premise: A history of mad-cow disease by veteran science writer Richard Rhodes ( The Making of the Atomic Bomb ). Critics praise Rhodes' lucid explication of complex virology as well as his range--the book includes digressions on political and literary themes and a section on the scandal surrounding a Nobel Prize-winning expert on the disease who recently pleaded guilty to molesting a little boy.
hypothesis: Critics appreciated the book of the scientist Richard Rhodes, which succeeded in explaining very carefully the mad-cow disease and other digressions, but it hasn't won any prize yet.