Gene

Before the reader are three interpenetrating biographies: the ideas of the gene, human society in the course of its development, and the author's family, into which this idea has penetrated with the baggage of a hereditary mental illness. On the... pages of this epoch-making book, the concept of the gene originates from Aristotle's vague conjectures about the informational nature of heredity and from Paracelsus's ideas about homunculi, intertwines with the images of the people who created genetics in the 19th-20th centuries, becomes involved in eugenics projects, and evolves into genome editing technologies. Observing the influence of genes on cellular and human destinies as a scientist and physician whose own family is plagued by a hereditary ailment, Mukerjee imbues scientific history with the dramas of people with genetic diseases and highlights the ethical challenges we face as we learn to "read" and "write" in the language of DNA.