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The Violinist's Thumb: And Other Lost Tales of Love, War, and Genius, as Written by Our Genetic Code
Sam Kean · back to the book
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorGenome: the Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters
Matt Ridley · 344 pages
The human genome, the complete set of genes housed in twenty-three pairs of chromosomes, is nothing less than an autobiography of our species. Spelled out in a billion three-letter words using the four-letter alphabet of DNA, the genome has been edited, abridged, altered and added to as it has been handed down, generation to generation, over more than three billion years. With the first draft of t
Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo
Sean B. Carroll · 384 pages
River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life
Richard Dawkins · 172 pages
How did the replication bomb we call "life" begin and where in the world, or rather, in the universe, is it heading? Writing with characteristic wit and an ability to clarify complex phenomena (the New York Times described his style as "the sort of science writing that makes the reader feel like a genius"), Richard Dawkins confronts this ancient mystery. Dawkins has been named by the London Daily
The Epigenetics Revolution: How Modern Biology Is Rewriting Our Understanding of Genetics, Disease and Inheritance
Nessa Carey · 339 pages
"Epigenetics can potentially revolutionize our understanding of the structure and behavior of biological life on Earth. It explains why mapping an organism's genetic code is not enough to determine how it develops or acts and shows how nurture combines with nature to engineer biological diversity. Surveying the twenty-year history of the field while also highlighting its latest findings and innova
The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race
Walter Isaacson · 560 pages
A scientific biography of Jennifer Doudna, a founder and co-developer of the CRISPR gene-editing mechanism, and an examination of what happened after CRISPR hit the marketplace.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Rebecca Skloot · 381 pages
A Crack in Creation: Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution
Jennifer A. Doudna · 304 pages
**A trailblazing biologist grapples with her role in the biggest scientific discovery of our era: a cheap, easy way of rewriting genetic code, with nearly limitless promise and peril.** Not since the atomic bomb has a technology so alarmed its inventors that they warned the world about its use. Not, that is, until the spring of 2015, when biologist Jennifer Doudna called for a worldwide morator
How to Clone a Mammoth: The Science of de-Extinction
Beth Shapiro · 220 pages
"Could extinct species like mammoths and passenger pigeons be brought back to life? The science says yes. In [this book], Beth Shapiro, evolutionary biologist and pioneer in 'ancient DNA' research, walks readers through the astonishing and controversial process of de-extinction. From deciding which species should be restored, to sequencing their genomes, to anticipating how revived populations mig
Survival of the Sickest: A Medical Maverick Discovers Why We Need Disease
Sharon Moalem · 279 pages
Survival of the Sickest: The Surprising Connections Between Disease and Longevity is a 2007 New York Times Bestselling science book by Sharon Moalem, an evolutionary biologist and neurogeneticist, and Jonathan Prince, senior advisor and speechwriter for the Clinton administration. It was originally titled, Survival of the Sickest: A Medical Maverick Discovers Why We Need Disease.
Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution
Nick Lane · 344 pages
The Double Helix
James D. Watson · 202 pages
By identifying the structure of DNA, the molecule of life, Francis Crick and James Watson revolutionized biochemistry and won themselves a Nobel Prize. At the time, Watson was only 24, a young scientist hungry to make his mark. His uncompromisingly honest account of the heady days of their thrilling sprint against other world-class researchers to solve one of science's greatest mysteries gives a d
The Gene: An Intimate History
Siddhartha Mukherjee · 593 pages
The Gene is the story of one of the most powerful and dangerous ideas in our history, from bestselling, prize-winning author Siddhartha Mukherjee. Spanning the globe and several centuries, The Gene is the story of the quest to decipher the master-code that makes and defines humans, that governs our form and function. This is an epic, moving history of a scientific idea coming to life, by the aut
The Seven Daughters of Eve: The Science That Reveals Our Genetic Ancestry
Bryan Sykes · 319 pages
"In 1994 Professor Bryan Sykes, a leading world authority on DNA and human evolution, was called in to examine the frozen remains of a man trapped in glacial ice in northern Italy. News of the discovery of the Ice Man and his age, which was put at over five thousand years, fascinated the world. But what made the story particularly extraordinary was that Professor Sykes was also able to track down
Epigenetics: The Ultimate Mystery of Inheritance
Richard C. Francis · 234 pages
Discusses how scientific evidence is increasingly showing a link between the stress of the environment on an individual and the seemingly inherited traits of his or her subsequent generations.
Creation: How Science Is Reinventing Life Itself
Adam Rutherford · 278 pages
"How scientists are closer than ever to not only uncovering the mystery of how life was created, but to replicating that moment Within the first billion years after this planet formed, a spark of life spontaneously ignited, turning inanimate chemicals into what we now would recognize as a living thing: a cell. Four billion years later, science has catalogued more than a million species. Science wr
Woolly: The True Story of the Quest to Revive One of History's Most Iconic Extinct Creatures
Ben Mezrich · 293 pages
Traces the pioneering work of a group of young scientists who sequenced the DNA of a frozen woolly mammoth harvested from the Arctic circle to resurrect the extinct species as part of a larger effort to slow the advances of global warming.
Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life
Eva Jablonka · 576 pages
Time, Love, Memory: A Great Biologist and His Quest for the Origins of Behavior
Jonathan Weiner · 310 pages
The story of a biologist's search for the foundations of behavior. Looking over the shoulder of some of the premier scientists in the field, biologist Weiner takes us into their laboratories to show us how pieces of DNA actually shape behavior. He focuses on the work of Seymour Benzer, who, decades ago, with James Watson and Francis Crick, helped to crack the genetic code. Then, in a simple experi
Frankenstein's Cat: Cuddling Up to Biotech's Brave New Beasts
Emily Anthes · 241 pages
For centuries, we have toyed with our creature companions, breeding dogs that herd and hunt, housecats that look like tigers, and teacup pigs that fit snugly in our handbags. But what happens when we take animal alteration a step further, engineering a cat that glows green under ultraviolet light or cloning the beloved family Labrador Retriever? Science has given us a whole new toolbox for tinkeri
Molecular Biology of the Cell
Bruce Alberts · 1,616 pages
Life: An Unauthorised Biography: A Natural History of the First Four Thousand Million Years of Life on Earth
Richard Fortey · 416 pages
Richard Fortey guides us from the barren globe spinning in space, through the very earliest signs of life in the sulphurous hot springs and volcanic vents of the young planet, the appearance of cells, the slow creation of an atmosphere and the evolution of myriad forms of plants and animals that could then be sustained, including the magnificent era of the dinosaurs, and on to the last moment befo
The Philadelphia Chromosome: A Mutant Gene and the Quest to Cure Cancer at the Genetic Level
Jessica Wapner · 323 pages
This work discusses the history of a genetic mutation, discovered in 1959, that causes chronic myeloid leukemia, and traces the research and breakthroughs that led to the creation of a drug that makes this once-fatal illness now treatable. It focuses on what is widely viewed as the 'poster child' of rational drug development in the cancer research world. The history of the founding of a genetic mu
Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body
Neil Shubin · 240 pages
Why do we look the way we do? What does the human hand have in common with the wing of a fly? Are breasts, sweat glands, and scales connected in some way? To better understand the inner workings of our bodies and to trace the origins of many of today's most common diseases, we have to turn to unexpected sources: worms, flies, and even fish.Neil Shubin, a leading paleontologist and professor of