Un libro con un montón de información super interesante. Supongo que se encuentra algo desactualizado ya que tiene más de 20 años el libro, y en la ciencia todo conocimiento muta y se descubren nuevos conocimientos todo el tiempo. Igual esta bueno

Sometimes I have to stop after even a paragraph. It's a strong feeling of becoming enraptured by the information, connections and insights afforded by this extremely lucid and stimulating layperson's introduction to the human genome. An extremely compressed three page preface provides a glossary and explanation of key terms, and can be returned to as needed. Each chapter then takes one chromosome and selects from each a particular gene to describe with a much broader emphasis upon what this actually means for human individuality, culture and society.

As always when reading popular science books, as well as becoming enthusiastic and wishing to retrain as an astrophysicist or quantum mechanic for instance, I am very interested in the 'rhetoric' of discourses, what emerges between the lines - often very powerful assumptions and values relating to conceptualising 'human nature'. In the case of biology, neuroscience etc. it strikes me as not at all right that one of the assumptions seems to be treating the hard, material attributes of human animalism on the same logical level as the wider discourses of humanity: thus for instance the nature-nurture division (itself making the same logically precarious distinction) leads at worst to quanitfying the relative influence of each 'side'. The are always ideological and political implication, too, not only within the production of science popularisation but within scientific enterprises generally.

Ridley does not entirely address the identity question. There's an interesting parallel I think between science writing like this which acknowledges "environmental factors' but leaves them as extremely vague, amorphous and subject to filling with whatever a particular thinker or conceptual paradigm requires, and those who consider such questions as occur around socioeconomics, ideology, material poverty etc. who tend to leave the questions about the enormously important weight of human meat, including brain meat, as a passing aside. Both have their essential role, and a synthesis is required. However, Ridley does an excellent job in contrasting Chapter/Chromosome 4, Fate wherein a particular tiny, tiny genetic abnormality is indeed an unstoppable marker which predicts certain terminal illnesses )or, the high risk of) with Chromosome5, in Environment which details the research for asthma related genes: here, he whizzes through the many implicated genes correlating with different demographies and how environment is a very significant, possibly crucial, factor in triggering genetic propensities (among different groups: men, for instance seem more affected by petrol fumes than women who have a weakness for diesel).

I like his conclusion of the chapter on environment (in which he does, by the way, mention the wide open field for interpreters of data to channel explanations through favourite hobby horses, interests or ideology):

The more we delve into the genome the less fatalistic it will seem. Grey indeterminancy, variable causality and vague predisposition are hallmarks of the system.....(S)implicity piled upon simplicity creates complexity. The genome is as complicated and indeterminate as ordinary life, because it is ordinary life. This should come as a relief. Simple determinism, whether of the genetic or environmental kind, is a depressing prospect for those with a fondness for free will.

Well, being a numbskull, I hadn't realised that gene theory has almost died in relation to the context of this book. I shall keep it as an historical text! Still, its great strength remains which is the approach to emphasising the amorphousness of data and theory, the tentative nature of concluding anything, and so thus an antidote to the dread ideologies of the numbskulls all around who use language like lego blocks and words like things to be quantified, measured and sold and bought. Yah!

"Still useful today".

Even though it's published in 1999 the book is still useful today. I was reluctant to get it because I though it might be dated. He really does explain the human genome better than anything I've read. The book was a necessary background to educate me about all of this talk I've been hearing about the human genome. Some of his assertions haven't held up since the publication of the book, but don't let that dissuade you from reading this highly informative book.

كتاب صعب جدا ،
ان لمً تكن من أهل الإختصاص

أنهيت أكثر من ثلاثة أرباعه بشق الأنفس
ولم أكمله
التقيم أعلاه
للجزء الذي قرأته فقط

_____ سأعيد قراءة الكتاب
بنسخة أخرى صادرة عن المجلس الوطني للثقافة والفنون والآداب في دولة الكويت _ سلسة عالم المعرفة

This was beautifully done. I could not put it down. The human body is strange and artfully made. Read this and go on an exploration into the chromosomes that make us unique.

كتاب رائع و غني جدا بالمعلومات و يحتاج تركيز لان مواضيع قويه اعجبني طريقه تناول الموضوع من قبل المؤلف في كثير من النواحي لكن اعترف واجهت صعوبه في بعض فصوله و فيه مصطلحات علمية كثيرة لكن حبي و اهتمامي بموضوع الوراثه و الجينوم ساعدني في هضم الكثير منه و انصح بقرائته للمهتمين بهذا المجال

My review is on Booktube!

In the beginning there was the word and it was RNA? Wha? Stop trying to wax poetic about my genome! I tried to slog through this but my brain felt like my legs do when I walk across wet, clay soil and it builds up on the bottom of my shoes as I walk along.

A very well-written, chatty, enjoyable and wide-ranging introduction to genomics. Ridley does a reasonably good job of keeping his political philosophy - nutty right-wing libertarianism - to himself until the last couple of chapters, at which it emerges in the most unfortunate (and unscientific) fashion with the soft-pedalling of eugenics. Eugenics, we are told, is not bad science but bad _politics_; we could breed a population of really smart, slim, law-abiding people if we as individuals wanted to, but the real problem is the government telling us what to do. Absurd. If nothing else, it's well established that phenomena like 'intelligence' are extremely complex and that their genetic component corresponds to a large variety of genes that you couldn't possibly breed for.

Partly the problem is that the book was published in 1999, which is a long time ago in a fast-changing world; but I think a particular political bias is the bigger issue here.

If you were planning to read 5-10 books on genomics, this should probably be one of them. If however you wanted a single book to give you a flavour of the topic, I'd go for either The Gene: An Intimate History or A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Stories in Our Genes - both are more up-to-date and less Tory.

This book has the enigma to change the viewpoint of everyone. Though, it is a little outdated as we have come to a newer version of genomes especially when we talk about the introns and exons. This book makes you see the intricacies that nature has designed us through evolution. It specifically describes the human genome and takes you through the details of each chromosome. We definitely study more during our college years of Biochemistry, but this book is a life-changer for those who want to understand how the body works the way it does.
For instance, without males, it is impossible to form a human placenta. Placenta, a female organ developed during fetus formation will not be genetically instructed to form if chromosome 15 of males don't allow it to form. This means for the proper growth of the fetus, both genes from male and female equally plays an important role. Here, none of the genes shouts feminism or machochism. Both work equally for the proper growth of the fetus.
There are many interesting discoveries written in this book, which will take the readers to an ephemeral world with no superstition, no false conspiracies, just science.

A spur of the moment buy at the airport when going on holiday, I couldnt put the book down once I'd started. This is more than a book about the human genome, its also an analysis of the social, political and scientific implications of understanding the human genetic map.

Each area he analyses from health and healing to death and immortalit, from instinct and intelligence to personality and behavior is illustrated with examples of experiments used to prove the point and is analysed with a laymans eye so even those of us without a scientific background can absorb and understand the complexity, possibilities and even the threats this "new" science presents us with. Thankfully for me, he also steers away from the spiritual/religious debate and concentrates on evidentiary argument.

I enjoyed this book so much I came straight back and bought his follow up "Nature via Nurture", also an excellent read.

Highly recommended.

No doubt this is very well written and a good example of science communication. However, some chapters were a bit excessively long, for my taste.
Coming from a molecular biology background and reading it in 2021, I can't give it more than 3 stars because of its outdated ideologies and data.