Blood: A Very Short Introduction

Very Short Introductions #486

by Christopher Cooper

Blood is vital to most animals. In mammals it transports oxygen and food, carries away waste, and contains the white cells that attack invading microbes. Playing a central role in life, it has had profound cultural and historical significance and plays an important role in religious ritual. Blood was one of the four humors in early Western medicine and is still probably the major diagnostic tool in the doctor's armory.

In this Very Short Introduction , Chris Cooper analyses the components of blood, explains blood groups, and looks at transfusions, blood tests, and blood-borne diseases. He considers what the future may hold, including the possibility of making artificial blood, and producing blood from stem cells in the laboratory.

ABOUT THE The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Biology, Medical, Medicine

147 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2016

Reviews

[Yumeko (blushes) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enlightening, almost embarrassingly so.
(May come back to a chapter or two when I know more Chemistry)

[heptagrammaton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Obligatory cover art review: Evoking the post-centrifugal separation of blood and the linguistic-social significance of the colour red both. The best colours, arranged in the best way (which is literally, like, poetry or something.) Immaculate. I rate this A Very Short Introduction an Amsterdam flag out of 10.


A very short review: Wide-spanning, with a focus in medicine and on bioengineering potential and problems.

I think - though am in no position to judge as someone with background in the life sciences - this one suffers a bit from the expert's inability to judge the audience's background knowledge and difficult-to-understand points. It might be difficult to parse at points by the layman. Cooper is also notably awkward in his the first, history-focused chapters.

Very good bibliography though..

[Greg Hovanesian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Once in a while, you read one of these 'Very Short Intros' that is just incredibly good ...and this is one of them. The author did a fantastic job describing often very technical things in ways that were not only easy to understand, but also enjoyable to read. And this is a fascinating topic for anyone interested in human health, history, and science. I highly recommend this.

[Tso William · Rating 4 out of 5]

Blood: A Very Short Introduction differs from books of the same series on the same subject (i.e. medicine and health) of which I have read a dozen in the sense that it is a condensed version of a popular science book wherein Cooper includes anecdotes and trivia as well as some academic biological details on blood. The balance is just right for a general reader but a biology or medicine student might have found the academic side of the subject lacking.

[Matt Sautman · Rating 5 out of 5]

For someone who is not a medical science person, I found Chris Cooper’s Blood: A Very Short Introduction a fascinating blend of science and history that demonstrates the complexity of our blood without ever feeling overtly dense or incomprehensible.

[Helen Lewis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite a difficult read for a non-medical person such as myself but very informative.

[tisasday · Rating 3 out of 5]

A few chapters were good. Some chapters were not written in a manner that was easy to understand. Nine Pints was a much more engaging book about blood, though of course it was not short at all.

[Kathryn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Learned more in this 130 page book than I did in a semester of physiology

[Paul Waring · Rating 3 out of 5]

A reasonable introduction to the subject, though you really need a bit of biology knowledge to be able to follow all of it.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5

[Usfromdk · Rating 3 out of 5]

Starts very slowly and poorly, and I was close to deeply regretting having bought the book after I'd read the first half of the first chapter. Later chapters however turned out to include a lot of interesting stuff, and less fluff and irrelevancies; overall I'd say that if you just skim 'the weak stuff' but read 'the good stuff' carefully, this is a decent introductory book on the topic for people unfamiliar with the field of haematology and related topics.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite few slight inaccuracies (for example as these days blood transfusions are mainly component transfusions, the average volume of a transfused red cell and plasma units is 250mL, which is about half, or a bit over, of the entire amount usually donated, and plasma is used in emergency transfusions, usually part of a 'shock pack') this is a good introduction to blood. The historical aspects of blood and research into it were quite interesting.