Pump: A Natural History of the Heart by Bill Schutt Book

"Fascinating . . . Surprising entertainment, combining deep learning with dad

jokes . . . [Schutt] is a natural teacher with an easy way with metaphor.”—The

Wall Street Journal

In this lively, unexpected look at the hearts of animals—from fish to bats to

humans—American Museum of Natural History zoologist Bill Schutt tells an

incredible story of evolution and scientific progress.

We join Schutt on a tour from the origins of circulation, still evident in

microorganisms today, to the tiny hardworking pumps of worms, to the

golf-cart-size hearts of blue whales. We visit beaches where horseshoe crabs

are being harvested for their blood, which has properties that can protect

humans from deadly illnesses. We learn that when temperatures plummet, some

frog hearts can freeze solid for weeks, resuming their beat only after a spring

thaw. And we journey with Schutt through human history, too, as philosophers

and scientists hypothesize, often wrongly, about what makes our ticker tick.

Schutt traces humanity’s cardiac fascination from the ancient Greeks

and Egyptians, who believed that the heart contains the soul, all the way up to

modern-day laboratories, where scientists use animal hearts and even plants as

the basis for many of today’s cutting-edge therapies.

Written with verve and authority, weaving evolutionary perspectives with

cultural history, Pump shows us this mysterious organ in a completely new light.