The Gene: An Intimate History

Couldn't get through because of boring writing style, unnecessary details and no real value add. I have completed 20% of the book and gained nothing but lost several precious hours. Useless!

This book was given to me as a gift and sat on the shelf for quite a while. Its a large book and my frequent airline travels didn't match with its size. I recently went out and bought the audio version (actually it was a free book tbh) and I was then able to dedicate time to the material.

Most of the negative reviews, to me, read like other scientists in the field with vastly different opinions on the minutiae of the book (which, honestly that is fine..) harboring vicious responses to even the slight literary detour. I didn't press to read (listen) to the book because I expected a university text book on the topic. Science and Nature both offer vast amounts of content and if the prospective reader is expecting this, you would be better served elsewhere. I have experienced this in the fields of physics, nuclear engineering and computer science - every field has its zealots and they are easily offended. The explanation of the book clearly outlines what it delivers, but.. well - whatever.

My background is Nuclear Engineering, Physics and Mathematics. Unrelated in specificity, but relatable in the concepts of attempting to understand the nature or function of things through observation and experimentation. I found the content enjoyable, easy to follow, detailed enough to inspire review of more rigorous sources yet brief enough if uninteresting that it didn't bog down. Opposed to some reviewers, I actually liked the interweaving of his family into the story. In fact, towards the closing he superimposed 3 individuals, each with genetic aberrations, but vastly different dilemmas. The point, to me at least, being that cracking the genetics code doesn't 'provide the clear answer' as much as it sheds light that 'its not an easy answer' - in fact it presents some fairly substantial questions. I can sympathize if this isn't to everyone's taste but I didn't find them long or arduous to get through. I also enjoyed the journey of the discovery, and the aspirations around genetics - both the politically and monetarily focused and the well intention-ed... the fragile relationship, not being very surprising given my field.

He does dance around sensitive topics like eugenics and nazis a bit, none of which bothered me. I didn't feel the topic to be overly 'PC' as some have suggested, but the author clearly shows some bias here.. to be honest, with these topics, that's not offensive but to the academic reader only interested in hard facts and zero humanity, it will be a nuisance. Still, there is some color there but to me this wasn't a textbook and the bias didn't really bother me.

Bottom line, if you have a very thin understanding of the topic, you enjoy science and experimentation, and you are only looking for a journey through the history and what we have learned at about a 10-15K foot view this is a great book. You will not come away able to teach a masterclass or jump straight into CRISPR experiments, but you might have something more interesting than what the news offers to talk about at the kitchen table or during your next flight.

This is an elegantly written primer on genetics that brings the reader up to date with developments over the past generation. Most striking is Dr. Mukherjee's treatment of the genetics of race and gender and his discussion of the politics of genetics. He shows that the y chromosome that determines gender carry very little other information. Race too is simply not associated with many of the secondary traits that the popular imagination adds to race. Mukherjee makes the compelling argument that we attach to race and gender far more significance than is justified by biology. As for the politics of genetics, Mukherjee shows how the Soviets and Nazis used crude, bastardized genetics to support their opposing political arguments. The Soviets argued that acquired traits could be passed on genetically, indicating the importance of society. The Nazis argued that race determined the traits necessary to survive. Each was half-baked in its arguments, and the sorry history of eugenics in the 20th century show the danger of having just a little information.

Mukherjee shows the extraordinary advances in genetics allowing the mapping of the human genome and the effectiveness of genetically focused cancer treatments. In the end, though, he leaves the impression that we have just scratched the surface in this area and are a long way from the Brave New World of biological engineering.

This is beautifully done and on par with Mukherjee's previous prize winning book on cancer

Amazing from start to finish

I don't care for reading much, so when this book was an assigned reading in my 400 level biochemistry class I was less than thrilled. I imagined that this book was one of those dry, difficult to read books, but I was wrong. This book using personal experiences to open in to different levels of genetic discovery. There was a lot of personal research put into the book which brought a more personal approach into the writing. This sounds like a first hand account from the times of Gregor Mendel to plasmid discovery. This is a must read, and this is coming from someone who dislikes reading.

