Description

An epic, dazzling history of the idea that defines us.

From Gregor Mendel’s pea plants to the discovery of DNA and the CRISPR revolution in gene-editing, The Gene tells the story of how we came to understand heredity – to decipher the master-code that makes and defines humans – land how that knowledge now allows us to rewrite life itself. Siddhartha Mukherjee combines scientific insight with personal history, weaving in his own family’s struggles with mental illness to explore the moral frontiers of genetics.

This is science writing of the highest order, humane, lyrical, and profound, showing how the study of genes illuminates both our biological destiny and our deepest hopes.

‘Siddhartha Mukherjee is the perfect guide to genome science’ Bill Gates

‘Thrilling and comprehensive’ Sunday Times

Publisher Review

The story [...] has been told, piecemeal, in different ways, but never before with the scope and grandeur that Siddhartha Mukherjee brings to his new history, The Gene. He fully justifies the claim that it is "one of the most powerful and dangerous ideas in the history of science." ... Definitive -- James Gleick * New York Times Book Review * Dramatic and precise... [A] thrilling and comprehensive account of what seems certain to be the most radical, controversial and, to borrow from the subtitle, intimate science of our time... He is a natural storyteller... A page-turner... Read this book and steel yourself for what comes next. -- Bryan Appleyard * Sunday Times * The Gene is prodigious, sweeping, and ultimately transcendent. If you're interested in what it means to be human, today and in the tomorrows to come, you must read this book. -- Anthony Doerr, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of All the Light We Cannot See [Siddhartha Mukherjee] is the perfect person to guide us through the past, present, and future of genome science... It is up to all of us-not just scientists, government officials, and people fortunate enough to lead foundations-to think hard about these new technologies and how they should and should not be used. Reading The Gene will get you the point where you can actively engage in that debate. -- Bill Gates * Gatesnotes * With a marriage of architectural precision and luscious narrative, an eye for both the paradoxical detail and the unsettling irony, and a genius for locating the emotional truths buried in chemical abstractions, Mukherjee leaves you feeling as though you've just aced a college course for which you'd been afraid to register - and enjoyed every minute of it -- Andrew Solomon * Washington Post *