First published 2021
On December 2, 1943, German bombers strike the Allied port of Bari, Italy. Among the seventeen ships destroyed sits the John Harvey, an American vessel secretly loaded with 2,000 mustard gas bombs. As sailors begin dying from puzzling symptoms, Lieutenant Colonel Stewart Alexander arrives to investigate. The army doctor quickly identifies mustard gas poisoning, but British officials refuse to acknowledge the toxic cargo. Prime Minister Churchill and General Eisenhower demand complete secrecy about the chemical weapons presence. Alexander continues his work despite official obstruction. His classified report documenting how mustard gas destroys white blood cells reaches Colonel Cornelius Rhoads, a brilliant but troubled physician at the Sloan Kettering Institute. Rhoads realizes the deadly poison might also kill cancer cells. His research launches the era of chemotherapy. The Bari bombing remains hidden for decades, obscuring the strange path from battlefield catastrophe to medical breakthrough. Conant reveals how military cover-ups buried the true story of cancer treatment's origins.
Genres: science, medical, 20th-century, non-fiction, academic, history-of-science
Vibes: suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: hidden-history, investigative-journalism
Setting: Bari, Italy, Sloan Kettering Institute
Period: 1943
416 pages · Paperback · W. W. Norton & Company
Content warnings: medical-trauma