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The Gene An Intimate History
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Scribner, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4767-3350-0 |
Books describing every aspect of the gene abound, as discovering its identity and describing its behavior was one of the biggest scientific accomplishments of the 20th century. Indeed, it was quite brave for Mukherjee to enter this crowded space, although perhaps not surprising as he comes with the highest credentials you can wish for: winner of the Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction for his masterpiece “The Emperor of all Maladies: A Biography of Cancer”, published in 2010. A such, I picked up this book with a combination of anticipation and trepidation, as it was unclear what novel angle the author would take with such treaded material.
Alas, I fear to say that albeit well written (I would not expect anything less from Mukherjee), it ultimately does not offer any new perspective, nor any new facts regarding the gene. Moreover, it provides a very superficial look at topic, which might be good enough for a novice, but which will leave anyone else (such as students of biology) wanting for more. And given that there are several other books out there that also recount the history of the gene, but in richer detail, I would have no choice but to alert readers to pass on this book. Mind you, I only ask to pass on the book, but not the author (I still consider his “Emperor of all Maladies” to be mandatory reading for anyone). Perhaps this is a case where the author should have listened to his inner voice, as he does confess in the acknowledgements that after writing “Emperor of all Maladies” he felt like he suffered from “exhaustion of imagination” and that the experience “sapped all [his] stories…and placed a lien on [his] future as a writer“, which left him with “… nothing more to tell”. Sadly (and ironically) this book corroborates exactly that.
