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p53: The Gene That Cracked the Cancer Code
- By: Sue Armstrong
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Jasicki
- Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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p53: The Gene That Cracked the Cancer Code reveals the tale of the search for this gene, as well as the excitement of the hunt for new cures - the hype, the lost opportunities, the blind alleys, and the thrilling breakthroughs. As the long-anticipated revolution in cancer treatment tailored to each individual patient's symptoms starts to take off at last, p53 is still at the forefront of the game. This is a timely tale of scientific discovery and advances in our understanding of a disease that still affects more than one in three of us at some point in our lives.
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Excellent story! Unfortunate narration at start
- By Adriana on 12-25-14
By: Sue Armstrong
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The most fatal virus known to science, rabies kills nearly 100 percent of its victims once the infection takes root in the brain. From Greek myths to zombie flicks, from the laboratory heroics of Louis Pasteur to the contemporary search for a lifesaving treatment, Rabid is a fresh, fascinating, and often wildly entertaining look at one of mankind’s oldest and most fearsome foes.
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Computer-generated Narrator. Dated Humour.
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Quackery
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Reporter Sam Kean reveals the periodic table as it’s never been seen before. Not only is it one of man's crowning scientific achievements, it's also a treasure trove of stories of passion, adventure, betrayal, and obsession. The infectious tales and astounding details in The Disappearing Spoon follow carbon, neon, silicon, and gold as they play out their parts in human history, finance, mythology, war, the arts, poison, and the lives of the (frequently) mad scientists who discovered them.
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From the masters of storytelling-meets-science, Patient Zero tells the long and fascinating history of disease outbreaks—how they start, how they spread, the science that lets us understand them, and how we race to destroy them before they destroy us. Written in the authors’ lively style, chapters include gripping medical stories about a particular disease or virus—smallpox, Bubonic plague, polio, HIV—that combine “Patient Zero” narratives, or the human stories behind outbreaks, with historical examinations of missteps, milestones, scientific theories, and more.
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The Butchering Art
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In The Butchering Art, the historian Lindsey Fitzharris reveals the shocking world of 19th-century surgery on the eve of profound transformation. She conjures up early operating theaters - no place for the squeamish - and surgeons, working before anesthesia, who were lauded for their speed and brute strength. They were baffled by the persistent infections that kept mortality rates stubbornly high. A young, melancholy Quaker surgeon named Joseph Lister would solve the deadly riddle and change the course of history.
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Not one boring moment!
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Brain on Fire
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When 24-year-old Susannah Cahalan woke up alone in a hospital room, strapped to her bed and unable to move or speak, she had no memory of how she’d gotten there. Days earlier, she had been on the threshold of a new, adult life: At the beginning of her first serious relationship and a promising career at a major New York newspaper. Now she was labeled violent, psychotic, a flight risk. What happened?
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An Epidemic of Absence
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An Epidemic of Absence asks what will happen in developing countries, which, as they become more affluent, have already seen an uptick in allergic disease: Will India end up more allergic than Europe? Velasquez-Manoff also details a controversial underground movement that has coalesced around the treatment of immune-mediated disorders with parasites. Against much of his better judgment, he joins these do-it-yourselfers and reports his surprising results.
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The point of view from a Veterinarian immunologist
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10% Human
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You are just 10% human. For every one of the cells that make up the vessel that you call your body, there are nine impostor cells hitching a ride. You are not just flesh and blood, muscle and bone, brain and skin, but also bacteria and fungi. Over your lifetime, you will carry the equivalent weight of five African elephants in microbes. You are not an individual but a colony. Until recently, we had thought our microbes hardly mattered, but science is revealing a different story, one in which microbes run our bodies and becoming a healthy human is impossible without them.
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Vitamin K2 and the Calcium Paradox
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Are you taking calcium or vitamin D? This book could save your life! Learn the secret to avoiding osteoporosis and heart disease. Millions of people take calcium and Vitamin D supplements thinking they're helping their bones. The truth is, without the addition of Vitamin K2, such a health regimen could prove dangerous. Without Vitamin K2, the body cannot direct calcium to the bones where it's needed; instead, the calcium resides in soft tissue, like the arteries, leading to a combination of osteoporosis and atherosclerosis, or the dreaded "calcium paradox".
