Carl Zimmer

She Has Her Mother's Laugh (eBook, ePUB)

The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2018 BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION

She Has Her Mother's Laugh presents a profoundly original perspective on what we pass along from generation to generation. Charles Darwin played a crucial part in turning heredity into a scientific question, and yet he failed spectacularly to answer it. The birth of genetics in the early 1900s seemed to do precisely that. Gradually, people translated their old notions about heredity into a language of genes. As the technology for studying genes became cheaper, millions of people ordered genetic tests to link themselves to missing parents, to distant ancestors, to ethnic identities . . .

But, award-winning science writer Carl Zimmer argues, heredity isn't just about genes that pass from parent to child. Heredity continues within our own bodies, as a single cell gives rise to trillions of cells that make up our bodies. We say we inherit genes from our ancestors but we inherit other things that matter as much or more to our lives, from microbes to technologies we use to make life more comfortable. We need a new definition of what heredity is and, through Carl Zimmer's lucid exposition and storytelling, this resounding tour de force delivers it.

Weaving together historical and current scientific research, his own experience with his two daughters, and the kind of original reporting expected of one of the world's best science journalists, Zimmer ultimately unpacks urgent bioethical quandaries arising from new biomedical technologies, but also long-standing presumptions about who we really are and what we can pass on to future generations.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Pan Macmillan
• Seitenzahl: 352
• Altersempfehlung: ab 18 Jahre
• Erscheinungstermin: 14. Juni 2018
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781509818563
• Artikelnr.: 50539128

Autorenporträt

Carl Zimmer is a popular science writer and columnist, who reports from the frontiers of biology, where scientists are expanding our understanding of life. Since 2013 he has been a columnist at the New York Times. He is a popular speaker at universities, medical schools, museums, and festivals, and he is also a frequent on radio programs such as Radiolab and This American Life. In 2016, Zimmer won the Stephen Jay Gould Prize, awarded annually by the Society for the Study of Evolution to recognize individuals whose sustained efforts have advanced public understanding of evolutionary science. Zimmer has written on subjects ranging from viruses to neuroscience to evolution, including She Has Her Mother's Laugh, focusing on heredity.

Inhaltsangabe

Unit
Part I: A Stroke on the Cheek Chapter
1: The Light Trifle of His Substance Chapter
2: Traveling Across the Face of Time Chapter
3: This Race Should End with Them Chapter
4: Attagirl Unit
Part II: Wayward DNA Chapter
5: An Evening's Revelry Chapter
6: The Sleeping Branches Chapter
7: Individual Z Chapter
8: Mongrels Chapter
9: Nine Foot High Complete Chapter
10: Ed and Fred Unit
Part III: Other Channels Chapter
11: Ex Ovo Omnia Chapter
12: Witches'
Broom Chapter
13: Chimeras Unit
Part IV: Other Channels Chapter
14: You, My Friend, Are a Wonderland Chapter
15: Flowering Monsters Chapter
16: The Teachable Ape Unit
Part V: The Sun Chariot Chapter
17: Yet Did He Greatly Dare Chapter
18: Orphaned at Conception Chapter
19: The Planet's Heirs