The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (2010) is a non-fiction book by American author Rebecca Skloot.

It was the 2011 winner of the National Academies Communication Award for best creative work that helps the public understanding of topics in science, engineering or medicine.

Skloot began conducting extensive research on her and worked with Lacks' family to create the book.

The book is notable for its science writing and dealing with ethical issues of race and class in medical research.

It was named a best book of the year by more than 60 media outlets, including New York Times, Oprah, NPR, and Entertainment Weekly.

She also confronts the spookiness of the cells themselves, intrepidly crossing into the spiritual plane on which the family has come to understand their mother’s continued presence in the world.

[15]Dwight Garner of The New York Times wrote: I put down Rebecca Skloot’s first book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, more than once.

[16]One reviewer for The New Atlantis, while mostly positive about the book, questioned its ethical arguments about tissue markets and informed consent involving scientists such as Chester M. Southam, and claimed to have found factual errors: one related to the role of HeLa cells in early space missions, and, another related to a statement in the book that says "if all HeLa cells ever grown could have been gathered on a scale, their total weight would have measured more than 50 million metric tons.

"[18] The book was adopted as a common reading text at more than 125 universities and was widely taught in high school, undergraduate, graduate and doctoral classrooms.