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I CANNOT APPLAUD THIS BOOK ENOUGH!!!!!!!!!!
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Ten Drugs
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Beginning with opium, the “joy plant,” which has been used for 10,000 years, Thomas Hager tells a captivating story of medicine. His subjects include the largely forgotten female pioneer who introduced smallpox inoculation to Britain, the infamous knockout drops, the first antibiotic, which saved countless lives, the first antipsychotic, which helped empty public mental hospitals, Viagra, statins, and the new frontier of monoclonal antibodies. This is a deep, wide-ranging, and wildly entertaining book.
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Engrossing to physicians & lay persons alike
- By C. White on 03-08-19
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Gulp
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Best-selling author Mary Roach returns with a new adventure to the invisible realm we carry around inside. Roach takes us down the hatch on an unforgettable tour. The alimentary canal is classic Mary Roach terrain: The questions explored in Gulp are as taboo, in their way, as the cadavers in Stiff and every bit as surreal as the universe of zero gravity explored in Packing for Mars. Why is crunchy food so appealing? Why is it so hard to find words for flavors and smells? Why doesn’t the stomach digest itself? How much can you eat before your stomach bursts?
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Funtastic Voyage
- By Mel on 04-05-13
By: Mary Roach
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Andrew Carnegie
- By: David Nasaw
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The Scottish-born son of a failed weaver and a mother who supported the family by binding shoes, Andrew Carnegie was the embodiment of the American dream. In his rise from a job as a bobbin boy in a cotton factory to being the richest man in the world, he was single-minded, relentless and a major player in some of the most violent and notorious labor strikes of the time. The prototype of today's billionaire, he was a visionary in the way he earned his money and in the way he gave it away.
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Andrew Carnegie
- By Peggie on 10-01-07
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The Gift of Fear
- Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence
- By: Gavin de Becker
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These days, no one in America feels immune to violence. But now, in this extraordinary, groundbreaking book, the nation's leading expert on predicting violent behavior unlocks the puzzle of human violence and shows that, like every creature on earth, we have within us the ability to predict the harm others might do us and get out of its way. Contrary to popular myth, human violence almost always has a discernible motive and is preceded by clear warning signs.
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Decent book severely undermined by last chapter.
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What listeners say about The Family That Couldn't Sleep
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Meredith A. Seibert
- 06-12-15
Great book!
Well paced and scientific. A good deal of jargon and acronyms but that was what I was expecting. More like a history of prion disease with lots of case studies and history.
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- francis j carroll
- 07-20-21
tragic but amazing story
although this story is told of a tragic and unlucky family. the author does an amazing job at researching the background and making it less about the family and more about understanding prions and the disease.
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- Matthew
- 10-20-15
Yawn...!
I wouldn't say this was a terrible book. I would say it was a mediocre book. It was essentially a medical textbook and it read like one. I usually enjoy books about these subjects, but there was something about this book that I just can’t put my finger on that leaves me with this "it's just average" feeling. Yes, I did learn something, which I always enjoy, but you certainly need to pay attention to every single sentence in this book or you will be totally lost. It was very heavy on the science, but not so much that anyone with a decent public education couldn’t absorb. I usually find myself searching online while listening to books like this to learn even more about the subject, but this book just didn’t evoke that kind of interest for me.
The only saving grace is the narration. I think that is the only thing that kept me from returning the book at the halfway point. Grover Gardner made it worth holding out to the end; he’s just that good! I'm debating if I'll listen to this book again to see if my opinion changes?
Ironically, this book has discovered the cure for the Family That Couldn’t Sleep; they just need to listen to this book. Put me to sleep in about 10 minutes every night.
