I have this tendency, when I read a book as brilliantly informing as this one, to wipe the froth from my mouth, shuffle the pages of notes I've written contemporaneous to the reading, and plunge into the cocktail party which is this forum, grabbing each of you by the virtual lapels, and launching into a lecture about one of the hundreds of things I learned in the process. As if, you know, I missed some of the froth.

So, imagine me back from some journey, casting pleasantries aside, and launching

I think this was really good, and even better than The Emperor of All Maladies which I just read recently as well. I might have enjoyed this one more because it's relevant to my current day to day thing though. I really liked the way it ties in the personal elements of genetics through out the book and how it acknowledges really important questions of what we actually deem normal and healthy. I feel like a lot of times there isn't as much acknowledgement of the tradeoffs made when trying to elim ...more

Hello bookish peeps,
Another one of my review has been posted on our country's largest daily newspaper's website, The Times of India.

"This book is the story of the birth, growth, and future of one of the most powerful and dangerous ideas in the history of science: the "gene," the fundamental unit of heredity, and the basic unit of all biological information. I"
~Siddhartha Mukherjee
The 2011 Pulitzer Prize winner, Siddhartha Mukherjee, is back with another incredibly well-written book, The Gene: A

I listened to the BBC abridged audio book as I often do before ordering it. I like hardbacks so I try and be sure first I want to read it. I didn't like it enough. I loved The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer but couldn't feel that deep interest with this one.

Now it could be that the book is fantastic and it had a lousy editor at the BBC. Oliver Sacks autobiography, On the Move: A Life is a 10 star book, but the abridged BBC one is terrible, mostly the wrong episodes chosen. But st

Not half as good a narrative as The Emperor of All Maladies, but still a good account of the Gene's journey and where it is going. It will hold your attention even if you have read multiple accounts of the progress of Genetics such as Watson's, because most histories of the Gene focus on the Genome project or on the early phase of discovery of genetics, Mukherjee instead focuses on the applications that are currently ongoing and how those fields have developed.

My only complaint: the focus of th

Cannot begin to tell you what I learned from this fascinating study of The Gene but I gained great insight from the thorough research of Siddhartha Mukherjee. I am destined for a second read/listen. The audio narration by Dennis Boutsikaris made this compelling, very well paced with a distinct and pleasant tonal quality. Highly recommended.

In this beautifully written, vivid history of genetics; Mukherjee takes us by the hand and walks us through the hall of fame of all the people who are the reason for modern biology as we study it today. His picturesque descriptions make the book a joy to read.

Starting with Mendel and ending with embryonic stem cell research and beyond; the fascinating story of genetic research is given in the book. There are life stories of many exceptional scientists. Unfortunately many examples of bad science

Thanks goes to Netgalley and a wonderful author for a wonderfully told series of stories within the world of genetics.

I was worried, briefly, by the insistence of bringing Aristotle's take on the genome, or the recapitulation of many of the grandfathers of the science, such as Mendel and Darwin, but the way that these otherwise well-known personages were brought alive to the page was more of a story than a dry recounting. Even so, I wasn't prepared for what was soon to come.

I became engrossed in

"We seek constancy in heredity--and find its opposite: variation. Mutants are necessary to maintain the essence of our selves."
- Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Gene

I've owned Mukherjee's other book, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, for years and have consistently found rational reasons to not read it. So, I'm not sure what made me pick up this book first. Perhaps, it was a friend who prompted me. Perhaps, too, was my tendency to come late to authors and read them backwards (rNA?).

I'm not going to lie, there were some pages of this book where all my mind saw was 'science science science science' etc etc over and over again instead of the actual words which apparently make sense to people cleverer than me.

Happily though, the vast majority of the book is written in a more engaging and approachable fashion. Nevertheless, it clearly represents a vast amount of research, spanning the field from Aristotle to the present day. It plots the path of ever increasing knowledge and m

Siddhartha Mukherjee, Pulitzer's Prize winning book, "The Emperor of All Maladies"
scared the hell out of me right from the 'get go'....when I read that "1 in 4 people will get cancer in your lifetime".

Mukherjee dives right in again, ( wasting no time), in "The Gene".

We first learn that mental illness has been in Mukherjee's family for at least two generations. He shares personally with us about 4 different relatives: 2 cousins and two uncles -- ( from his father's side), whose minds were crumb

This book is a skillfully crafted combination of science history, character sketches, and personal encounters by the author's extended family with a history of mental illness. The end result maintains the interest of the reader in a subject that could have been a lot less interesting in the hands on another writer.

Most of the book is an account of the history of human advances in the understanding of how heritable characteristics are passed through multiple biological generations. Toward the end

Not my first review of a masterpiece orchestrated by Siddhartha Mukherjee, as I am guilty to languishing (past a reasonable amount of time) in Pulitzer Prize winner “Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer.” Our Mom and Dad give us something. Finding what the something is are drops of light in a “dunkelweld” begging the question do genes determine our identity? What part does Mom and Dad play?

What is a gene anyway? A gene is vibrating message to build a protein, which creates a protein.

You don't have to like science to enjoy this book! If you do like science, you'll find it even more informative and entertaining. The book is written for a broader audience who enjoy history, biology, and for those who enjoy debating social, cultural, and ethical dilemmas.

In the book the author takes us in depth though the biological journey of the evolution of our knowledge and struggles with the study of the gene, all coiled around like the DNA strand with world histories most critical events

Siddhartha Mukherjee's 2010 The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer is amongst my top nonfiction books of all time.

