If you get grossed out by blood, this one probably isn’t for you. But if you’re like me and find it fascinating, you’ll enjoy this book by a British journalist with an especially personal connection to the subject. I’m a big fan of books that go deep on one specific topic, so Nine Pints (the title refers to the volume of blood in the average adult) was right up my alley. It’s filled with super-interesting facts that will leave you with a new appreciation for blood.

—Bill Gates

In a wide-ranging and energetic new book, “Nine Pints” (Metropolitan), the British journalist Rose George examines not only the unique biology of this substance but also the lore and tradition surrounding it, and even its connections to the origins of the earth and of life itself. “The iron in our blood comes from the death of supernovas, like all iron on our planet,” she writes. “This bright red liquid . . . contains salt and water, like the sea we possibly came from.”

—New Yorker

There is nothing like blood to grab the attention, as anyone who has found some in their urine will testify. The estimable British journalist Rose George has now written an entire, very good book about what Goethe called this “amiable juice.” [...] the qualities George brings to everything she writes: a no-nonsense briskness on the page; a forensic zeal; a potent moral sensibility. She’s a nimble writer, one who walks in fear of euphemism or pretension. There are no peacock displays of pointless erudition in her work; no recondite allusions are dragged in. She rips open her topics as if they were bags of chips. [...] As if George were pinching and expanding an image on a screen, “Nine Pints” expands to open up a world.

—New York Times

George’s journalistic eye is combined with sharp moral judgment. [...] What we know about blood is still so limited. “Blood is not done teaching us what it can do. More wonders will come,” George says. This absorbing, vital book by one of the best non-fiction writers working today is a wonder in its own right.

—The Guardian

It is 10 years since I last read a book that tackled taboos so fearlessly. It was also by Rose George, also excellent and its subject was The Big Necessity, or human waste and how we get rid of it. [...] If Nine Pints was just a pop-science-meets-cultural-history book about blood donation and periods it would be excellent. But this is also a travel book themed, like The Big Necessity, around issues of public health. [...] This is a brave book, then. It is also powerfully feminist. Not just how it tackles women’s issues and women’s history but for the coolly radical way it thinks, and its agitator enthusiasm. [...] This fierce and forensic book wrestles our taboos to the ground and tears off the plaster; what it exposes is strangely beautiful

—Sunday Times

George, a bloodhound of a reporter, travels extensively to bring us social, cultural, medical, historical and political issues around this wondrous fluid.[...] Vampires, hemophilia, blood types — the wealth and variety of subjects, each meticulously researched and laced with George’s dry Yorkshire humour and occasional righteous anger, means Nine Pints has something for everyone.

—Toronto Star

Rose George’s absorbing book is full of […] offbeat facts: it is a series of eye-opening excursions into the history and science of blood… She is particularly revealing on the history of voluntary donation… Fascinating

—Daily Mail

What’s notable about George’s work, and, in particular, this book – is her approach to the subject and how deftly she commutates vast tracts of information.  George has clearly undertaken huge volume of research and travel, but its presented engagingly, often sardonically … Nine Pints is a hugely intelligent, humane and riveting work, and from illness to industry, George is an engaging guide though the bloodstream.

—Irish Times

It’s surprising that we’re ignorant about something as vital as blood. Before I read this book I couldn’t even have told you where in the body it was made — the bone marrow, I have since learnt. Good job, then, that we have Rose George, who boldly wades forth into tides of the red stuff. [...] George writes immensely readable prose. […] This is serious, weighty nonfiction.  And a good thing too.

[paywalled]

—The Times

Blood, George notes, is revered, feared and mysterious — the stuff of legend. Chief among the legends are vampires, which, naturally, make an appearance in the book. But in George’s hands, ancient tales of purported blood sucking lead readers to modern-day experiments examining whether blood can truly bring youth and health when transferred to the old or sick. George’s bright writing and companionable tone, along with a healthy dose of skepticism, make her a welcome guide to the past and the future of this giver and taker of life.

—Science News

Blood is life. Blood is death. Writer Rose George’s book ranges extensively and often disturbingly between these contradictory extremes. George (whose previous books examined shipping and human waste) develops each theme in a series of engaging personal stories and journeys.

—Nature

Particularly gripping are chapters featuring interviews with HIV-positive South African youth and sections thoughtfully detailing the evolution and “intent and cunning” resilience of the HIV virus, which virologists describe with awe and dread simultaneously. The author packs her book with the kinds of provocative, witty, and rigorously reported facts and stories sure to make readers view the integral fluid coursing through our veins in a whole new way.

—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Journalist George (Ninety Percent of Everything) offers an insightful, fast-paced account of the science, politics, and social history of blood. Noting that “every three seconds, somewhere in the world, a person receives a stranger’s blood,” this wide-reaching, lively survey makes clear that blood has become a “commodity that is dearer than oil.”

—Publishers Weekly

Blood is feared and revered, and it is continually dying and renewing. Its power is mystical, emotional, and biological. Blood infuses our language: bloodthirsty, blood-chilling, blood brothers. George (Ninety Percent of Everything, 2013) delivers an informative, elegant, and provocative exploration of the life- giving substance she describes as "stardust and the sea" for its iron content derived from the demise of supernovas and its water and salt from the oceans of our origin.

—Booklist (starred review)

Each chapter of Nine Pints reflects George’s experience, personal investment, and broad attention to the historical, political, social, biological, and moral aspects of blood. If the organizational thread is not always easy to follow, the book nevertheless overflows with telling examples—some fantastic, some uncanny, all informative about the sanguinary fluid.

—Science