The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Just finished a pretty excellent book:

Totally comes out of left field, I had no idea about any of it.  It talks about a cell line called HeLa that is essentially immortal, it will keep dividing so long as it has materials to build with.  This was essential to a lot of advances in medicine, like the development of a polio vaccine and a number of cancer treatments. (HeLa is cancer cells, btw).

But it's not just a dry science textbook, it's written by a scientist-turned-artist, so it's very novelistic in the approach.  The first half of the book switches between the history of Henrietta Lacks, the person from which HeLa comes from, the history of HeLa and the author's own struggles attempting to research for her book.  There's enough story so you don't get bored with all that sciencey shit, but there's enough science so you don't feel like you're reading an account of the horrible travails of some shmucky woman living on student loans.

Definitely worth a look.  Or just a brief skim of the wikipedia article.