Siddhartha Mukherjee
Science, medicine
I've been trying for a couple of days to think of something insightful to say about The Gene. You know what? Just go read it. It's excellent.
Oh, I don't think it's quite as good as Mukherjee's The Emperor of All Maladies. The latter has the virtue of being intrinsically story-like. Cancer is the villain, and it has the upper hand for most of the book, until at the last minute
What's astonishing is both how much we know, and how fast we've learned it. Even five years ago, this would have been a different book. Fifty years ago, it would have been about a tenth of the size. A hundred and fifty years ago, it would have been non-existent. It's exciting, mostly in a good way. You want to see the Technological Singularity coming? Don't look to computers. Look to biology.
Putting this on the "Next" list. TEOAM is powerful. I keep stopping reading to look up terms on my phone. It really reads like a lifework. Gene came out in a much shorter time.
ReplyDeleteThe Gene has a useful glossary at the back.
DeleteI just finished it and liked it a great deal. It filled in lots of the cracks around what I did know about the topic.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you liked it, and I concur. I also just reread James Watson's The Double Helix, which provides a view from the trenches.
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