Snakes are often the villains. A new book gives them a fair shake

Slither
Stephen S. Hall
Grand Central Publishing, $30

Snakes don’t often get to be the protagonists. From the biblical tempter in the Garden of Eden to the eponymous snakes on a plane, your stereotypical serpent often gets cast as a villain — cunning, treacherous, cruel, deadly. But human views of snakes are full of contradictions. In mythology, snakes whispered secrets about the healing arts to the Greeks and established the concept of linear time in Mesoamerica. In the real world, they continue to inspire scientists in fields as diverse as pharmacology, reproductive biology and disaster relief.

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