Blood: The Stuff of Life

(Paperback)

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Description

Blood runs red through every person's arteries and fulfillsthe same functions in every human being. The study ofblood has advanced our understanding of biology andimproved medical treatments, but its cultural and socialrepresentations have divided us perennially. Blood pulsesthrough religion, literature, and the visual arts. Everytime it pools or spills, we learn a little more about whatbrings human beings together and what pulls us apart.For centuries, perceptions of difference in our blood haveseparated people on the basis of gender, race, class, andnation. Ideas about blood purity have spawned rulesabout who gets to belong to a family or cultural group,who enjoys the rights of citizenship and nationality, whatprivileges one can expect to be granted or denied, whetheryou inherit poverty or the right to rule over the masses,what constitutes fair play in sport, and what defines aperson's identity.

Blood: The Stuff of Life is a bold meditation on blood as anhistorical and contemporary marker of identity, belonging,gender, race, class, citizenship, athletic superiority, andnationhood.

'Chock full of fascinating statistics, anecdotesand arguments about blood and ranges intopics from embryonic stem cell researchand doping in sports, to the Holocaust andthe search for ancestors. It's entertaining,shocking and informative'Vancouver Sun

'Transparent and compelling. The book is asenthralling as it is informative. The reasonsfor Hill's success as a writer are apparentthroughout.'Publisher's Weekly

Reviews

Transparent and compelling. The book is as enthralling as it is informative. - Publishers Weekly

Author Bio

Lawrence Hill is an award-winning novelist and memoirist. He is the author of nine books including Someone Knows My Name (under the title The Book of Negroes in Canada), which was an international bestseller and won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize Best Book Award and the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. He lives in Ontario, Canada.