I am puzzled at the glowing reviews of this book. Did those folks read it all the way through? I began it with high hopes because "Emperor" is such a terrific book. "Emperor" is original, vivid science writing that weaves together discovery with social context (the women's movement of the '70's sparking the overthrow of the radical mastectomy) and culminates in a lovely retelling of the discovery of Gleevec. I hoped to similarly recommend "Gene" to my genetics students. What's unique and riveting are the stories of Mukherjee's Bengali family with its history of madness. The rest is an elegantly written but superficial history of genetics, with personal, unexamined biases thrown in. I wondered throughout who the prospective audience was- humanities professors with science envy? NYT journalists? That honors non-science major who goes on to medical school? An author's choice of quotes and cultural references reveals much; here they are relentlessly Western-canonical, white, old, male. How many undergrads, slapped with a reference to the myth of Daphne would even bother to Google? Yet there are such shoutouts on nearly every page, presumably to impress the humanities professors. Here's what I mean by a superficial history of genetics. The molecular biology revolution began as the confluence of two experimental schools, the Cambridge-centered structural biologists (amply described) and the phage group begun by Max Delbruck. There is barely a mention of phage in the book; even Hershey-Chase and Benzer's fine structure of the gene are omitted, even those these were major milestones in understanding the gene. Transfer RNA, key piece in the puzzle to understand how the genetic code is interpreted, is not even mentioned. Kary Mullis and PCR get one paragraph, while pages are devoted to the non-discovery of Xq28. The section on Drosophila developmental genetics is nicely explained but cries out for images of gradients, segmentation patterns, Hox gene maps. Without these details a beginning science student wouldn't understand the breathtaking excitement of these discoveries- we scientists are visual learners. Indeed, despite flights of metaphor, Mukherjee often seems oddly bored by the purely scientific delights of discovery. On the intersection of science and society, Mukherjee wants to have his cake and eat it too. He wants to be woke (indeed, he is trolled by some reviewers here as "politically correct") but can't escape his privilege and biases. His M.O. is to present "both sides" as valid, in journalistic fashion, leaving the reader to imagine that there is a case to be made even for the ugliest intrusions of racism and gender/class prejudices in science. Cases in point: his description of the theft of Rosalind Franklin's images, surely one of the most jarring cases of intellectual theft leading to a great discovery, is presented in the misogynist words of Wilkins and Watson, which weirdly justifies the greater "sense of play" of the male scientists as opposed to the stern, inflexible, humorless, sexless personality they ascribe to Franklin. This is what they said, of course: it is up to a modern-day historian to contextualize it by trying to imagine Franklin's point of view. Watson's subsequent racist outbursts which have just led Cold Spring Harbor to take away his honors aren't mentioned, though every other personality quirk of famous scientists is. Race doesn't exist as biology- but wait, maybe it does! Maybe the migrants out of Africa (revealing called "our ancestors") had more of a DRD4-7 novelty-seeking gene than the African stay-at-homes! I am not making this up. He speculates on this. The weaponizing of IQ against immigrants in the early 20th century and the race and IQ debate of the early '70's go unmentioned. The latter debate grew out of anti-racist activism and consumed the 1973 Genetics Congress, led to the discrediting of Arthur Jensen and the debunking of Cyril Burt, and shaped the responses to The Bell Curve which he does discuss. Mukherjee cites uncritically the falsified heritability estimates of Burt even though he admits in an endnote (!) that these are no longer accepted. The book hits rock bottom with the uncritical fables of separated twins told to reporters at the time of the "Minnesota Twins" study: "Both drove Chevrolets...both Jims had married women named Linda. Both had owned dogs that they named Toy..." Seriously, there's a gene for that? It amazes me that scientists who by profession must think critically about their own experiments and assumptions can be so sadly credulous in fields not their own. Lastly, Mukherjee's musings on the future of humans in the CRISPR era are long-winded, muddled, and shallow, suffering from the same lack of commitment as the history and social debates in the book.

Fascinating book. Some background in genetics would be helpful, but would be a good read for anyone interested in science history. I wish this book had been available in the 60swhen I was in college.