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- Gotta Tellya
- 11-04-14
Heart-wrenching medical challenges
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
Yes. The story is well researched and written in an engrossing style. Medical mysteries and detective work are as fascinating as any other sort of story, real or fictional. The author, D. T. Max, suffers from one form of misfolded proteins that impair nerve transmission to his muscles. In researching his own little understood condition, Max interviewed members of an Italian family prone to develop fatal insomnia, an even more rare, inherited misfolded protein illness affecting very few families worldwide. Max also studied assorted prion diseases, usually contagious, sometimes possibly not, that have become known to the public in recent decades. Prions are misfolded proteins, similar to the causative problem in the author's syndrome. Prions cause, among other fatal illnesses, the so-called Mad Cow disease (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD.) This book reveals the difficulty researchers encountered in discerning the causes of these illnesses, the various governments that dealt poorly with reducing spread of contagion by prions, and the totally inadequate efforts that are being made towards treatment and cures.
Who was your favorite character and why?
This is not a book centered on characters, though many fascinating and very special people are described.
Which character – as performed by Grover Gardner – was your favorite?
Again, not pertinent. Gardner's narration was well paced and suited the material.
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
Yes, even though it is long and there is a great deal of data to absorb. I found the subject matter fascinating.
Any additional comments?
Anyone who likes medical mysteries would enjoy this book. But it is more than a story about discovery. Max's book makes it clear that we all face some degree of risk of contracting a fatal prion-based illness, thanks to the tendency of governments to allow exposure of the population to continue, out of fear of the negative economic impact that might occur or simply out of sheer hubris and denial. Equally alarming is the paucity of research into prevention, treatment and cures, since the number of affected people doesn't appear high enough to provide pharmaceutical companies with the incentive of making a profit. I foresee a time when there will be plenty of sufferers to prompt investment in finding ways to prevent and treat protein misfolding illnesses. That need not happen, if the curative effort is pursued sooner rather than later. I have taken care of two patients who suffered from CJD. Their ends were horrible and tragic. I hope for all our sakes that some intrepid researchers continue the fight against prions and other misfolded protein syndromes, so that our children don't have to deal with the heartbreak of such illness in their lives.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Cecilia
- 01-30-08
Prion and illnesses
This is an excellent book for those individuals who have diseases for which scientists have not yet found a cure such as Parkinson's disease and any other one caused by the deterioration of proteins. The book is very well-written for the lay person and it is quite entertaining as well.
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- Michael Carroll
- 02-21-19
Fascinating!
This book is a very thorough and informative on the subject of Prion diseases.
I have heard about mad cow and the condition known as Familia Fatal Insomnia but had no idea they were related! The author covered all related conditions very well and the reader did an excellent job! great first book for my Audible subscription!
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- Linda B
- 05-15-09
Very well done!
The reader did an amazing job with this book! It almost felt like a novel a times, partly due to how well the reader did his job. The stories are incredibly compelling and the science is completely accessible and fully explained and very interesting. I cannot imagine a way to die that is more terrible than FFI - the prion related disease that robs victims of their ability to ever fall into sleep. And in the exposition of this disease and its history, is woven the development, history, and scientific exploration of all prion diseases. On top of that, there is a personal feel, as though you are reading the diary or memoir, since the author suffers his own afliction which, for the author, was the motivation for looking into these orphan diseases. If you are not into science/medical stories, this may not appeal... but if you have any interest, this is very, very well done.
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- Thomas
- 07-03-13
Great Book - Made Protein Chemistry Fascinating!
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
If you have any interest in science please; please enjoy this book-
Who was your favorite character and why?
The favorite is the saddest-
What does Grover Gardner bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
The inflection in his voice was perfect for setting the tone and carrying it-
Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
This book is interesting and a bit frightening with the history of animal to human disease transmission
Any additional comments?
I loved reading 'The Disappearing Spoon' and 'The Poisoner's Handbook' and this book feels a little bit like that-
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- Vic
- 05-06-21
Strays from The Main Title
Good book but is more about prion diseases than focusing on what the title states.
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- Leila M
- 08-02-24
Fascinating account of prions
Fiction cannot equal this incredible story of prions and how they affect humans and animals. Every sentence was a revelation. Highly recommend!
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