Robert Bud

When the references, bibliography and index of a book account for a third of the pages you know you're looking at something pretty thorough. To my mind (biased chemist speaking here) it's not perfect because it doesn't address the problems that had to be addressed in the purification and isolation; even more irritatingly it mentions that there were big problems but doesn't even mention what they were. Aaarghhhh! That said it is very strong on the issues with the fermentation and the biology around antibiotic resistance and the unexpected strength was the political background: both the US/UK issues around the wartime work and around addressing the emergence of antibiotic resistance with the 3 way dust up between the pharmaceutical, medical and agribusiness interests.

I'd recommend Miracle Drug by David Masters to address some of the gaps - but as it was published in 1946 it only covers the early work and is a bit gung ho. Oh and probably rather hard to come by.… (plus d'informations)