The #1 NEW YORK TIMES Bestseller The basis for the PBS Ken Burns Documentary The Gene: An Intimate History From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies–a fascinating history of the gene and “a magisterial account of how human minds have laboriously, ingeniously picked apart what makes us tick” (Elle). “Sid Mukherjee has the uncanny ability to bring together science, …
“Sid Mukherjee has the uncanny ability to bring together science, history, and the future in a way that is understandable and riveting, guiding us through both time and the mystery of life itself.” -Ken Burns
“Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee dazzled readers with his Pulitzer Prize-winning The Emperor of All Maladies in 2010. That achievement was evidently just a warm-up for his virtuoso performance in The Gene: An Intimate History, in which he braids science, history, and memoir into an epic with all the range and biblical thunder of Paradise Lost” (The New York Times). In this biography Mukherjee brings to life the quest to understand human heredity and its surprising influence on our lives, personalities, identities, fates, and choices.
“Mukherjee expresses abstract intellectual ideas through emotional stories…[and] swaddles his medical rigor with rhapsodic tenderness, surprising vulnerability, and occasional flashes of pure poetry” (The Washington Post). Throughout, the story of Mukherjee’s own family–with its tragic and bewildering history of mental illness–reminds us of the questions that hang over our ability to translate the science of genetics from the laboratory to the real world. In riveting and dramatic prose, he describes the centuries of research and experimentation–from Aristotle and Pythagoras to Mendel and Darwin, from Boveri and Morgan to Crick, Watson and Franklin, all the way through the revolutionary twenty-first century innovators who mapped the human genome.
“A fascinating and often sobering history of how humans came to understand the roles of genes in making us who we are–and what our manipulation of those genes might mean for our future” (Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel), The Gene is the revelatory and magisterial history of a scientific idea coming to life, the most crucial science of our time, intimately explained by a master. “The Gene is a book we all should read” (USA TODAY).
more
I finished The Gene this weekend. As a good friend says about Disneyland, it’s well executed. It’s very, very good a being what it is — an exhaustive history of modern genetics, from Darwin to the genetic therapies being tested in Kendall Square today.
I read it because I’m curious about the topic. Genes are central to all of our identies — and our understanding of them has changed a lot since I took high school biology.
I enjoyed the book, and would recommend it to anyone who wants to devote some time to this topic. Siddartha Mukherjee is a lovely writer, and I learned a lot. Of course, it is >1500 pages long, and probably not worth the investment if your interest is tentative.
Posting The Gene again just in case anyone missed the 15 other times it has been buzzed. @Will time for a rollup, yet?
Although this is part history and part explanation of the science of genetics, Siddhartha Mukherjee, who also wrote “The Emperor of All Maladies” a history of cancer, also interweaves the personal stories of how genetics affects real people. He makes it exciting to read and makes you think about how we and our whole world are all influence by frontier-busting science.
This and “The Emperor of All Maladies”, written by the same author are the greatest science books I have read in the last 5 years. The writing style is excellent and flowing. These are non-fiction books the equivalent of “can’t stop reading it” novels.
As a geneticist, I enjoyed this book and think that folks without formal training in the area will also gain insights into the field. The scientific history was enjoyable and fairly accurate. As in The Emperor of All Maladies, the author gives a personal twist to his story and has well-researched the evolving science of genetics, with an interesting and educated caution toward the future.
This is a great overview of the inception and beginnings of genetic science. As in Emperor of All Maladies, Mukherjee writes cleanly and concisely about deeply complex science, while sharing insights into the people (often unsung) who made these discoveries happen. He makes science extremely interesting and my only disappointment in this book was that it didn’t have a part two that would take us up to the present when so much of what he describes and predicts is coming to pass at top speed.
Very informative
Excellent and well written book that everyone should read. Triumphs and disappointments draw you in. It can make anyone crave more about our genes.
Educational
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Emperor of All Maladies, Mukherjee has an enthralling book here. It reads like a mystery, threading clues about the history and evolution of gene research. The prose flows like poetry, with the same harmony and rhythm. This is my favorite quote from the book: ‘…each represents the building block of a larger whole: the atom, of matter; the byte, of digitized information; the gene, of heredity and biological information.’ This book is a symphony of words woven into facts. It brought back memories of my undergrad days of reading about Mendel, Rosalind Franklin and Watson and Crick.
Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee is beyond articulate, he’s a consummate storyteller. I recommend both reading and listening to this book; I found the combination helped me to digest more of this densely-packed text.
“Gene, an Intimate History” is an enthralling, comprehensive history of genetics and molecular biology told by one of the great physician teachers of our time. Dr. Mukherjee takes us from the earliest beginnings of the idea of heritable traits up to the Pandora’s box of CRISPR/cas9 technology. His understanding of the subject matter is only surpassed by his lucid, easily understandable, and entertaining explanation of an immensely complex subject. In my opinion, this book should have won the author his second Pulitzer Prize.
well-written; very interesting
What is life?
A wonderfully balanced and sensitive review of the history of the discovery of the unit of inheritance and the biomechanics of its functionality. My only criticism was that I was left wanting more details about laboratory techniques, at times.
Great explanations of a complicated but fascinating subject.
Great and interesting information, well written but very scientific.