Kayote B. (kayote) reviewed on 12/9/2008 + 254 more book reviews

Helpful Score: 3

Not a bad book, interesting to read, but somewhat unsatisfying.

There was a historical exploration and a scientific one going on around the hair at the same time--how did it get to where it was, and what can it say about Beethoven?

Unfortunately, neither of these were really completed when the book was published. While the historical one may never be done, and the scientific one will probably always have another test--it would have been nice if one had been mostly done. There was a marked development in the scientific, but the skull results were not back, and the scientific paper was not published for responses to come back.

Maybe if the big result from the tests on the hair hadn't been treated almost as an add-on to the story it would have been better. But there didn't seem to be any research into where Beethoven developed the problem in the first place--while it, again, is historical and maybe not findable, there was no evidence of trying. They had a date, they knew Beethoven's movements--at least some thought could have been put down. There certainly was enough guessing going on about how the hair had travelled--some non-brief discussion about possible vectors of ingestion would have been interesting.

I really like this type book, but it just doesn't seem like this one discovered much. Which I know it did--the scientific results were very interesting. But they were treated almost in passing in the book, and very much as a secondary to the path of the hair. Since the latter was never fully documented--close enough for guessing but some large gaps--it felt at the end like not much had happened.

The author also repeated themselves. The beginning of the book is just following the hair, as best it can, then it goes into the modern-day. But the modern-day then goes back into the past, and the registry discussing who lived where gets drug up again, and is repetative from before. And so much time dealing with so many people which ends up not directly connecting up.

I think this is an excellent draft of a book, but I think it needed a bit more work with the information it had, in presentation and organization. It really should have waited for the results of the skull tests, or at least done a better job of showing the vital clue that was found by scientific testing, rather than putting it on a secondary footing to a non-successful historical tracing.

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