I wish I had read this book 19 years ago, when it was first published. If you can't stomach the whole book, browse the Table of Contents &/or the Index & pick out a chapter or two-they're fairly self-contained so you can get away with skipping around, and I guarantee you will learn something cool. Eye-opening in a way that encourages wonder rather than only prescribing answers. Just slightly out-of-date (published in 1999) since genetics is such a fast-progressing area of knowledge but overall not 'dated' or off-base.Īs for the content, WOW! Changed the way I think about evolution & heredity (duh), human biology, history, & psychology, disease, medicine, food, sexuality, instinct, intelligence, personality, behavior, EVERYTHING. He's not a scientist, he's a writer & former editor, & this isn't a textbook, but it could be-he's done his research & includes all his references. I suggest thinking of the author/narrator as a cool guy you'd be friends with telling you all this information, instead of a nerdy/haughty *scientist*. I wish I could give this book 6 stars! It's really fantastic, and I want to recommend it to EVERYONE, but in my heart I know the tone would bore some of my friends. It will help you understand what this scientific milestone means for you, for your children, and for humankind. From Huntington's disease to cancer, from the applications of gene therapy to the horrors of eugenics, Ridley probes the scientific, philosophical, and moral issues arising as a result of the mapping of the genome. By picking one newly discovered gene from each pair of chromosomes and telling its story, Matt Ridley recounts the history of our species and its ancestors from the dawn of life to the brink of future medicine. Genome offers extraordinary insight into the ramifications of this incredible breakthrough. Questions that will affect the rest of your life. Questions that will profoundly impact the way we think about disease, about longevity, and about free will. But what does it mean? Matt Ridley's Genome is the book that explains it all: what it is, how it works, and what it portends for the futureĪrguably the most significant scientific discovery of the new century, the mapping of the twenty-three pairs of chromosomes that make up the human genome raises almost as many questions as it answers. He addresses not only the ethical quandaries faced by contemporary scientists but the reductionist danger in equating inheritability with inevitability.' - The New Yorker 'Ridley leaps from chromosome to chromosome in a handy summation of our ever increasing understanding of the roles that genes play in disease, behavior, sexual differences, and even intelligence.

Genome by matt ridley