When he released THE GENE: An Intimate History in 2016, I had plans to get to it, but the 500+ pages on genetics and molecular biology was (just) a little daunting. I mean, I love biology, but I was imagining heredity charts of peas... of course, I just needed to remind myself how fantastic Mukherjee's writing is and trust in that fact.

I chose to listen to the audiobook o

'The Gene: an intimate history' is a most readable story about what it means to be human. It is a book that attempts to shine a light on the complex and often fraught history of understanding heredity. The book is laid out in a relatively easy to follow format with a writing style suited to those without a scientific background but with a keen interest in science.

What makes this very readable for the non-scientist is how the author relates the history of the gene, determining the human genome a

I began this book knowing practically nothing about genes and chromosomes. My ability to follow it from start to finish without any serious problems is amazing! The author is clear, and he captivates a reader’s interest all the way through.

Mukherjee, a cancer physician and researcher, begins with the history of genetics, moves forward to our capabilities today and what lies ahead in the future. He makes the science relevant to modern-day readers. He relates how genetics has impacted on his own

The dude who wrote Emperor of all Maladies is back with a prequel and it's good!

It starts with some history - a little Darwin and a lot of Mendel, the monk who spent his whole life geeking out over pea plants, and who I remember as being the most boring part of a very boring 9th grade biology class. (Why is high school so awful at making science interesting? It's so interesting!) And some other, lesser-known characters. This is what Mukherjee did in Emperor of Maladies, too: the history of resea

Sorry, people. I couldn't finish this book. Billed as a prequel to the brilliant Emperor of Maladies, this was just too confusing and frustrating a book for me. My major difficulty with Mukherjee's approach is that the book is a history of genetics which never properly explains what a gene is. So the reader follows the scientists down blind alleys and back out again while getting dizzy from the increasingly long list of names and biological terms. I ended up trying to sketch out a diagram of how ...more

Mukherjee makes science history interesting, accessible and relevant. We learn about genetics and how a steady stream of brilliant and driven scientists uncovered the code that defines us all. Recent discoveries have given us the ability to change that code. Mukherjee presents the moral conundrums implicit in our new knowledge. The moral dilemma has a history too that is as important as that of the discoveries.

Mukherjee begins with Darwin and Mendel. Mendel’s 1856-63 studies of heritable traits

This book offers a comprehensive and engaging overview of genetics. It includes the history of the field, anecdotes of its development, a well-paced technical explanation of the high level aspects, and quite a lot of discussion on the associated moral dilemmas that we are faced with as we understand how we can use this technology to change our own species.

Unfortunately, the book does not delve into some of the aspects of modern genetics that I find most interesting, such as gene drive. These are

4.5/5 But what is ”natural”? I wonder. On one hand: variation, mutation, change, inconstancy, divisibility, flux. And on the other, constancy, permanence, indivisibility, fidelity. Bhed. Abhed. It should hardly surprise us that DNA, the molecule of contradictions, encodes an organism of contradictions. . . . Our genome has negotiated a fragile balance between counterpoised forces, pairing strand with opposing strand, mixing past and future, pitting memory against desire. It is the most human of ...more

‘The Gene’ is a very informative book, and a book I believe which everyone should read, as it packs vital information on what we really are. That said, this is a big book, and is very dense in several sections.

Siddhartha Mukherjee traces the history of how we have gained better understanding of our genes since over a century. He starts with his family, many of his relatives on his father’s side suffering from mental illnesses. This is interspersed with some random musings on the impact of the p

Very interesting and educational, but a bit of an effort to get through.

At the same time I reached the midway point of Siddhartha Mukherjee’s The Gene: An Intimate History, the satellite Juno entered the atmosphere of Jupiter. But that feat pales, in my view, to the story about genetic journeys that are taking place within our individual, biological selves, especially since “genes provide the context to understand development and fate” of every human life. As I finished the book today, the New York Times reported that a clinical trial using a promising type of genet ...more

What a fantastic read!
4.5*

When this title arrived, before I opened the pack I thought there were two books inside, and my stomach sank a bit at the thought of ploughing through a 600 page wrist-buster. Apart from anything else, very long popular science books are often loaded with affectation, and this impression was not helped by the toe-curling praise of a previous title ('The notion of "popular science" doesn't come close to describing this achievement. It is literature.' Ick.) Not to mention the tedious, very persona ...more

This book is a combination of science, history, and stories. It is so well written and very engaging, but it does includes many details (and reads like a textbook for some of the time). I am not writing this to discourage anyone from reading this, just to set the expectations if you decide to approach this book. Since I studied some extended biology in the past it was easy for me to dive into the RNA and the amino acid described at length, so just FYI. The author did an amazing job spicing up th ...more

The Emperor of All Maladies, which won a Pulitzer Prize in 2011, is among my most memorable reads of the past decade. So it was a disappointment to find that I could never really engage with Mukherjee’s second full-length work. There’s no denying this book’s impressive scope: it’s a comprehensive survey of the past 150 years of genetics research, but it also stretches back to antiquity to see the different ways people have imagined that heredity works. It’s a no-holds-barred science and social h ...more

“ Here, in the estuarine plains of criss-crossing information, history, society, and culture collide and intersect with genetics, like tides. Some waves cancel each other, while others reinforce each other. No force is particularly strong—but their combined effect produces the unique and rippled landscape that we call an individual’s identity. ”

“ Normalcy is the antithesis of evolution. ”

“The Gene: An Intimate History” by Siddhartha Mukherjee is a comprehensive, relentlessly informative and