Revelations revealed by the mapping of the Human Genome.

Ridley's organization of the book into chapters on Free Will and other basic philisophical topics is really great. In that way he is able to bring cold hard science down to the human level.

Some of the concepts are repeated a couple times. I'm not a big fan of redundancy; I usually get it the first time. My brother thought it was helpful, though. He read it for a class - not straight through like me - so the references to previous chapters helped to tie it together.

Enlightened. The most surprising (and I may say disturbing) thing about this book is the revelation that our own genome can sometimes work against us. I certainly didn't know just how competitive the small chemical environment in our nuclei is.

Is obviously a journalist and not a scientist. There are very few scientist who can write this well. Ridley did his homework, though, he brings out the perspective of the scientists working directly with the studies he talks about while keeping an objective hold on the topic.

It's readable. It isn't a text book, and a non-geneticist can understand it easily. The subject matter is very interesting but certainly not over anyone's head.

If you are geneticist. The whole concept of the book might seem a bit patronizing then.

If you liked this, I recommed "Invalid Item"  by Deborah Blum.

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Created Feb 14, 2002 at 4:28pm • Submit your own review...